The Bend City Council held a work session on April 22, 2026, covering three major topics: final policy direction for the proposed Climate Pollution Fee, an annual water conservation and supply update, and a feasibility study for a new public assembly venue. Council provided clear direction on fee exemptions, effective date, and building applicability, received updates on water conservation progress and drought preparedness, and expressed support for further exploration of a multi-purpose event venue.
Staff Presentation (Cassie Lacey, Senior Management Analyst):
Council Discussion and Positions:
Staff Presentation (Lori Feya, Environmental Resources Manager; Dan Denning, Water Conservation Program Manager):
Council Questions:
Presentation (John Katz, CSL International; Jeff Knapp, Visit Bend; Katie Brooks, Economic Development Officer):
Council Input and Next Steps:
All right, I'm gonna call this work session on April 22nd. Um here. Um the mayor is going to be joining us online from uh Pendleton in um a few minutes, I think. Uh if she's not oh, there she is, there she is. And counselor Norris will be here after this first item on the work session agenda. So first we are going to uh get to start with uh electrification, and um I'm just gonna ask as we have 50 minutes to talk about this, and I would love it if we could hold all questions and comments until Cassie gets through the whole thing, and then we can go backwards and ask questions and go through each slide. Okay. Um good afternoon, counselors. Just a quick roll. Oh, I'm sorry, we'll call. An interval. We'll call. Counselor Platt, we'll start with you. I apologize. Megan Perkins, she, her. Mike Riley, yeah, Ariel Mendez, heat him. Gina Franzosa, she her. All right. Now we're legit. Okay, good afternoon. I'm Cassie Lacey, senior management analyst in the city manager's office. I do have Daniel Walker online from Brightline Group to help field any questions over Zoom. Um, so I'm here to get the final pieces of direction that we need from the council in order to develop the code chapter and the ordinance for the climate pollution fee that we've been working on for the last several months. Okay, specifically, we will be looking for your direction direction from you all today about exemptions or other adjustments and the effective date of the climate pollution fee. Those are the topics that we had the round table on two weeks ago. And then we also need direction from you on the applicability of the fee to specific building types and on the fee update and review process. And then the process for the fee looking ahead is that we're scheduled to bring the first reading of the ordinance and the code chapter to at the council meeting on June 3rd, and then the second reading on June 17th. And then one additional policy document that will come later is the actual fee resolution. This would be adopted shortly before the effective date of the fee. Um, so we will schedule a work session about two months before whatever decision you make on the effective date of the fee to review that fee resolution and review the updated fee calculation and fee schedule. So next I'm gonna walk through all of the different policy questions that we need for you tonight so that we can just see the full scope of the discussion, and then as uh counselor Perkins said, we'll go back and actually talk about each one. Um so we held a round table two weeks ago on April 8th to hear input from stakeholders on ideas for potential fee exemptions and the fee implementation timeline. We share a few ideas to discuss with the group, and then we also heard some new ideas from roundtable participants. Um we've been doing a little bit of research into the different ideas that were proposed for the fee exemptions and adjustments. We've determined that two of the ideas are ones that are relatively straightforward enough that we can go ahead and incorporate those ideas into the policy documents that we'll be bringing to you on June 3rd. So those are the first policy questions we have for you regarding whether or you want to move forward with these two ideas or not. So the first one is the option to create an exemption for deed restricted affordable housing. This would be an exemption on any affordable housing project that has a deed restriction. Um we could potentially leverage um or sort of mirror the existing process that we have in place for getting affordable housing projects through expedited permitting, which makes doing this relatively simple. Some of the roundtable participants had requested that the city create exemptions for up to 120% AMI levels. This exemption would be based on the having the deed restriction and not necessarily specific to any particular AMI level. Um so there are some, there's not very many, but some deed restrictive projects do go all the way up to 120% AMI, so it would just be inclusive of any that had that deed restriction. Um and then as a reminder, virtually all of our affordable housing projects are built without gas already. Um this fee would not apply to multifamily, which is also a percentage of the um affordable housing projects. So we would not expect this exemption to be utilized very much. The purpose would just be to have it in place to ensure that there isn't an additional fee on affordable housing in the event that the market conditions change or if there's sort of a one-off situation where a project decides to use gas. Um the other one that we need direction on today is how to treat dual fuel equipment. The options for this include an outright exemption for houses with dual fuel systems with the new code update going into place in April. We do expect potentially significant increase in uh the amount of these dual fuel systems since builders will be putting in the heat pumps for the air conditioning units. Um so if you do create an outright exemption for these, I would expect it to be a very broad exemption or a pretty broad exemption that potentially a lot of homes would fall under.