We are ready to get going here with our work session for the Ven City Council.

We are all here.

I just want to get started because we're a little bit behind.

So I see everyone is here.

I'm not going to do a formal roll call.

Okay.

So first up is commercial strategies.

Yep.

So good afternoon, Mayor Council, Respiration, Chief Operations Officer with Sarah Hudson.

Good news, we're not here to talk about transportation funding, because that's usually we've seen us before, right?

We're here to, I'm just gonna give a quick context of what we're gonna do here.

We're gonna try to give a 10 to 15 minute presentation just to provide context of all the different kind of questions and areas around commercial um developments around town and different strategies.

And then if you notice behind me, we've got a host of staff, then some extra chairs here.

So we have a lot of experts in the room, depending on questions and direction you want to go.

Probably pull some people forward, but Sarah and I will find the context of where we're at, what we're trying to do, and the different kind of levers we're talking about.

And then we'll be more than happy to we really want to get into conversation on this to make sure that we're addressing council's questions, concerns, and ideas about what how to move forward.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Sarah.

Hello.

So um as we kind of go through today's discussion, I know Russ just kind of gave that overview, but in terms of framing what we're talking about, there's lots of different threads of conversation happening.

We've heard from our Petros and Eastern neighbors, and kind of in terms of the focus of protection where there is commercial lands in the city, how do we preserve that and balance that with needed housing?

So that's kind of the protection side of the conversation.

There's also kind of a piece around how do we activate commercial.

So with recent um presentations and feedback from um Central Oregon Land Watch and Yimby and conversations at BDAB about where do we want commercial in the city, how do we get more of it, what types of commercial we want to see.

So kind of that protection side and that activation side.

So kind of be thinking um about that through um tonight's conversation.

Um as Russ said, we're gonna talk about a little bit more why we're here, kind of give some background.

Um, and that will really serve as a good foundation for talking about, okay, what are the tools, what are the levers at the city level that we could be really looking at um in the short term, medium term, and long term.

So we'll get into that um a little later in the presentation, and then we want to leave a lot of time for that discussion and question and answer.

So just to uh kind of align with council goals, obviously there's several council goals in around this area.

I'm not gonna go into great detail there on the screen, but this we know that this is an area of interest around complete neighborhoods, um, how does this relate to housing?

Because some of those conversations on housing and and kind of commercial, and how do those two relate?

And then urban renewal is in theory an investment strategy or incentive strategy if you want to use so um to kind of get these complete communities.

So I'm gonna spend a little bit of time, this is the context portion of the presentation just for council and for for the audience listening of what are we talking about.

So when we say commercial, especially in the context of this conversation, we're talking about a wide breadth of commercial.

You'll see different examples on the screen of what we have around town.

So when we start talking about how do we get commercial into existing neighborhoods, you have things like Jackson's Quarter, um, Jackson's Corner, Active Culture, Bruno's Market, they're they're embedded into the residential neighborhoods, and I know there's um desire by council to how how do we broaden that and get that more in more different areas around the city and incentivize those.

And I know there's desire by council to how do we broaden that and get that more in more different areas around the city and incentivize those.

Then you start moving into more of kind of neighborhood center commercial when you think of the area, recent development up at 27th and remarket over by NEF and 27th of the hospital, down on Brookswood.

Now you're starting to get more services and kind of collective smaller scale commercial activities, and then we start going to corridors, so up in the upper right, that's the Newport Corridor, where you start to see a big mix of uses along streets, and then we start talking about the actual shopping centers that range from like the West Side Safeway with the ancillary buildings around that, and that can then that can also stretch up to the power, what we call the power box centers, which is you know the Costco's and things like that.

Really kind of focused in this range, because I know that's what the interest of council we're not talking about the power super centers and things like that.

It's more how do we get these kind of activated different levels of commercials into and to support the existing residential neighborhoods.

So, real quick, how do we do that in terms of all of our documents and how we plan the city?

So this is just the kind of running at different elevations gonna start up.

I know council's aware of this, but I just want to give some context.

Starting with the 30,000 foot levels where we start, that's really where we envision what the city's gonna look and feel like around town.

And that's really our comprehensive plan, which is our policies around growth, it determines where our zoning is going to be and what how we where and how we want the city to develop that rolls into the implementing documents, which is our development code, which is really the kind of the instruction manual for developments when they come in, what do they need to do?

What permissive uses do you have in each one of these zones based off of the policies and and and kind of the leading principles of the comprehensive plan?

Then those are further refined through special area plans like the Southeast Area Plan that the city did, and master plans that are done by developers to take those kind of comprehensive plan goals and objectives and zonings and acreages, and then actually translate that into a more um developable piece of property where they know exactly where the roads are gonna be and the different zones are gonna be, but there's definitely rules of engagement around that.

And then we get down to what we call the street level.

That's when we actually get how do we actually activate these spaces, right?

So that's when land use applications come in.

We look at market conditions.

Um are we just letting the market figure out where this is going to go, or do we want to look at city incentives?

And this is also where we have the discussions of you know, we start to figure out what projects need to build and the kind of supporting things and costs that will go in relationship to the project.

So a lot of times when you see things come in at the street level, there's a lot of things that are already happening on those upper bands to create and set the table for that stuff to happen.

The other thing I will say in here is this is where we have a lot of state guidance that occurs.

This is Oregon and the Oregon land use system.

We use that to create the upper documents.

There's a lot of rules as council knows in terms of how we create those documents, but then also at every session, I'm gonna talk about this on the next slide.

We could get new legislation that kind of either overwrites what we have or changes what we have that we need to adapt to, not only in the comprehensive plan when we update that, but also specific to what uses go on what property.

So on the left here, this is just a colored map of the different types of zones that we have in.

The yellows are the residential zones, and then the other colors start going into the mixed-use commercial areas and industrial areas.

So this is what comes out of the comprehensive plan is our zoning and comprehensive plan maps that say this is where we want commercial, this is where we want mixed use, and this is where we want the city to grow in certain types of ways.

What happened with a lot of the conversations going on now?

I'm gonna touch on this briefly around what we call Senate Bill 8 was a recent state law that got passed that says from the state perspective, they're trying to get more affordable housing generated into communities.

So the state came in and said any property that you have that is zoned for commercial uses, it is a permitted use to allow affordable housing in there, and you must do that.

And so we we've had to adapt to that of as things have come in, and that's been a lot around the feedback that you've been hearing in certain areas.

It is not this is not a city choice, this is a requirement that we need to do, but there are things that we are looking at.

We're gonna talk about here in a second, about different ways to try to adjust that or modify that if possible, both at the state and local level.

So this also I'm gonna use an example now of how this works and why commercial takes time to get here.

So this is Northwest Crossing, looking at 2004 on the left to 2024 on the right over a 20-year period.

Um, when Northwest Crossing was designed, and and the developers up there, what they had always intended to put a supermarket, that what you see in the middle is aroundabout of Mount Washington and Northwest Crossing.

That upper kind of northeast, northwest quadrant, developer had already planned for a commercial development there, and they were targeting the supermarket.

That's what they really wanted to put up there.

Um, if you look around, there was in 2004, there's only a one or two commercial buildings in there, they were heavily subsidized by the developer.

They were heavily subsidized by the developer.

But then when you go to 2024, you now see all the rooftops that occurred that went around that.

And they continue to try to pursue markets through that entire time to get a certain level.

What is what a supermarket and other developments do when they come in is the first thing they do is they drop a pen, draw a circle, and start counting rooftops to see if it meets their metrics.

And then they have a whole nother list of things that they need to do that are way outside of the city control.

Also, we a supermarket is a permitted use in the zone, but it's not the only permitted use in the zone.

The city does not dictate what goes where, where the supermarkets are going to go, where repair shops gonna go, or you know, a target or things like that.

We just set the stage for that, and then we let the market and the developers figure out when and how is going to be activated in those spaces, but we're just trying to kind of set the places so that we know over time, over 20 years, that we we were hoping to see that development.

I will also say that every development has different different kinds of metrics that go in there and different things they need to think about in terms of their land structure, their development costs, their investment and their investors, and all those different kinds of business requirements they that they need.

They're set differently in different areas, and if you want to go into that, we can definitely go into that.

But at a high level, in most commercial areas, it takes time for those things to come to life because of those kind of the desires and needs to actually get a commercial development out of the ground.

So now I'm gonna turn it back over to Sarah to start talking about kind of the different kind of lanes we have around helping get more commercial projects in around the city.

So, kind of in terms of where do we take this, where do we see kind of paths for action?

It really kind of boils down to what we were seeing is kind of three buckets where the city has some influence or where we can kind of look at where do we have tools or levers.

So the first bucket being state legislative advocacy, the second, kind of our looking at our own local codes and policies, and the third, kind of exploring financial incentives.

So, how that looks in terms of um what can be done this year, so that this is what we're kind of calling short term, so actions that could happen this calendar year, medium term would be kind of looking over the next year or two, and then long term is work that's kind of planned for farther out.

But in that first bucket on the left, that first point being legislative advocacy.

So the short session begins in just a couple of weeks, and as Russ was saying, with SB8, where um affordable housing uses are allowed outright, kind of looking at that a little more closely.

Can we make adjustments to it?

And there are some concepts that we would like to share with council that we'll get into in a moment.

So that would kind of be the first step.

There's also work currently underway, a market analysis as part of the economic development work plan.

So this is really looking within the urban renewal area, but it will be applied citywide.

Um, it's happening in the first half of the year to really understand do we have can we support different types of retail, neighborhood commercial things like that, to even understand that's kind of like the first step.

What will kind of the market support?

Um there's also um looking at code cleanup for neighborhood scale commercial uses, and Russ can actually expand upon that a bit.

Yeah, so there's there's some things we've and planning our planning group can come up and talk to you if you want to know specifics, but there's some things that they've been dealing with as they get applications and talk to people that are minor tweaks around sighting standards, um, you know, looking at our change of use process that that they have ideas and concepts on that we could bring forward.

We just need to get that into the overall kind of work plan for code updates, and then also we want to see what happens at the state level if council wants us to to pursue something at the state level.

We want to see what happens there because if we are successful there or partially successful there, then there might be some things that we can do at the local level with our code to enhance or provide further protections if council wants to do that.

But we can need to start at the state level first and then figure out kind of where we go from there.

And then in the medium-term bucket, that first bullet is kind of this recommendation of having conversations with stakeholders, um, whether that be developers or business owner operators.

I think we have some ideas of why commercial is not necessarily activating in some areas, but we really need to have those conversations to understand what are the barriers or say if we did look at incentives, what would actually be incentivizing, so kind of doing more of that research.

Um, and we have some in programs that we know of, but you know, is it SDC exemptions or waivers?

Is it urban renewal?

We need to kind of understand that a little bit more, and then there's planned work around infrastructure standards for infill development.

And then in the long term, there's just a lot kind of coming down with the growth plan.

Um, I don't know if you want to expand upon that now.

Yeah, and I've Brian Rankins just sitting right over here, can he can go into this more?

He can go into this more.

But one, we will have conversations with stakeholders, and there might be another code update that we want to do immediately based off of those decisions, such as if you're interested in kind of changing some of the standards in allowing commercial uses into residential zones.

There might be some concepts that we get through stakeholders or input from council that we can bring back.

But then we then we start going into well, if we're talking about how do we want commercial look and feel across the city, then we want to make sure is that a conversation we want to have independently of the growth plan and climate-friendly areas and things like that.

Or we would recommend that we put that into that bigger discussion because there could be policy changes, and we also want to make sure that we're having a community-wide conversation around that.

So again, what we're trying to get through this is just feedback from council on what areas you wanted to explore, what we're trying to achieve, and then we can kind of come back with a plan of action around that.

And then just the last item in the long-term bucket is legislative action looking at next long session.

You know, if there is some more things that we want to try to influence at the state level with our advocacy efforts and looking ahead and planning for that.

So there are just a couple things around that.

In fact, the mayor just sent some communication out about what's happening in some other cities, both you know, from the kind of state actions and also city actions.

There could be, I think the references like a House Bill 2001 type of scenario, but for commercial.

But there's also other things that we might be interested in working with the state on well, how there's some just things around prevailing wage and the kind of the current rules around that to get mixed use developments with affordable housing projects so we it's you can better you more easily get the ground floor commercial with the residential above, which is something we like to do, but there's some barriers that exist within that now.

So, but that's more of a long, a long legislative session than an immediate immediate work in the short session.

So with with the advocacy, I'm gonna go over this really quick, but um Brian Rankin and we also have air cancellor.

Um, he's he's on deck as well.

If you want more information about what what we're trying to, or initial conversations we've had at the state level, um there are things that there are concepts that we're talking about around how do we um how do we balance the need?

We we don't want to be against senability because I think from council goals and everything, we support getting affordable housing into commercial areas and get more housing with our housing crisis, but we want to balance that with complete communities and commercial.

Um but there's some ideas around um some concepts around can we restrict the percentage of a commercial area, especially master plan communities or something to ensure that we're still getting kind of that urban form that we're trying to get, but still allow this to happen.

And if you want more details around all that, um we can definitely bring them up.

But what we want to make sure is um because the session is starting, is that we're getting head nods from council of yes, you want staff to be actively engaged in this conversation.

Um, and and we can have more detailed conversations around that here in a minute.

Okay, so I think to wrap up, this is really where we want to leave a lot of time for discussion and QA.

Um, here are some questions for us to think through, but of course, can go wherever um you all want to go.

But as Ress just said, do we you know, kind of get council guidance?

Do we want to continue advocating for a legislative solution to protect commercial areas surrounded by residential uses?

So those that would be that those SBA adjustments.

Does the recommended approach that we outline of that short, medium, and long-term um approaches, does this address council's concerns?

Should we be considering anything else?

If we explore using incentives, what are we targeting and what type of commercial development is council most interested in prioritizing or looking at?

So I think both from codes and from incentives, to kind of add one more layer of that.

We're really trying to make sure that we understand what are we trying to do and incentivize, where are we trying to do that, and also a little bit of the value statements of the why, and then staff will go back and then we can prepare different options around that.

But this is really we're trying to make sure that we understand from a policy perspective what are we trying to do.

Okay, great.

So I think I just want to summarize and say thanks for um this presentation, and and I'm glad that we're having this conversation today.

It's in our council goals, it's part of our economic development strategy.

But I think just generally everyone kind of knows that having that third place is not your work or your house, but the other place you go.

Uh, you take your kid to daycare, you go out for a drink with a friend, you go see a show, whatever it is that's really important, and then we have areas in our city that don't have those amenities within that walkable or or short distance that they would really like to have.

And I think that's a universal goal of most folks in this city to have those amenities available.

So I think that's sort of the frame we're in right now, um, and that we've been hearing from folks in the community about.

I think what I'd like to do is start with just that sort of specific legislature since that's sort of specific to right now, that legislative advocacy and make sure we're aligned on that, and then go into the other um more broad questions.

So yeah, and I see counselor Francesa has our hand up.

Thanks.

Yeah, I um I just want to get a really clear uh statement from counselor cancellor, that is, on the status of um the uh potential legislation and um and what it can what the language says right now.

Yeah, and Eric, I think is on Zoom, and we've been talking to our delegation about this in the past couple of meetings that we had at the end of the year and prior to that about this bill.

But Eric, you want to give some details?

Yeah, thank you, Mary Keebler and Councillor Francesa for the record error cancer, C Bones lobbyist.

The we don't have language that's developed yet to the point of requesting a specific amendment, and frankly, we have to wait for uh the legislation that's been drafted to drop before we can officially request amendment.

We've got language that's been in review with a number of different local stakeholders, and I've got language in front of the League of Oregon cities right now.

And in fact, I just got a text during the call that they want to talk to me about that this evening and provide feedback.

So I might defer to back to Russ and Sarah.

I don't know if there's anything in the presentation beyond what they have that speaks to the intent.

Um what I wouldn't want to do is put up something half-baked at this point because we definitely want to make sure that we do outreach and get buy-in from all of the relevant stakeholders.

Uh and so we are very much actively in that process right now.

Yeah, Brian, do you want to come up and maybe kind of give some context?

Maybe I'll just I'll just offer, you know, um, like just from my perspective that I in my reading of the bill, you know, it seems like the intent was for um cities not like Bend, you know, where there's a lot of like undeveloped commercial land that's maybe underutilized, whereas we really don't have a lot of that um underutilized commercial land.

Um I you know, I heard that you know maybe the amendment would be something as simple as like excluding um master planned, or um maybe even something as simple as including the language from House Bill 3395 into the Senate Bill Eight section, which was related to like land brought into the urban growth boundary in the past, like 15, 20 years, something like that.

So, like that land that was newly brought in, um, you know, this wouldn't apply.

The Senate Bill Eight language wouldn't apply to that.

Um, but I mean, just from uh you know a philosophical perspective.

I mean, I used to work for an affordable housing developer.

Of course, Capital A is affordable housing.

I 100% um, you know, support that it's just when the city has gone through such extensive master planning efforts and community outreach to have the rug pulled out from under us um after all of that seems um like a yanking away of local control that I I don't feel really good about um and uh and uh disregard of um the public process.

So um so I guess that's that's just where I'm coming from.

And I think that's the same message um Eric that you've been uh that you've heard from the city.

So I just wanted that to be stated and for the public who's probably watching.

Yeah.

Oh, let's go.

Um you're speaking specifically when you were saying when your read of the bill was referring to Senate Bill Eight, right?

And its intentions for the kinds of the kinds of communities that it might have been trying to address.

Yeah.

Yeah, like where it originated, why someone even put this forward, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I could offer a little bit more feedback on that.

And uh the city of Bend was very involved in the crafting of Senate Bill Eight and in supporting a pretty extensive version of Senate Bill Eight.

So I have been in a number of those conversations, um, quite a few of those conversations.

Uh I would say, in my experience, what we are seeing now is was unanticipated.

Uh, this is not, we didn't really have the forethought collectively at the legislative level to say, oh, wait a second, this is going to put complete community planning at risk.

So it's and it's not unnatural to take a big bill, a big concept like that on the balance is incredibly needed, and then realize that there are little components that you might want to tweak in the future so that you can accomplish a number of goals together, which of course is the the point of the complete community planning effort.

Yeah, um I yeah, I have a comment, but Brian, is there anything you want to add in the language that we're thinking?

No, I think to Eric's point, you know, not getting too specific at this point, it's just exploring the concept.

I mean, what we're seeking is uh you know, I have to distinguish between commercial areas.

For example, there are commercial areas on Third Street, there are large commercial centers.

So distinguishing between those kinds of areas where we fully support having Senate Bill A continue to operate versus these smaller, say 10 and 20 acre sites that are subject to Senate Bill A, and just saying, look, we let's try to strike a balance here where we're still allowing some of that affordable housing under Senate Bill 8, but also we need to protect some of this acreage for the commercial use that it's intended for so that we can achieve our local goals, um, and then where it has been used before to say, okay, look, if you're in the situation where a smaller site has been used and Senate Bill Eight's been used, and we have a little bit of commercial left, let's make sure we can protect that commercial.

So that's that's the essential concept.

And I think with your with your blessing that we move forward and begin those discussions at the legislative level.

That makes sense.

Any objections to that course of action?

I just I just had a question.

I mean, how many is this is Bella Pine's the first project that this is where this has come up and bend?

Yeah, so we have one in the eastern development and one in the Petros development.

Just want to state for so everyone's aware there are still developable commercial land in both of those areas.

We have the acreages if you want to see them, but yeah, there we're not losing the entire commercial area, but as always, there's always concern of the Senate in theory, another project could go in there.

Um, and that's why we think it's it's wise because as the mayor said, we we share the same value statements as I think of some of the feedback you're getting.

We want to get those services near to people, um, so they're in their neighborhood, so how do we protect that that limited space that we've already planned for?

It remind me, Russ, how many more acres of commercial are still left in that in that area?

Um we can show real fast.

So we got a couple so in Petrosa, we still have another 19 acres of commercial available, 4.7 acres was for the Bellapines.

And if you go down to east and I think it's it's about half of the seven acres that's still available.

Just math.

Russ, while we're on this point, can you tell me roughly?

And I hate to put you on a spot like this.

You tell me roughly how many commercial acres are in Northwest Crossing.

Oh, I don't know.

I'm gonna say it's around 20 plus or minus.

So I don't have the exact acreage figure.

I did a quick scan of our zoning map, for example, and went around and kind of did some very crude.

I apologize.

Yeah, not a measurement tool kind of stuff.

You know, and a lot of these commercial areas like Galveston out of Northwest Crossing, and some of these little smaller nodes that you'll see, like at 15th and and Reed, for example, or 27th in Reed, those tend to be like in the five to 10, typically under 20 acres.

And so, as we're talking about kind of a threshold for these amendments, the Senate Bill 8 to me, we have to do some more work, and other communities, of course, are very important here.

It could be 25 acres, for example, but it's the smaller areas around, say 25 acres or less, not these larger commercial areas where uh more of that affordable housing makes a lot of sense.

And just as an example of Northwest Crossing, just to the west of the where the grove is now is an affordable housing project.

Right, right.

So there we do see this embedding of it was done through this specific zoning at that time, but you do see the the desire to embed kind of these higher density uses around the commercial.

Yeah, and that so okay, I'm so I think I'm hearing support for this course of action of the legislature.

That is a good segue into a comment I wanted to make because I just want to be real careful here that we're not talking about complete communities and implying that having neighbors living in affordable housing is not part of a complete community.

Absolutely it is.

Um, and I stood at the Verney Pines groundbreaking yesterday um and and saw the crowd of folks that made that project happen and happen quickly, and they're going to be getting homes into that neighborhood quickly for people who really need them, and those neighbors are also going to be supporting the commercial.

I was standing here with the homes that were going to be behind me and the acreage of the commercial in front of me.

We can have both.

It is all part of the same community.

And I think it's really important when we're talking about complete communities, and I'm going to throw the mic to you, Megan, about that term, but that we're talking about mixed income, mixed background, uh, mixed ability, mixed age, right?

That's a complete community along with the amenities that we want those communities to have.

Um, so I just don't want to lose sight of that value, even as we I think very rightly are looking at um asking for some amendments to this law for some clarity and for some protection for the areas that we do have as commercial.

But I'll I'll pass it to you, Megan.

Yeah, so some homework, Brian, when you do go.

I know that you're gonna be working with the human rights and equity commission on um the growth plan extensively.

They um when I was talking about this work, they had some concerns about the the term complete communities and that it was it felt it could feel exclusionary, and so that's something that they wanted to kind of really delve into with you as you're doing all of that important engagement work on the thank you.

Um how many how or how likely is it that an affordable housing project moves forward without the city facilitating grants or other financial incentives?

We can so if if if this amendment or effort fails and we have to live with SBA, how likely is it that an affordable housing project moves forward without?

I mean, does the city have the discretion to say we only want it, we only want mixed-use affordable housing, or does SB8 allow that?

SBA in theory allows that.

Now, there's a as you know, there's a big financial kind of structure that needs to have and a funding stack to make those affordable housing projects go, and we have the affordable housing fund from the city that helps out um kind of create that funding stack.

But we can we can have a whole other discussion on kind of the future of affordable housing and things like that.

But in theory, SB8 would allow that as an outright use in these commercial zones.

If we don't it's just the discretion on where we spend our funding, yeah, and we can we can factor this in in the future, absolutely.

Yeah, that's that's reassuring.

Um so that that's good clarification, and then are we gonna get a chance to talk about the other?

Yeah, so I want to close the book on the legislative advocacy and make sure that's one of the questions.

And then we need to get to the other topics.

But yeah, we know what the um what our alternatives would be legally if we um if Senate if these amendments didn't go forward and Senate Bill Eight is still standing at the end of this next session, or at least you know, through the end of the following session, so another 12 plus months.

There's some concepts that we were looking at.

Yeah, I think what we would do is we would come back to you if Senate Bill Eight, if the legislative session didn't happen and maybe have a quick conversation with council around things we're thinking about.

But we'd be looking forward, I think more into new areas that are not yet entitled, um, new master plan areas and things like that.

Very limited with existing entitlements and existing approvals, the way that our codes are written in state law is written right now.

But we'd be we'd be exploring things like could we look at in future areas deed restrictions or other type of mechanisms to kind of make sure that we are getting the kind of development we need, but we need to be careful to that we maintain and be within state law on how we do that.

Also the use of our dollars.

I mean, we could choose to be more specific about uh more narrowly constrained about where those dollars could be used.

I think if you talk to the developers, most of the developers they want to put in commercial development because they get a bigger return off of that development, you know, and so the their desire is not to put affordable housing into commercially zoned areas, especially in these master plans.

But obviously, market conditions and finances and things play a part of that.

Their highest return is to get commercial development going.

So they're they are still incentivized to do that, right?

Can I just make one other little comment?

And that's related to um Petrosa versus Easton, and yeah, that or I guess the southeast part of town.

If there's uh very limited number of acres in the Petrosa area, but down in that southeast area outside of the eastern eastern development itself, there's quite a bit of mixed employment and some other commercial land as well.

So, crisis, if you will, is a little bit different than uh where we are, you know, and I think the concerns in Petrosa because there's a much smaller number of acres that's being talked about.

Um, so just for the community, that there are still opportunities for that kind of um neighborhood conserving commercial to um roll out in more than just those commercial pieces that one with property dislabeled commercial.

Yeah, and I think that's the work that that's the kind of issue we can address as we're looking forward in the growth plan of potential UGB expansions.

Uh I don't want to get into all the steps, but essentially, if we have unmet land need and we need to expand our urban growth boundary in the future for either employment or residential, that's what we're gonna be looking at.

And just like the last time we did this in 2016, we use the UGB expansion process to say, hey, this area does not have access to commercial, so let's comprehend the plan and zone a portion of this expansion for commercial.

We did not anticipate Senator Bill A.

And now, if we were to do that again, and Senate Bill Eight stays just as is, then that informs a strategy on how you're designating the land with some assumptions that some of that could be absorbed through resident uh through affordable housing, for example.

Okay, so Eric, I think we have the direction here to continue working with Brian on this concept, um, and probably through an amendment in the short session, we'll make an attempt here.

And again, we have talked with our delegation and we have some support there.

Um, so hopefully we can also just reaffirm that with them when some of them come to visit with us next week at our meeting.

Um, okay, so let's close the book on this, and then I think what might be good is going to that short medium long-term slide and just um getting some thoughts from council here on um if this is a good approach and any other ideas we want to talk about for incentiviating commercial, and I also invite folks to talk about what kind of commercial we're talking about here.

Um and for quick context, um, and planning can talk more.

So, right now it's just so council's aware we do have allow under certain limitations commercial in residential zones, but you there are citing criteria that's pretty tight, have to be on arterials and collectors, you have to be within X amount of distance from a commercial center to make that viable.

So we and we can come back and have a further work session or have planning commission work on kind of what we're trying to achieve there, but just know that we do have it is in the code now.

In fact, Landwatch actually submitted some things in their letters around that language.

Um, but do you want to expand those type of uses?

That's one of the questions we have for you.

Yeah, and I think we're not deciding any of this stuff tonight.

It's more the what's the roadmap for the next steps in this conversation.

So yeah, Council Mendes.

Yeah, so um, I mean, I think the holy grail, of course, is grocery store, but I know that's also the hardest, the tallest order.

But I would generally say I'm most interested in uh commercial where residents can meet some of their everyday kind of daily needs.

So uh coffee shops, including things like places to eat, but especially somewhere that you might be able to buy, you know, some milk or something that you need, maybe not your whole grocery trip, but maybe some of the items.

Um two questions I think for me are I I really like the market analysis, the code cleanup, and the exploring incentive programs.

And I think my understanding is market analysis is probably really necessary first before we that comes before we talk about the incentive program.

And that's currently underway.

Okay now, and that'll Katie we're looking somewhere one question about the market analysis is um I sense a lot of anxiety from residents about space.

You know, do we have enough space left?

And uh looking out places like Farewell Market and in Southwest Bend and Newport Market and Northwest Bend, like those are just a little over an acre of space.

So could you give us a sense of what kind of things we should expect from the market analysis?

Is space one of the biggest issues that you foresee?

Um and then I I have another comment about the incentive programs.

So there are two macro considerations, and one is how do you decide what the formula is for um allowing for commercial use?

And and you can use restaurants, you can use grocery stores, etc.

etc.

What are the metrics they're using?

And that also applies secondly to scale.

And the analysis I understand it, Jonathan's heading it up.

It's going into procurement, hopefully out on the street by the end of the month.

Um, and hopefully completed by July.

So this is already underway and the work is is taking place now.

So what we'll have is a sense of what the targets are and the metrics are around concentric areas of the city, primarily focused around the east side for this particular study because we're incorporating the borough, the urban renewal areas, and that'll tell us where um are the rooftops making most sense for X size of a grocery store, or um what metrics do they use for other types of of industry sectors to make their decisions.

That'll be like a primer or template for us, so that we'll understand, like a commercial investor would, where am I gonna place this asset in the city that goes beyond an individual master planned community into maybe three or four or five master planned areas.

So it'll give us a sense as we go through the comprehensive plan, longer term but shorter term of where this is going to make sense market-wise, and to what scale.

Because when you're talking about a neighborhood store, you are talking about a very, very different um in and out, get your milk, get your whatever it is your your ice cream after 10 p.m.

or whatever it happens to be, versus I need um this entire grocery list filled out.

Um so we'll have a sense of scale and a sense of target areas.

Can I make a follow-up comment on that?

So the discussion that we had a little earlier today was about the urban renewal areas are sort of right, you know, Juniper Ridge, the central district kind of Murphy Crossing in the south.

But there's also we can also look at one of the potential new urban renewal areas, which is farther to the east, um, along uh Greenwood, out sort of by the old Cusco, generally speaking, in that broad area.

And when we look at all four of those, and then this co-centric circle, we cover pretty much most of the city.

Yeah, maybe not quite as much on the west side of town, but we also have a lot more of this kind of neighborhood commercial in that part of our community already.

So we're gonna get pretty much cover most of the real estate in the community from this analysis, which is reassuring to me because I was a little concerned that we're focusing just on urban renewal areas, but that we really are getting really gonna kind of get a good analysis of our whole community and kind of how this plays out, and then you know that helps us figure out where we might most effectively use our money and where money incentive money might not make sense, also.

That's right.

Right.

I see counselor Franzosa has her hand up.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

I I I know I already spoke, so I don't know if anybody else wants to go before me.

I'm happy to go ahead a moment.

Yeah, go ahead.

Okay, I'll just go ahead.

I'll just go.

Okay.

Oh I'm gonna um focus on the on the code cleanup for neighborhood scale commercial uses.

Um I you know, I I think that's really really critical, and I think that's kind of the bulk of like the feedback that we're getting um from a lot of the um advocates in the community.

Um I agree citing standards um need to be looked at change of use process.

And I I guess I just want to um maybe ask a clarifying question.

My assumption is that when we talk about code cleanup, we're talking about um allowing for neighbor for commercial uses in residential zones.

Um so simplifying the process, making it a little bit easier to do some commercial uses in neighborhood zones in residential zones.

Is that is that the correct assumption?

That's what we're talking about.

And one of the one of things we can come back and we can either work with council or we can work the planning commission to figure out depends what we want to do and how significant it is.

There are different kinds of paths we go down in terms of community engagement and notification because we could have a if we do something uh I would say a little bit more comprehensive within the residential zones, you're talking about a citywide notice that would occur, right?

Because there is with Oregon Law, there's notice requirements around certain type of changes that are being proposed within the development code.

So we want to make sure like how how you want us to approach those conversations and what do we want to take on now, and then what do we want to kind of roll into these larger community-wide conversations with the update to comprehensive plan?

Yeah, and and my idea on that was if we I would love the planning commission to be involved with this.

I know they've been hearing a lot of the feedback that we've been hearing, and I know they're very eager and they've had their own feedback about this issue.

And I would love them to not only take on this code cleanup, but maybe do some work sessions around the bigger, what you just said, sort of the bigger residential um commercial question um and help start to give us some feedback and some direction.

What were those steps look like?

Should they be between now and the growth plan, or should they be in like I think planning commission could really help us with that and also provide sort of a venue to gather some feedback?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's it.

That sounds good.

I mean, I guess what I would say is, you know, we're we talk about economic development in um in terms that make it seem like a really big lift.

And you know, there's there's a lot of entrepreneurial folks out there that you know, maybe they want to um have a hair salon in their house, you know, which actually my grandmother had, and uh she supported her family on that.

And I doubt she had to go through too much of a gauntlet in the 1950s in small town to get that.

But um, I think it it it almost goes beyond um you know, it makes the folks in the planning department kind of take off the the you know, make make sure that their peripheral vision is really wide um and uh and kind of starts to think about how our our planning code maybe is making it actually harder for folks to earn the amount of money that it takes to live within our town.

So um I would hope, and I I also actually had a friend um contact me and say, hey, how can I do a little like uh doggy, you know, small scale doggy boarding out of my house.

I'm trying to figure out the code so we don't get in trouble.

And um and it turns out she can't do that.

And it that's actually was kind of a surprise to me.

Um so I think there's quite a bit of opportunity in the code to kind of you know open open up those allowances uh for commercial and residential, and I think that it would be um pretty popular um with folks who are trying to find ways to kind of earn more money or find space to operate their businesses.

Um and maybe one more thing I would add to the code cleanup that I've heard from architects is that the um the design standards for commercial are uh overly restrictive.

Um and that, for example, um the grove in Northwest Crossing, which I I think a lot of people think is a pretty cool looking building, that would it would be impossible to do that building anywhere else in town because Northwest Crossing has their own architectural review committee, um, and you don't have to comply with the city's development standard or design standards there.

So um so I'd like that to be um included in the in the code cleanup process.

Yeah, I think that's that sounds good.

Thank you.

Megan Pitt first a question and then a comment.

Um this market analysis is I know it's something that that we are going to be using.

Do you view it also as a tool for developers to say to reach out and say this is this is the this is the conclusion of what we here's here's so here's what you can do, and here's what we're hoping you can are the idea to reach out also to developers to get to start.

Yeah, we certainly can reach out.

And I guarantee you that developers do their own study.

Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure they'll definitely compare and contrast.

But yeah, that that's definitely something we can do.

Counselor Perkins, are you saying to help us identify the gaps that maybe we can put it?

Yeah, and vet it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think some vetting would be great.

So hey, this is why this part of town we haven't been able to go yet.

Yes, exactly.

So staff's recommendation is kind of I think we should go through the study first, yeah, and then understand market issues from the studies perspective, and then engage with owners, developers, and then users as well.

Um to make sure that we're understanding what those barriers are.

And then just one last thing on the code cleanup.

I mean, I think these are things that we are hearing from our community that we need.

Um I you know, I could tell you that when the you know the Bennett Central District was in front of BDAB, the Bend Economic Development Advisory Board, they were saying that the change of use process is like a really key thing, it's a limitation right now on getting a lot more um development happening.

So and you know, of course, the siding standards and neighborhood commercial we're hearing from uh from a lot of people in our community.

So I think this is a really key thing um for us to be doing and uh something that our community really wants and can make some some make some changes.

And we we have until six, and we do have to do TSSA.

We're okay on time, but let's so people know.

Russ, at the very beginning, you said this supports our housing uh goals, the the council's housing goals and the uh economic development goals.

The point I want to make is that it also really supports our environment and climate goals as well.

This is a way for us to get at vehicle miles traveled.

This is a way for us to get at creating uh a sense of community for folks in different parts of our our parts of our city.

So it really does speak to me across that uh that area as well, and it's really really gonna help us make some gains in an area that's really important to me.

Yeah, I'm gonna I'll I'll sneak preview another conversation with you real quick.

We've been we're in the bike kind of master plan conversation.

We've been doing some data analysis and getting the models up for bike and walksheds.

When you start just saying isolate, we can isolate just commercial areas and say who's within a 10 minute walk or 50 minute ride.

You see, we see you see what we call the commercial deserts really fast.

And they're in the exact areas where we put new commercial zone properties to get to that because we always it's a perfect example of like you don't want everyone going to the safe way at highway 20 in Greenwood.

We want part of the area to be able to turn turn those trips around and head closer to where you're at, and then it achieves those kind of climate goals as well.

Totally that's that's how the whole comprehensive plan is put together.

Yep.

And then I just wanted to say um just going back to the market analysis and who you know we want to reach out to.

I know personally, you know, my background is more in residential development, and I just think it would be great if we all kind of immersed ourselves a little bit more in the commercial development and um and learn more about it.

And so my you know, request would be is I know that uh Northwest Crossing Brooks Resources does some great tours and they invite folks, they have folks come from you know nationally and internationally.

Um and I think it'd be great, and I can help organize the tour for us and um really learn more about you know how they made that work and pencil and how you know long it really took.

We saw that slide.

Um and uh and also I think it'd be great to hear from you know grocery store owner, developer, um, commercial developer to really understand you know um that market a little bit better and what it takes, how many how many units, how many housing units.

Um so that would be my request if we could hear or meet with whether it's you know more formally here or just one-on-one meetings outside.

So I I'll give you a quick example in some of the areas where we're having some of these discussions right now in these new master plan areas before COVID, we were in active conversations and they were working with interested supermarkets to come in, and then all of a sudden all the market conditions changed.

Right, right.

And so, how do we get that?

How do we get that back into alignment or understand what those are?

But that's how close one of the areas was like we were we were in truly active conversations with them because we they thought they were in you know operating, then all of a sudden material escalation goes through the roof, performers don't work, and they walk.

Right, right.

And one thing I do want to be careful of when we're talking about incentivizing and maybe even putting public dollars is I mean, we've seen the Brookswood market has gone out of business, there's a new new owner coming in there.

I want to be really careful with public money that's going towards these things while really trying to think about what it is we're trying to incentivize.

I did want to go back to just to try to see if there is some consensus around really focusing down on sort of these meeting your daily needs, accessing food as sort of one target area that we might really think about, um, just so staff are aware of that as sort of what we're thinking about when we're thinking about that third place.

Um and kind of moving ideally, we're moving a little bit as fast as we can on some of that, which maybe is related to the code cleanup.

Right.

I I really support Councillor Francis's call for the um also for small scale services, allowing that kind of stuff to happen as well, and exploring that.

I mean, there may be some things that we want to say no to.

I'm not I'm not really sure to learn more, but I I want to be open to that.

I think it's important um to offering that as a you know um a way to get your needs met, but also as a business and that kind of development opportunity.

Yeah, I think um a dog boarding place is a daily need for this kind of idea.

So gaps too, apparently.

And I did send out um there's other cities working on this.

I said to staff rent in Washington's working on this, and they they were a little farther ahead, and you know, what they say is corner markets, cafes, low-intensity, convenience-oriented businesses, services, salons and barbers, pet retail, right?

So they're thinking about those low impact, and I think that's a really good place.

That meaning of your daily needs is a really good place for us to focus.

Um, and I did want to also make a uh a comment on I think if we really want to move faster, we gotta think about scale and adaptability.

And I, you know, it's it's great to hear from Brooks resources, but what about the person that wants to start a new business?

What about a small business?

Like we want to make sure that we're that's where we could probably maybe see the fastest change and get some things going.

Um and those people might need the most help.

So, what I'd like to do if council's okay with this is we'll take this information and I need to work with with Colin's team to figure out okay, we've got other code updates, tree codes, other things moving.

When when and how would we do this?

And then we can communicate back through probably Eric and the city manager's memo, just to kind of give you an idea of timing and schedule.

We wanted to have this conversation first to figure out where the value statements were, and then we we'll figure out a plan.

Yeah, and Gina, I see your your hand up if you had one more comment.

Um ditto to all the great comments um that council's made already.

I just wanted to um ask Brian Rankin while we have him here.

So the um the growth plan, the concepts for integrating commercial uses into residential zones.

You know, when I look at the um the comp plan and the growth management plan that was um whatever plan it was that was adopted in 2016, um, complete communities are um are an integral part of that.

Um and so um I guess you know I what so that was already an integral part of it.

So, like when we say the growth plan is another long-term tool, it's like, well, we it sounds like we kind of already had this stuff in the the growth plan from 2016.

So, how is this what more can we expect if we say we want to work on it again in the next growth plan?

Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Um, you're right.

Um, but going back to 2016, I think if you look at some of the the emphasis of where the change occurred in 2016, the emphasis was on kind of preserving existing neighborhoods and not doing a lot in those existing places and focusing areas of change in the new mixed-use zones that were designated, so Ben Central District Central West Side, for example, core pine, good example, and then UGB expansion areas and trying to create that mix of uses at the perimeter where we actually have a lot, that's where we have a lot of these deserts of uses, right?

And it just makes sense the way the town grew up, right?

We grew out and we kind of absorbed a lot of county land, it was mostly lower density residential in a lot of cases, and so we were using that.

I think the emphasis of the rules have changed this time around.

So we have brand new transportation rules.

Um you'll hear them, the CFEC rules, climate-friendly, equitable communities, and they're really focusing on making sure that the entirety of the city is designed in a way through its land use and transport, land use pattern and transportation systems to accommodate this kind of land use pattern, which means we're going to be looking at the existing city limits and existing UGB, and as much as we'll be looking outside counselor.

Does that make sense?

So I think there's going to be more of an inward focus or as much of an inward focus as much as there is an outward focus.

And so all the strategy you're talking about tonight are all paving the way.

Um, code cleanups, experimentation, all perfect.

But I think that at that bigger policy level, those are the things we're gonna have to address in the growth plan where we say where do we have these needs?

How do we what are the tools that we have our disposal in order to provide an upgrade or mix of uses to make it easier to walk and bike around for a variety of reasons?

Does that make sense?

Yeah, and I'll I mean I'll say one thing that I'm looking forward to trying to talk about in the growth plan is um form-based code that is more adaptable and allows more uses to be more creative within our zoning.

Um, taking a look at our our number of zones and how our zones are defined, um, and um taking a look at our master plan process, and those are all things that that I think we need to look at from 2016.

So that's just throwing out some ideas that how it could be different next time.

Um, I think all of those would be aligned with also the idea of having these amenitized communities.

So we've got five minutes left on this topic.

Well, lots of hands.

All right.

So I'll concentrate.

All right, R.L.

Mike, and then I see her.

I just I have maybe a suggestion on this topic in terms of process.

I wonder if we uh should be engaging the planning commission and helping us really look at kind of the short and long-term code needs because we already do have some allowance for small-scale commercial and residential zones.

What are some barriers, some things that we can do in the short term, and then how do we set up this conversation for the long term that's part of our growth plan and how to do that thoughtfully?

Because I think there's some other changes that we want to make, and do we want to make the change one time with just this issue, or do we want to because it's a pretty intensive notification process when we talk about changing uses, right?

We have uh state required notification requirements.

So, how do we sync that up?

I think that's a great conversation for the planning commission to kind of grapple with if that's something that would be of interest of council.

Yeah, I think we're interested in that.

Okay.

All right, well, Mike and then Steve.

So this is a question, I think, for other counselors.

Um, how bold and risky do we want to be on the incentive side?

We've talked about Northwest Crossing as an example.

One of the things that was distinctive there is there was a land to hold a landowner, a developer who was willing to hold that land and reserve it for commercial.

Would we, for example, want to consider the city also being a landowner, like we do to facilitate commercial activity downtown.

We provide on you know below market subsidized parking.

Uh, we are a landlord to a commercial entity.

Do we want to be that bold and risky when we think about incentives here?

I feel like for me, I want to be bold and risky.

But what do you think?

I think our next topic gets me some pause about how much capital to outlay into land right now.

But I don't I don't disagree that like landholding can be a strategy for cities.

I I wouldn't mind exploring it.

But I'd like to explore it.

Yeah, I don't disagree.

I think it'd be interesting to explore it.

I think that's a segue with the question I wanted to ask and comment I wanted to make was the important of the incentive programs.

Because I think if part of the problem is um it takes so long for stuff to develop, you know, we have to wait five, ten, fifteen, even twenty years before we get a grocery store, say in Northwest Crossing, some of this stuff to occur, especially in the master plan, this may be a little different when we're talking about the more micro stuff dispersed around the community.

But if we can help some of these things happen faster through financial incentives, I think that's really important, and those are tools that we have available to us now.

Um, you know, our ability to purchase land to be able to land bank, given all the other needs that may make that harder, but I think it's worth talking about.

Um so I see the incentive programs as pretty important.

I'm glad to hear that we're moving forward in the market analysis in the next six months.

We're not waiting a year and a half before we can get back to this.

I'd also like to see the infrastructure revolving loan fund potentially show up there as one of the incentive programs that we'd look at.

I understand it's it's that's just examples, but I'm being specific here and saying I'm I think I'm hearing that infrastructure slash slash SDCs slash the cost associated with change of use is part of part of the problem and the obstacle for businesses of small to medium sizes.

So if that infrastructure revolving loan fund, maybe we need to think about a little bit more capital there.

Maybe it's a pilot for a year to test how it goes.

I think we should look at that tool as well for this particular outcome that's so I just want to outlaw two other conversations that are going around around both of the the counselor's comments here.

One, we are right in the middle of the highest and best use um study for for the city on property in relationship to city hall that might have some insight around that'll that'll be coming back later around the summer.

We'll have this economic development strategy going.

We'll have this the kind of the market analysis going on, and then in June, we're coming back to start to have the conversation around infrastructure requirements for development, which include we'll be asking these types of questions.

One, what do we want to make developments do these at these different scales to build the infrastructure the city needs?

And then we can also tailor that as well to do we want to have incentive packages or involving non-funds to help with that.

But we'll lay out the conversation there of okay, these are what we're seeing in terms of infrastructure requirements and things related to to both commercial and residential development.

And my other question is is there a reason we have to wait until the growth process to look at the concept of accessory commercial units?

I think that's what we're asking the planning commission.

Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

I don't think that's a short term or medium.

Yeah, I think that as long as we're putting that potentially on the earlier list, is my point.

Yeah, I think it doesn't seem like something that needs to wait for another three years.

Well, the question we have is like on all these different things of how much public engagement do we want to have, which is a great question for the planning commission to go.

And then when you start to figure out we figure out what we're doing, then we create the code.

We're we're we're in a process, right?

Depending on how much engagement we want to do with the community to get feedback and then actually develop the code, have the work sessions.

When we say that's why we're kind of looking at it, may take about a year to do that.

Yeah, no, I don't think that's off the table though for planning commission.

Uh Steve, you want to wrap us up?

Russ, you started this off saying that there were some great ideas on the planning staff, and you brought them here tonight.

Are there any that we didn't bring up from the dias here tonight that you can help that the public can hear that can also address some of the concerns that we have for near-term changes to the code or something like that?

Low-hanging fruit things that you think would be big wins.

I think for those kind of immediate concerns, I think for a lot of people that are sitting behind me, I think this legislative action is probably the biggest thing that we could possibly do right now to help kind of answer those questions.

And again, we we share the same, I think, value statements in terms of what we're trying to get accomplished as the residents in these large master plan communities.

That's what we plan commercial.

We're gonna we we will look at what we can through, you know, we'll have discussions with the planning commission, look at different options and and and make sure councils engage in those conversations along the way.

Um we have different thoughts and ideas, but uh again, let's start at the largest at the state level because I think that's the kind of the highest return level we can to kind of protect some of these critical commercials.

And we'll know fairly quickly because it's a short session.

So I do want to say I'm um council Raleigh and myself had a conversation with the commercial developer in Petrosa.

I had a personal conversation with the developer in Easton.

I'm committed to continuing to have those dialogues with them, especially as we talk about incentive programs and literally talk to them and say what is it that would incentivize you to move faster, what are your barriers?

So I think those in those specific neighborhoods we can commit to that as well.

And we've already, I mean, we'll continue to work with our staff to have kind of these kind of formal informal discussions as projects come in or just in our normal conversations and kids and conversations, Ryan and Renee, or Colin and Renee are always in conversations.

I'm in conversations with commercial developers.

We will start to just kind of open the door of like what do you what's going on with your performance?

Where are areas of interest where you might need some assistance just so we can start to come up with that strategy before we actually start looking at formal formal actions?

Okay, great.

Thank you all.

Thank you, everyone, big team working on this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone, for following along.

I see we do have members of our planning commission or former members here, so thanks for following along as well.

Okay.

Oh, I'm like, yeah, the kind of thing you don't like those slides.

Well, I like that.

I don't know what I mean.

I like I do plan some project tests.

I'm gonna run you guys.

I've seen this presentation.

So Megan, do you want to just get us started?

Okay.

We gotta go.

We're on our techniques for the area commission.

I think I'm sure they're I'm sure they would love to take this up, Bob.

Thank you for being here.

All right, I'm gonna step off just real quick.

Megan's gonna get us going.

I'll be right back.

All right, the next topic is the temporary safe state area.

It looks like we have Matt Stewart and Amy Fraley here.

Good evening.

Minus Mayor.

Council.

Uh Matt Stewart Real Estate's Facility Housing Director joined with Amy tonight, our senior senior program manager of House of Services.

Tonight we wanted to give an update on the TSSA in prep for our joint meeting next week with the Board of Commissioners.

So I'll kind of start out discussing uh what's been going on at the TSA since our last meeting in September.

I'll kind of provide the intent and that timeline.

I'll review the sectional closure process that we you provided as direction and asked us to move forward with at the last joint meeting in September.

I'll kind of give a brief overview of what's been going on out there in terms of enforcement.

I'll then hand it over to Amy.

Amy will address kind of the menu of options that were requested by the council and board of commissioners at the last meeting about where could people go and what could we do in terms of other shelters or other operations that could house people, and then we'll talk about some of the funding uh and other challenges that we're seeing within our existing shelter framework as ARPA expires and we have some of these fundings go away.

And then lastly, we'll summarize just kind of a quick discussion on what we uh would like to discuss with the county or what kind of direction we'd like to pursue with the county around the TSSA at the joint meeting on Tuesday.

So, as a reminder, the goal of TSA was to mitigate and improve the health and safety risk associated with unmanaged camping up in Juniper Ridge.

It also allowed us to move forward with providing case management facilitating people moving away from June provision to safer shelter.

The goals that were set out in the joint resolutions between the county and the city was one, we would reduce the temporary safety area by half uh here in the second year, which we just enter into.

And then we were we fully close the TSA by the end of 2026.

Can I interrupt you, Matt?

When you say, just for people watching or interested, when you say reduce the temporary, do you mean people, geography?

Can you ever we mean geography?

So we're talking about the physical area.

So today the TSA encompasses about 170 acres.

Our goal, and we'll talk about that closure would reduce that just over half.

We have about 90 acres remaining, and that's more geographically fitting into that area.

So correct.

I won't go into everything timeline, but again, this started back in September 2024 when we established the TSSA between the county and the county and the city.

Um, and as we kind of move forward along after that joint meeting in September, we are looking to issue the first round of closures for sections one and two, and I'll have a map and I'll walk through that.

We'll start those notices for the closure in March.

The goal is to close those areas to people and have them relocated by June 1st.

If we stick to the existing timeline established in the resolutions of closure by the end of the year, we would need to close the additional sections, sections three and four.

We need to start noticing that in September in order to meet that end of the year guideline.

Um I'll talk more about that here in the next slide, what that looks like.

So just a reminder geographically, the area in green is what's owned by the city.

The area in blue is what's owned by the county.

However, sections one and two, they are bifurcated by the canal.

So that's C UID's canal.

The area in white where you can see the little arrow next to section one, that is the COID's hydro facility that they have up there.

So our proposal and what you gave us direction on at the last meeting was go ahead and proceed with closing sections one and two and allow people to relocate the three and four.

The critical component that we're really asking for at the joint meeting is whether we're going to pursue that full closure or not.

We'd like to be able to provide direction to the people who are in sections one and two that they can go to three and four and can stay there for any sort of substantial time, or do we need to provide them that they may only have a few months before we close everything else and move forward that so again if we step with the full closure, we would need to move forward that here probably in September with a goal of closing down in around November and early December and meet that deadline.

From an enforcement standpoint, we are now fully staffed up and appreciate at the last meeting you provided us that additional uh direction that we can add another um person to our health and source safety coordination team.

So we have two full-time employees, so our team at the health and safety is now up to five.

Five.

Well, we're not five from two uh over a year ago.

So we have been able to go out there and really sort of communicate well with the residents, and we've seen a lot of good productive activity in terms of uh improvements around the number of fires and incidents and other things that are happening out there.

Um, since July, we really started ramping that up.

We've had 49 remedies to notice or notice to remedies, so essentially asking people to fix certain situations that may be in violation of the rules.

Um, in September, we really began issuing those notice of removals.

Again, our first step is trying to get people in compliance, but we have to date removed 10 people from the TSSA.

And mostly that is around sort of violations around structures or we think that are unsafe or they're still living in we need them to clean up the camp in order to address that, and they typically just don't end up doing it.

And that tends to be where most of the notice of removal was come from.

So with that, oh I forgot.

And then lastly, we're kind of just a summary of our expenses to date.

So uh the first four there, the water, the portable toilets, the dumpster security, those we have a we pay jointly with the county, so these are split costs.

Um, as you can see, there's been an increase in FY26 over FY25.

Just a reminder for the public, our fiscal years begin in July and at June.

So we're looking, we ramped up a lot of these services last summer when we added we doubled the amount of hygiene stations out there, so that's why those costs are almost in line six months compared to a year.

So we but we are still uh where we thought we'd be with projected.

The general trash cleanup, those numbers also include number of us cleaning up the east side, so not just TSA, but also full cleanup.

So when we look at the total of what we spent so far on fiscal year 26, if we just focus on the expense of the TSSA, we're probably around a quarter million dollars.

About that additional 80 grand is what we've used to help clean up the remaining balance on the east side of the camp.

Start with that.

And then the next, I'll hand it over to Amy.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

As part of the TSS, the TSSA, I'm not gonna get the name right, just out of the gate today.

Uh, the county and the city both put in dollars to create housing focused case management.

The city put in 800,000 of ARPA, and then the county put in 400,000 of uh revenue replacement dollars.

With that, we had a competitive grant process.

We selected six based on the grant structure that would provide direct client services.

These are listed here, as well as neighbor impact with 50,000 dollars in order to coordinate case conferencing and then also data management.

We can say that to date, 309 people have engaged with our service providers out at the TSSA, which is a testament to both the service providers and the people that are living there and want access to another place to live and services.

So this is our dashboard.

It's updated usually right after the 15th, which is when our data is due.

So we're expecting those updates tomorrow.

Um you can see that in November that we were up to 697 service hours.

This averages out with 165 people accessing service to about four plus hours per, which is is our target.

We've seen 35 transitions out of the TSSA.

I will say that those transition numbers may be low because folks may not share where they're going, but we know that those 35 have moved into more permanent housing options.

At least 35 folks have.

Yes.

Okay.

And we also met with the host team this week to see if there's a way that we can double check that their transitions are also being reflected in our dashboard.

Got it.

So that could go up.

Um currently there are 192 campers.

This is as of last week.

150 camps, I believe 115 of those are actually on city property.

And so the majority of people are living on city property.

Um sorry, the 35 are the are do you know if those are local?

You have a way of tracking that local their transition.

Yeah.

Most likely, yes.

Okay.

Anecdotally, I can say yes.

Okay.

There could be someone red.

Or they go home to somewhere else, and that can happen.

Just curious.

Family reunification, things like that are rare.

Most of those anecdotally are people that are going into either shelter, some kind of treatment, or also permanent housing.

So city supported shelters are still staying high as far as utilization.

They're about 88% for 2005.

But we will say that the navigation center, which is your only option if you become a houseless tonight to walk up and get a bed, is right at 99.

And the Franklin Avenue shelter is over 100%.

And so that is where we would see those emergency placements of families or people perhaps with some kind of significant medical issues.

So they're not in congregate shelter.

Safe parking has significantly expanded this year from 13 to 41 spaces.

And the Franklin Avenue shelter expanded from 60 to 70 beds.

So that 101% is also on top of those additional beds, which is fairly impressive without a budget increase.

In the next couple of months before the TSSA closure for right now, we're looking at seeing maybe one more safe parking program come online.

Um 35 campground spaces in Redmond.

I will say that those campground spaces are really tied to the DSL land swamp.

And so whether those would be usable or options for the people at the TSSA, we're not sure.

And then we're looking at eight more shelter beds that are in the queue, and those are high barrier women's beds.

So they're fairly specific.

So where do those almost 200 people go?

Um we know the permanent supportive housing is about 400,000 per door.

And on top of that, you would need um services per year.

And so we're really looking at at 21 million.

Um I believe Cleveland Commons took 10 to 15 years to get in place once people started talking about it.

Um RICS program, or excuse me, Mountain View Community Developments program that could be coming in in Redmond, hopefully, that's slightly lower than that 21 million, but it's still it's quite a stack.

Affordable housing on average is about 400,000 per door, and so that comes in a little bit lower.

Um when we look at what the city has been really focused on as far as houses services over the last couple of years, we've done two motel conversions and then congregate shelter.

Uh both of those projects took some considerable time and effort, but with those 70 beds, the acquisition we've based it on the rainbow motel, which I believe was 4.55 million.

Uh the renovation there is fairly limited, um, but we put that around 500k.

Uh stepping stone, it was closer to 2 million by the time we got it done.

Um, so your startup cost for beds on motel conversion is right around 80.

And then the annual operations is about 1.3 or 54 dollars a day.

So to do that, 6.9 similar breakdown on congregate.

We based it on the navigation center, and that renovation for 1.5 million is also probably probably low.

But you see a slightly higher number as far as the operations budget because you're getting three meals a day, and there's those intensive navigation services.

So safe parking is another um place where we've really put a lot of effort, and we've seen some expansion in the last year.

Startup costs really can range from 8,500 to 15.

Annual operations is consistently around 100,000 that we have seen a bigger range than we anticipated.

Uh, outdoor shelter, we have one temporary outdoor shelter on Bear Creek at 27th.

You'll see the note at the bottom that that shelter will need to move their leases expired.

But those 20 units were just about 439, so just about a half million to start up, and then their annual operations is hovering just around about 300,000 for those 20 units.

Amy, can I just when we're talking about this?

I you know, a lot of the decisions we say, look, the city, the city invested in this and that.

I I just want to for people who may not know, you know, a lot of the determination of what we invested in was based on what the funding was for, right?

Absolutely.

So if the state, if the federal government, the state, if the ARPA is saying you need to invest in low barrier, this that that was what we invested in.

Um of course, also because there was a huge gap, and and we needed in our community, but we had to we had to go where the funding was, right?

Absolutely.

And where the providers can provide to find a place.

So the motel conversions, for instance, stepping stone was a turnkey property.

Right from the navigation center was specific, all of those dollars to creating navigation centers in in communities.

Right.

And so um, excuse me, I think I'm coming down to something.

Um the new campground.

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Yeah, and then I'll lick the microphone.

Um, so the new campground, we pulled these numbers just out of Redmond and that DSL land swap new campground.

Um we did up the management number to 500,000 just because we were having a difficult time determining what their 250,000 per year was.

It didn't seem to address some of um some of the hygiene numbers.

So we're looking at about a million, um, and they're using land that's being leased, and how to identify that land or lease that land or purchase that land is something that's not included, and we upped it.

It's we put 70, but it's 35 spots, and what we see is is not all the spots are occupied by two people.

So just a couple caveats.

So that gets us back to the TSSA.

Um about 1.1 million annually to continue operations.

Um, the case management number is a little bit lower, and part of that is we saw one-time expenses as as we rolled out that case management, including vehicles and things like that.

And then we did have a provider that was unable to continue, and so um their contract um was terminated.

Uh Matt added the enforcement staff time there.

So we feel like 1.1 is is possible.

So if we look at extending six months just to buy that in half, again, we already have agreements in place with the county under the existing HSGP, where of the 1.2 ARPA, City ARPA is 800,000, 400,000 contributed by the county, the hygiene trash and security.

We have an IG in place where we're already splitting that 50-50, and we each sort of take our cleanup costs.

But right now, the city team is doing majority of enforcement on both city and county property.

So when we discuss with county, we may hear it's like can we get maybe a little help with that as part of the discussion?

So anecdotally, we looked at the population just talking with providers about what is needed in the community or what would be one step out of the TSSA.

And we thought that permanent supportive housing, about 50 beds.

We just took it to the 200, say parking around 50 beds, non-congregate, like another motel conversion.

There is one on the market right now.

It's much more expensive than anything we've purchased in the past, and then the campground.

And so if those were the options, if those were where people were interested in going, we would be looking at somewhere around 30 million to meet that need for those 200 folks.

Yes, that's acquisition in the first year of operations only and first year of operation and renovation to some extent where that's yes, the renovation is in that in that as well.

But that doesn't include, of course, is that timing that we talked about permanent supportive housing, 10 years maybe.

Yeah.

Does the permanent supportive housing is it like brand new builds, like new construction?

Yes, that's what we were looking at to come up with that number.

Because that's what Cleveland Commons was.

Yep.

And I I pulled or I pulled the cost of um four properties total, including um Mountain View Community Developments, and then I didn't average it turned out to be about 423 per door for um for 50.

Yeah.

That's consistent with what we see in the market too, private market of any of the apartments being built typically in the range of 300 all the way up to half a million, depending on the size of that unit.

So that's pretty consistent.

I'm just curious, like what other I just know other cities sometimes it's not always new construction, it's sometimes using existing existing buildings or residential units and doing rehab.

I just I'm curious if there could be a savings there.

I don't know.

Entirely possible.

I know um yeah, yeah.

We're just a city with lots of new houses, a lot of that.

Yeah, a lot of the older still that's affordable.

Right?

Yeah.

I know with for instance Stepping Stone and and even um Franklin talking about using those properties for respite care.

Um we run into ADA and really ADA light, and then those parking spots and trying to be able to meet that is is really difficult.

So though the both of those programs are filling that need in the community through Shepherd's House and Neighboring Back, we can't find a way dollars-wise to to offer more.

We can't find a way dollars-wise to offer more.

People used hotel conversions for motel hotel conversions for permanent supportive housing.

I believe there are two turnkey properties that have done that, but they have been extensively renovated to another community.

One of my one of the things I remember from Cleveland Commons is like a different HVAC AC for each unit in case something's going on in a unit and you don't want it to spread to other units because of how just I'm just thinking of those kind of you know special expenses that might be needed for this type of a housing.

And we have certain more complicated.

Yeah.

We've replaced those units in the motels twice now.

I think those are the because of the excessive the use of the space has been a constant highlighted.

So these are getting more use than if they were just a traditional hotel or motel.

So those units need, I think the tourniquet they actually upgraded those units to be able to handle that constant use, whereas the units you see in a motel or hotel when you stay, they're not intended to be used to that kind of extent.

So we've had to absorb that cost when we look at stepping stone.

I think mostly stepping stone has been the one we've had to replace a couple times now.

Yeah.

All right.

So this is just everything kind of laid out in a table.

Um the cost per month through bed per bed, as well as the startup and the timing, just an estimate on what would be possible.

I took um permanent supportive housing and building more affordable out for right now.

And then we've got a looking at this, I would say we can go back to that slide.

But why is a congregate shelter more expensive than a non-congregate shelter?

But that's because of the services, right?

Just wanted to clarify that.

It comes right the daily, the navigation resources.

It's the yeah.

And the means, yeah.

When we're talking congregate shelter with services, we're talking all day long navigation.

Because there are many places that have a congress shelter, it's just you show up at night and then you leave in the morning, and we we moved away from that to the NAV center.

Um, but that increases the cost.

Yes, yeah.

And I will say after um reading the article yesterday in the Oregonian that these costs are significantly lower than then many many counties there.

Yeah, spending a lot of money up there.

So our expires, that's all the dollars that we've got towards the TSSA, and for the gaps at the shelters on December 31st, 2026.

Um the statewide shelter funding isn't gonna fully cover our existing traditionally city supported shelters.

Um, this year it was minus six percent.

And so it's UYC has said the gap is is 1.7 million, and that is for the region, which is interesting because our DAP is very similar.

Um it's uh that deficit, and that is just really for the navigation center, all of safe parking in central Oregon villages, if the state move forward with funding at the same levels they did.

Um the navigation center budget for instance went up significantly between the last two years, and so with that 30% increase, COIC was like we can't make up that difference.

And so the city with our remaining ARPA on our contract with the navigation center will fill that gap, but we can only do that for one year.

Um safe parking traditionally has not been included because of habitability requirements as part of the sustainable shelter framework.

They are including safe parking as eligible.

Our safe parking is high barrier, and so it will be 30% of the total award is possible to go to higher barrier shelters, which means that they will be competing with, for instance, Bethlehem.

Um and then Central Oregon villages again with habitability, they have not been eligible, and they also are high barrier shelter.

And so those are really the ones that we're not sure how that's going to move forward, even though they could be eligible under the new framework.

And just a reminder that 1.7 is only looking at the first six months, we're talking January 1 to June 30th.

So when we talk about what that means on an annual, that's okay.

So uh love love following up that slide.

Yeah, um so as we talk about the TSSA moving forward, one just we're gonna continue to move forward with the sections one and two closure, that's gonna be set.

So we do that by June 1st, 2026.

The questions for this council as we approach the meeting next week.

Do we want to maintain that December 31, 2026 deadline to close the TSA?

At the last meeting we had or work session prior to the previous meeting, I felt there was consensus from the group that there's a desire to extend, although I don't think that was fully shared at the joint meeting with everyone, so we kind of punted that.

So just refreshing, do we want to do that?

If so, we really need the county to join us in that extension.

The only way we can access our property is through the county.

So if they decide not to and close that down, we sort of limit our access into that TSSA.

It also means we are absorbing a lot of the funding and the backup and the people now on our property, so we would see that cost go up.

So staff's recommendation if the county does not decide to move forward it, we will unfortunately we should close it as well.

If the county is on board, we would like to extend it as well.

Um and then from there, we can do we want to share in any costs.

So we do have the uh continue service provider cost that right now is through the HSGP and the joint chair I talked about earlier.

Do we want to continue some sort of uh cautionary agreement with the county on that as well as some of the enforcement costs?

So we talked about 1.1 million annually to operate at TSA.

So again, we're talking six months in this scenario, so about 550,000.

Is there a way we split that cost?

So it's about just 250 or 275 each among the city and the county.

We'd still have our own cleanup costs, so it does not uh negate my ask at the previous meeting for some additional dollars for if and when we do close, and the about half a million that's gonna cost us to clean up everything afterwards.

So that still is there.

This is just for us to kind of extend and maintain our current operations with our current level of service for another six months.

And then in terms of uh potential solutions, we're actually going to have a financial strategies uh work session on February 25th.

Um we'll talk about kind of the funding landscape in totality, kind of leaving off where we uh approved the biannual budget, some of the areas of risk, this being one.

Um we have also had some of those preliminary recommendations from the home committee around establishing a uh revolving loan fund for infrastructure, the credit enhancement tool, um, and then I think there's just been some uncertainty with the state with our shelter uh our shelter system and shelter funding, as you've seen here, there's that gap of 1.7 million potentially, and then plus if this idea of of extending the um TSSA and our cost share in that.

So we're really uh narrowing that conversation to uh the use of the 10 million that we have sitting in reserves from one-time land use uh land sales at Petunipper Ridge.

Um, I'm not looking to spend all of that 10 million, but I think what we're gonna be developing a strategy to uh based on some direction from council in cooperation with the county.

So I think we we want to be careful not to say we're solving this all on our own.

We want to be in partnership with the county, but um looking to to allocate a portion of those funds to help address this and a couple of other issues that we'll uh detail out on the 25th.

Okay.

So council at our joint meeting that we had last year with the county, there were a majority of us interested in extending the TSSA.

So I think tonight is just confirming if there's still a majority of council that um wants to bring that position into our meeting next week with the county and ask for their partnership.

Um and any other questions you might have for staff, but welcome any comments at this point.

Well, I I mean I definitely support extending it for a couple reasons.

One, it's the middle of the winter when we're talking about you know closing over when winter is most years is anyway, fully underway.

Um, and um two that you know we don't have a lot of great other options right now, and I think we need some more time to be able to explore more options and figure out some of the funding issues.

There's one property that's being talked about still, the Gales property.

Um, and it's this is about set buy this is about 17 more months.

Um, and you know, I I don't think wow our options are so limited, it makes sense for us to close something like this down, not only in the winter, but uh folks that are just gonna end up back on our streets and causing havoc for neighbors.

Um, it's more difficult to live on the streets.

They you know um the services are maybe not as focused there, and there's a problem with having more people out in the forest and the risks that go up in terms of fire.

And I think we were trying to both serve the homeless community better in this concentrated area, but also minimize some of those risks for our community.

So I think we need more time to be able to develop further um more options, which I hopefully will happen, but it's a challenge because of the time frames.

Steve uh I also am in favor of extending uh Matt, can you confirm for me that the the cost for you the 1.7 does that we have previously when we closed uh sections one and two, there's a cleanup bill associated with that, right?

Have we already given you funds for that?

So we have enough enough funds to maintain and do that initially.

Yes, it's gonna be the final cleanup, which is my ass for the additional half million to kind of clean that um and then the 1.7 million that's just for our existing shelters just not a cleanup, not TSSA.

We're talking about a half a million dollars total for the TSSA to extend.

We would we would have about a 300,000 if we if they agree to split our costs would be on 300,000 to extend.

Okay, got it.

Do we know um anecdotally?

If when we do close sections one and two, how many of those would probably end up still in the TSSA?

Would what do you what are you hearing and seeing?

Uh a majority.

Yeah, majority would move.

We just moved.

Yeah, a majority would just move.

Uh, how many camps are in one and two?

Our last count was over a hundred people in one and two, and it was only like nine and less in sections three or four.

So we had a when when um China was closed the majority of the people that came over from China moved into sections one and two because that was where the least people were um and they tried to create it so that's where we saw the largest increase so it's uh over 50% of the individuals are in one and two there's also BLM land to the north of us where there's still a couple people camping and and we're working closely with them because obviously if we create cutoff access we don't want anyone north of their being affected.

I would I would I would anecdotally 75 to 80% would mean stay in the TSSA.

I think if you would leave that typically is happened but more guessing more than 20% leave I I don't think that'd be that's what I thought there's no other Matt your numbers are based on everybody staying right for the for the next six months basically if I remember right yeah we're keeping it yes yeah and mostly it's because the the number of hygiene stations are in sections three and four.

So we don't see that that would taper off and as it's kind of a conservative number you're giving us in terms of uh would our could in theory our are the amount we pay for security in our go down but in our staff time is fixed I was I'm not I'm not advocating I reduce my health and safety team out there.

So we would we think we yes it'd be nominal or minimal reduction.

Is there a way to prepare um I know that when China had closed we in which we had not prepared for um and a large influx of people came there there was there was some some stuff going on.

So if we're if a majority of the people are in one and two um I'm just thinking ahead are there things we can do to mitigate any conflicts issues that may arise and that's probably a question for service providers and security and and and all that kind of stuff but I I do anticipate that that that could be yeah I think I think a crucial difference between us and China and is beyond service providers who are going out China we have internal staff security yeah we have so many touch points that is just beyond like what you see in the TSIC dashboard that we have.

It's already being talked about they already know a lot of people already know that this is happening um and ideally our teams are kind of out there kind of highlighting areas within one and two that are open and the people can go and are kind of cleared so the discussion is happening so that the the notice should not be a surprise and then we'll have we'll we have so many people already out there the people in three three and four know that that they know too yeah the words for you know that they're gonna have some close by million if you're at and that's where the reduction I think will come from is the folks who want more space and don't have it and and that they'll be the ones who will want to relocate.

And yeah I can tell you that the con conversation is where do they go more than likely they're gonna go to redmond or further into the county.

So that's what we've seen when people who've had to unfortunately remove where we see them ending up is the county ends up seeing them on their property further outside from us.

So um yeah whack a mole is is a term that comes to mind but it that definitely is people are moving around and we're yeah trying to keep them engaged as much as we can.

Yeah I I agree with counselor Riley and I did want to note I'm a little worried CO Villages is going to be moving so there's going to be some disruption with them and their services that's happening this year.

So um again you know could affect some of our exits and things um for folks that might might be ending up there.

I I will say that if Scott who's their executive director and was just I think um is leading a track as of yesterday as well um is is really in tune and planning for that um comprehensively and Kathleen as well who's um takes a lot of leadership um I expect it to be a planning yes yeah a smoother transition than than most okay good that's really good to hear council franzoza thanks um yeah I I guess my opinion is the same as what it was um when we met with the county uh last time that I would only be in favor um of extending the resolution um if we pursue some of the other options that um Amy presented tonight um I I think uh for I mean that's it's for two reasons one it's I I know it's gonna get very you know um the population density in the TSSA is gonna increase as we as we shrink it down and so I think um we need to provide options for folks um so and and I uh appreciated counselor Perkins' comment yesterday about the um high barrier versus low barrier um and so I made some phone calls to a few folks today and I um and I understand that state funding that Amy mentioned um is uh really dedicated for operating services of low barrier shelters um and that is um or low barrier shelter meaning um even the possibility of for example a campground or a long-term vehicle area um which was presented to us or suggested to us by the community um could potentially unlock some of that state funding for local service providers um in a low barrier uh in a low barrier fashion so um so that to me seems like something that's um uh pretty optimal and then um also I'm um I you know I wanted more

Um and so I made some phone calls to a few folks today, and I um and I understand that state funding that Amy mentioned um is uh really dedicated for operating services of low barrier shelters, um, and that is um or low barrier shelter meaning um even the possibility of for example a campground or a long-term vehicle area um which was presented to us or suggested to us by the community um could potentially unlock some of that state funding for local service providers um in a low barrier uh in a low barrier fashion.

So um so that to me seems like something that's um uh pretty optimal.

And then um also I'm um I you know I wanted more safe parking places in our council goals, and so I'm gonna just advocate for that again.

Um and I I think uh, you know, it obviously it's not gonna happen overnight.

Um, but I think that's something that we should um kind of start working with our safe parking providers um so that they can you know plan for some increase, whatever increase you know they think um is manageable.

So um that's what I got.

Thank you.

All right, any other comments.

I I support the extension.

I'm uh I just want to make clear that I'm um uncomfortable with using one-time funds to fund something that isn't sustainable.

And so I would want to put some guardrails on saying, okay, if this is 250,000 that we're talking about, you know, I know it's it's a much larger amount in the total fund, but these are funds that we intended to use for um other development purposes, city hall, you know.

I I don't think that we would consider selling off part of our existing city hall to fund this.

So it feels a little bit like well, we're basically selling off a portion of future city hall, and I think for me the need is just so clear that this is a really big fiscal cliff.

And I if there's you know, I don't know what the solution here is, but if we I'm okay doing it once, I don't want to be back here again in a year having the same conversation to go back to that fund again.

Um it's it's just it's not sustainable.

Yeah, okay.

Although certainly using potentially using part of that fund to invest in something that is more permanent that's related to houseless services could be um to me that makes I understand your point.

I think it's well taken.

Um, but I think um we're talking about a relatively small amount of money here to buy us some more time to where we get maybe another option or two that we might be able to help support with some of our own dollars that is more um sustainable over time, at least from the capital side operating is a whole different story that we have to talk about.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I I don't want to pretend like this is an easy situation or an easy decision or um a certain future, I think the solution or the the only solution.

I think what has been achieved though, um, and and and through partnership with the county on this is a mitigation of risk of the folks who are living in Juniper Ridge to themselves and to others.

Um, a real great connection to service that I think is paying off and will continue to pay off.

Um, and what I'm afraid of is um a sort of a sudden ramp down of this.

If we do that at the end of this year, we we definitely don't have anything in place.

If we buy ourselves a little more time, I think we we may be able to get something in place that could be better.

But um yeah, not this is a tough one.

But I I'm glad to see we're all basically aligned here, I think, on um the priorities and the values um that we'll take into that joint meeting next week.

So I think that's good.

Um but I think it's it's it's gonna be an interesting conversation because we do need partnership and we need material partnership from the county.

We cannot fund this all ourselves.

Um and and hopefully we can continue that at the next meeting um and get some of that buy-in.

So okay.

And then we just the county actually had their board meeting today, and they did talk about similar to us, maybe more abbreviated, um, just prepping for our joint meeting.

And the message I got back from the county administrator was sort of a one-one-one.

There's one person support, one person maybe no, and one sort of undecided.

So I think we'll have some work to do at the joint meeting to see where the county commission is at in terms of an potential extension.

Yeah, I think the other thing I just wanted to comment on is that you know, we have a discussion going on with the home committee, and they're gonna start to move into a discussion about new sources of new revenue potentially to use to support housing.

And while I know that there's a big focus on middle income housing, I think that we as a council need to be very open to using a portion of the resources that we might generate from new revenue to help support um probably the operations in particular, uh maybe also some capital for some of these houseless solutions that we need to keep exploring.

I think it would be worth us having the conversation of like, well, what are the one or two others that we really want to actively pursue helping make happen in our community to counselor Francosa's point?

But I think that discussion about new revenue needs to look at the whole housing spectrum, and that includes this end of the housing spectrum that are people who are on house and how we're gonna support them better over time.

Because this problem is not gonna go away quickly, we're gonna continue to have a funding need.

Um and we're gonna obviously need to have some resources we control at the local level to help backfill um some of the the gaps that are starting to emerge from the state.

Yeah, yeah, just uh just sharing some being on the the coordinated house list response um office board.

We have people coming to us every month, service providers saying we are we are we have a massive gap.

Um it is this is not um just a problem with the city, it is a problem across the entire spectrum of houseless services.

And um I for one am very worried and concerned about um going in all this amazing work that we had to that we had, just not just with the city, but in our entire community, setting all of these things up.

Um I'm very concerned that we're gonna go backwards because there is just no money right now.

There is no money for this.

Um, and so I agree with you.

Like we when we are talking about um you know, new sources of revenue, we have to think about the the fact that there are and there are a lot of our houses the house list community that is going to work every day in our community and um cannot afford to live here and um we need to take we need to take care of them and we need to invest in in in um some place for them to be.

Yeah, thank you.

Council Francis, do you have another comment?

We do, yeah.

Thank you.

I do I have a question.

Um it's kind of more of a question of um I appreciate our conversation tonight, and it sounds like yeah, we are on the same page or at least really close.

But um, you know, if we're going into a joint meeting with the county, uh we kind of need to make some quick action on this.

So are we gonna the our discussion today has been very high level?

You know, I mean, what about the specifics of like um, you know, if if there's uh agreement on a trying to set up a long-term vehicle area, you know, does the city have in its back pocket?

I guess I'm talking to Eric here and Matt, uh, land sort of thought about as a potential spot for that.

Um and then as as far as funding goes, Eric, you mentioned we'll be talking in February.

Um, you know, at what point?

And this maybe is a question more for my fellow city counselors.

Like, at what point do we revisit, you know, the budget and try to find a more continual revenue stream, you know, ask our city manager to try to find a more uh long-term revenue stream and then the general fine for our homelessness.

Thanks.

I can do one of the talk to the property annually.

We evaluate, and we did it last year for the CHRO, and that was kind of more publicly, but annually we look at all the property owned, and we sort of evaluated it.

The first pass last year was around safe parking and what could and could not be used for safe parking and where can we put um so yes.

Uh is there does a city owned property that in theory we could use?

We we we have this group has looked at a variety of sites.

We still have Southeast Ninth Street that's on our book that we've decided that we're pushing off that we wanted to use for affordable housing, but we've we've kind of pushed off uh moving forward with any sales for that.

Um, you know, as we look at Juniper Ridge, I think that's part of the discussion in February is is what you discussed as Borough is selling more of that land for commercial, so that that takes some of that off, and that there's accessibility issues with that.

So we we are limited in the amount of property that we own.

I Amy highlighted the COB.

We're looking at uh working with them on relocating them to the 15th Street, just because that's now has some availability and acreage availability with transportation in their yard moving up to Juniper Ridge.

So we have so I we yeah, I I I have ideas.

I I think it's you know, there's gonna be concerns across uh our all of our neighbors on whether or not they want that and they'll voice that.

So I'm happy to sit down and go through where and what and what can we do, but uh it's it's limited, and I and I think it it's a huge lift.

Um I think operators is kind of the big one.

I think the operator capacity we do, yeah.

It's it's we did have a conversation with uh Central Oregon in uh irrigation district too.

They have some potential properties both in the city and in the county that are I think options for continued kind of like safe parking um sites.

Um I think the Gales property as we've been talking about is going through a zone change process.

I'm sure that'll come up in the joint meeting.

The county's uh gonna be processing that as an option.

So there are some things that are you know, kind of but the the real issue is the both the startup and operating costs.

I think that's the that's the real big challenge is uh finding and and also capacity too with our providers of finding somebody that is willing to take that on, especially if there's a lot of uncertainty about the funding.

And I think kind of to counselor Mendes's point if I'm a provider, if there's just sort of one-time funds, I'm not sure I'm gonna want to take on something like that.

I think we we do need that ongoing secure funding.

So just another plug as we look to our delegation when they're here next week for the legislative agenda for the short session.

We need to make sure we preserve our shelter framework that does not cut depending on what the finite the um forecast is the economic forecast that's gonna come out next week with the state.

I mean it was a little bit better than we thought the last forecast.

Hopefully that holds, but with all the uncertainty right now and the pressure to cut, I'm concerned about just even the existing shelter framework staying intact.

Um so we really do need to kind of think about what's our responsibility, what's the state and how we meet a community need and what's our share of that, and hopefully get some partnership with the county as well.

That that state framework is not likely to increase, right?

I mean, we'll be lucky if we're able to maintain it and not have any further cuts.

Yes.

So we know we have you know roughly 200 people that are gonna be sort of moved in need of place, right?

Within 17 18 months, idea ideally if we can get an extension here.

Um so we do have to come up with some kind of prioritized plan.

Well, if you know which of these options are we gonna pursue.

We're I think obviously we can't do some of these more expensive ones.

We're probably gonna have to choose some of the lower cost ones, you know, we'll look from both outdoor shelter down.

Um having a sense of priority, and I think the councillor Francis's points are starting to zero in on some properties where we can make some of these things happen.

And then ideally the time buys us the ability to work with the providers as well, because I know that that's a big challenge, right?

In terms of their capacity, and we have these other funding pieces.

So it's not a lot of time, but it does seem like there needs to be some kind of prioritized plan here of what we're um attacking first, which of these were kind of trying to do that.

Yeah, I think we if we could try to find some agreement with the county on that, yes, we'll be good at the next one.

And it feels like I think to Councillor Francosa's point too, this idea.

I mean, when you look at the table, it's sort of evident that a campground, which is kind of what we have at the TSSA, but something like that where folks have the ability to take their existing vehicle and you know, and and have a place to park, it's gonna be the lowest cost, and then this idea of having providers go to them versus a whole new thing, right?

Because of all of the costs associated with that.

So I think we need to be in that sort of scale of the solutions, which is probably evident to everybody, just want to be.

I I do want to add that the messaging from the state is that there will be no dollars for anything new, right?

Right.

That there's not going to be any eligibility for something that's new.

The only eligibility that will be considered is for those programs that have a track record that can meet the metrics.

And so uh as we discuss uh options, those will be fully funded somewhere else.

It's not gonna be through the sustainable shelter framework.

But Amy, was there any dollars associated with the emergency continuing of the emergency declaration by the governor?

Was there any new dollars that she was committing to that or just not for emergency shelter, my understanding?

Um, but that could change.

I mean, we've seen a lot of things that that had moved around, but we also know from our partners across the state that there's a lot of need.

Absolutely.

And so um I feel confident saying there's not going to be a lot of more money, a lot more money coming into Bend.

I I do think that we have a really strong structure.

I think COIC has done a great job at it and our partners to keep things um moving and those metrics available.

I just think it's gonna be a really difficult session.

Yeah, it is.

And that extension doesn't um give us any more legal flexibility under land use laws any kind, right?

I asked this question someone else and got basically the answer no.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the the statute we're operating the TSSA under like to go to, I think it was talked about what should we charge a fee or do something in operating account.

I would I would advise we should probably not do that under this, under how it's written.

We'd probably want to reevaluate how we would operate that.

And and because we typically technically don't have this access is kind of challenging out there.

It's not be my first option to say flip this, but if that's what we're left with, that's something we can obviously explain.

There's no ask um to have more flexibility on some landy stuff from the EA Jason to the UGB.

If we're not the funding is basically drying up, you know, we're gonna be lucky if we can maintain it.

There's no ask we should be making in this session around that.

Um there are there actually, I know I talked to to Commissioner.

And you'll you'll hear from Commissioner Chang.

Um, he mentioned in our prep meeting yesterday that that there's a bill for uh allowance of manufactured homes as like a an expedited UGB expansion to kind of some flexibility in the land use system to really kind of meet some of that needs.

He'll explain I think he was planning on explaining more of that next week.

I'm also happy to share as we move along with this process, but something that the the CHRO um has been working on is acknowledging the fact that that the funding is drying drying up from sort of municipal sources, and we're working on sort of a um uh pitch um to um the the private community um to our businesses and and saying this isn't you know an important economic development um thing for our for for our region um and you know x many people at at this business um are actually working homeless, you know, and and and sort of working on that pitch, and we're gonna be we're moving along with that.

We met with Edco today, we're meeting with Chamber um later this week to to work with them on how we can more effectively reach the private sector.

It's it's worked in Silicon Valley, um, and so we we want to try and bring it here to get money private sector could send some money here too I know that would be nice to actually we still moved here.

I think they have enough, yeah.

Yeah, Amy.

Um I just want to ask an assumption that we're making.

Councilor Riley talked about there'll be 200 people that will need to be, you know, and I and I don't think it's a bad assumption, but there is a transition rate that you have coming out of that program.

Yes, about a lot of things.

And there's also a backfill rate that goes in for people coming behind.

Do you feel confident that we should look at a continuing steady state 200 number?

Or do you think that there's any possibility that that number will get smaller with success in our transition program?

I think that number will get smaller, but I think with as other services dry up, and especially those services for prevention, which was not funded really in the previous um legislature, that we will see a significant increase in people needing those services.

So I I would love to say that it's gonna go down.

I I just I I'm I'm not confident that we'll see a significant drop.

And it's fair, and I and I'm not challenging that assumption.

I just I want to be clear to to folks who say, you know, here we are enabling this, and I and I don't, and I and so I want to challenge that and say no.

What we're doing here is we're doing what we can to provide the services to folks that helped in transition, but but externalities happen all around us all the time, and so this is a fair assumption that we're making here, and it's a population that needs our help continually.

We're keeping people alive and and safer than they were previously, right?

Um Stacy uh from REACH shared a story this week about um a mother and son that had been on Hunnel Claussen and were part of that displacement or clearing or closure, and they just got that family into stepping stone, and it was because just a fundamental distrust in the system, and it took the McKinney Vento rep, it took REACH, it took neighbor impact, it took just this in camp to take care of it.

It was just this full spectrum of services and people, and and that's you know, a couple of years out, and that's how long it took to get this mom and child into more permanent housing.

Um anecdotally, which I feel like I say a lot.

Stacey was saying that as they're seeing transition, there are more people requesting a heat assessment because they're starting to recognize that there are some possibilities out there.

So she thinks that that we're seeing some more traction um perhaps, but then somebody moved in from Hawaii um last week, and and so it it's just it's it's a unique group of of people who need a unique range of services, and as long as service providers are going out there and making those connections, we have the opportunity to get them somewhere safer.

Was that family after TSSA?

Yes, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been clear.

Yes, they're at the TSSA.

So it would there are those stories.

So those relationships perhaps that were built, right?

As a result of the concentration of services and repetition and building trust and and mosaic and hosts to provide medication to stabilize and that resource as well.

And so the service providers will tell you that it is an exceptional experience for them to work together in this way, and neighbor impact again plays that that critical role that there is there's movement and there's stability, and this is one of the only places people can go, and so I'm not sure if that number will drop.

But it's down from 235.

I mean, that was our high this summer, and so there's been some movement.

Okay, well, we'll take this to our meeting next week.

Um, I do want to name, we've talked about the state a lot, but I do want to name that the federal government was until this last year really starting to dig in on this issue, considering how they could play a role in homelessness, had a special agency that was talking about coordinating federal agencies, didn't have lands.

That all is gone and in the complete reverse direction.

Um, and that has a significant impact on our service providers and what we're able to do here.

So I just want to name that as well.

It's gonna that's why we're looking at cuts at the state budget, right?

Um, so we're in a difficult spot here, but I think we just need to do the best we can with what we've got in front of us, and so we'll talk with the county some more about that next week.

All right, thank you both.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, anything you want to update us on to the upcoming schedule?

Yeah, joint meeting on the uh three o'clock at the new public works building.

Public works building, everybody has remembered that.

It's on the third, we'll be on the third floor of that building.

We'll have folks to to guide to guide you, and then we have our regular meeting on the 21st.

Uh we'll also have a borough meeting on the 21st, and we're gonna include some work session items like the legislative agenda.

We'll have a our delegation here, we'll ask for approval of that agenda, and then an update on parklets and some or some direction on parklets, and then borough to talk about the um sort of financial uh considerations if we have a default on a site-specific um or development agreement related to the site-specific program.

So and then we have a meeting on the 28th where we'll hear an update from our equity uh restructuring efforts.

We had an update last night uh to the human rights and equity commission.

We'll hear that update as well with council and then uh transportation standards and a Hawthorne crossing kind of where the bridge is landing.

That's the work session on the 28th.

Okay, great.

Is that an update or is there decision points on that one?

Uh I think there's some direction that we'll be looking for from council.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

That's it for today.

Thanks, everybody.