Okay.

We are here for the Venn City Council work session.

Let's do roll call.

You can start, Councilor Mendez.

I think too much Mike Riley, he's Melania Keebler, she her, Megan Parkins, she her.

Megan Narshi her.

Steve Platthee, him.

Ariel Mendes, he him.

And Councilor Francesa is on her way to the meeting and will arrive later.

She's on actually.

Oh, she's online.

Okay, so she's listening in.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm actually card right now.

So this is good.

So I'm here to geographic cards.

Okay, thanks.

All right.

So we are starting with our CIP update.

Perfect.

Thank you, Mayor.

So Ryan Oster, I'm the director of the engineering department and supporting me up here and partnering with me.

We have Sarah Hudson from the city management office and Corey Johnson also from the engineering department.

There's obviously a lot of thought and conversation that goes into this.

So they're gonna elbow me and remind me of things that we have talked about that I have forgotten to mention.

So it'll be kind of a joint presentation, primarily from me, but don't be surprised if they jump in as well.

Feel free to interrupt at any point if you have questions.

Obviously, this is an interactive thing.

The point of this today is really to focus on both the geobond and transportation CIP updates.

This is a mid-biennium update, so nothing really new.

But we will have about an hour here.

Here's the agenda.

We'll talk about a mid-biennium update and what that means.

We'll go through the process timeline.

I'll share a quick calendar of kind of what we've been doing to date and how we got to this point.

Then we'll take a little bit of a deeper dive into both the geobond and the transportation fund, and then of course, uh council discussion related to those.

And then I do have a little bit of an update on our other important uh water services slash utilities side of the house.

Uh but we'll have a more in-depth discussion on those topics at a June 24th council work session meeting next month.

So that being said, the overall objectives of this meeting, uh, we add another year at the end of the five-year CIP, right?

So a year has come and gone.

Uh it was weird to talk about fiscal year 30, and now we're talking about fiscal year 31.

But here we are.

Overall, we just the whole point of this is to make sure we're still in alignment with council goals, community expectations, uh financial projections and everything, so that so where they're still delivering the way both both this public and the council expects of us.

And then really just to highlight some of the things that have changed.

If you'll recall, we we had a nice friendly work session meeting while we were all down here in a horseshoe back in October.

So we took that feedback and we've implemented that into the draft CIPs.

It's it's not shown in the presentation, but you you all have or should have access to the draft CIP as an attachment as well as a memo, kind of describing the changes that we've experienced this year.

Uh so we can reference that at any point in time.

And that really gets us to where we are today, and and the idea of here's what we understand as staff that we're being asked to do.

Uh, there's a few fundamental questions that we do want to run by you.

And so we're gonna introduce these questions up front.

Don't want to take too deep of a dive into them yet because the presentation should answer a lot of these.

But what we're sitting at today is is with respect to both of these funds.

We have the geobond fund and we have the transportation fund.

So on the geobond side, questions to consider is the consolidation of the ODOT money.

That's something we talked about in October, and what possibilities lie ahead of us in terms of what to do with that money.

We've outlined three potential options there, so we'll take a bit of a deeper dive into those after kind of going through all of the possibilities.

And then on the transportation side, uh a little bit less excitement there, but there are some things that we have adjusted, whether it's moving a project up or back in the schedule, as well as accounting for things uh that weren't in there uh when we adopted the biennium budget, and really just ensuring if you have other priorities you'd like us to consider.

The transportation fund is where we maybe have a little bit more flexibility within reason, but the the geobond fund obviously is is more uh in sync and it has to, you know, we got to deliver what we said to the public on there.

And then the third question really is you're gonna be at next week's council meeting.

You're gonna be seeing code updates for AHAC, BDAB, and TBOC.

A lot of acronyms there, but one of those is the reformatting of the Transportation Bond Oversight Committee into more of a general transportation oversight committee.

So, what what are you asking of them moving forward?

And out of this update, what would you like us to go back to them to consider and work on now that they're gonna have a little bit more ability to look at both the bond and the transportation fund?

So those are the high-level things to consider.

We will show this slide again at the end of the presentation, and we'll kind of run through each of these options in more detail.

So, timeline-wise, uh, we adopted the current biennium budget we're operating under now back in July of 25.

A couple months later, that previously mentioned work session where we talked about the geobond and transportation fund.

Uh, internally, as staff, we continue to deliver projects, so we make budget adjustments at the end of each calendar year, we make fiscal year projections of how much role we're going to spend, how much needs to roll over.

Uh, here we are in May of 26, having an update meeting.

All of this is leading to the mid-biennium budget adjustment adoption.

And then once we're done with all of this and and we approve the mid-biennium, it's only a few short five or six months from now that we're going to be talking about the next biennium.

So keep that in mind is there's never a final decision point.

You always have flexibility moving forward, and in every six months or year that goes by, we have better information.

We have more concrete numbers about how much something like the read market overcrossing bridge is going to actually cost.

And so, with that certainty allows more flexibility in what to do with some of this other money.

So, jumping into the geo bond.

At a high level, where we sit today is the original resolution that was passed, uh resolution 3218.

Out of that 190 million, it basically called for about 180 in projects and another 10 million in just general overheads, about 5%, which is actually a pretty good number when it comes to this.

That's to help pay for the additional staff we brought on board that pays for overhead costs.

There's a lot of management and administrative work that has to go into working with the with the bond and who else we work with here on the financial side, and then just monitoring this from investment income side and all of the things that go into that.

So that's the original intent.

Uh, for reasons we've previously discussed, and we can jump into more should we want to.

Our current spend rate is far exceeding that original 180 million dollars intended.

The good news is with the read market grant, which we are confident will be hitting soon.

We we got confirmation from the Federal Rail Administration over the last couple days that and that I think because we've constantly been, I don't want to say pestering them, but we're we're getting them to move at lightning speed, which is not normal.

We're we're confident that we're gonna be coming to you on the June 3rd council meeting with the actual grant language and and asking council for approval of acceptance of that 32 million dollars.

And so everything we're talking about here is under the assumption that that 32 million will hit and will be programmed into the next budget that you're gonna be adopting.

So the good news is overall, it's with that 32 million, it basically trues us up.

It takes us back to the projection that Corey ran for us here, is we're right back to where we should be in terms of how much we can deliver from a project standpoint.

So winning a 32 million dollar grant did not mean, oh great, we've got an extra 32 million dollars we can spend.

It basically brought us back to where we should be.

So that that could be viewed as how did we get there, but also is okay, at least we're back to where we need to be.

Overall, that does give us some flexibility moving forward, and we'll talk about that in more detail.

Um, and there's there's some other areas within the geobond that we might have the potential uh to consider of what to do with with some funds that should be freed up.

So Ryan, can I ask a question?

Absolutely, please.

Uh I'm I mean, I'm so uh amazed at the at the grant work that our that our city did to get that.

That was fantastic.

Um so much change for 2020.

We get right here.

So the the burn rate is where it is, and it's because of a lot of what's happened in the world.

What I'm trying to think about here is we're sitting up on the the dice, we're looking at five years in the in the front of where we are right now.

What can we do?

Yeah.

To try to help with all that's going on in the world to help you get as much of a predictable outcome as possible.

I appreciate that.

No, I that that that would be a really good conversation to have in terms of you know, we've managed to true this back up, but we have to be very cautious moving forward over the next five years, we don't put ourselves back into that position.

So a good example is the butler market project that's being built right now.

So the original scope of that from the TSP and from the geo bond is is I'll read it here.

So shared use path adjacent to the roadway, close sidewalk gaps, and create a low stress network.

That's that's a kind of a general description.

In reality, what we're building is a fully protected shared use path on both sides that is much more expensive than the original project that was outlined not only in the TSP but money that was dedicated from the geo bond.

So internally, we've already, you know, we we've been asked on projects that you know, whether it's like the Bear Creek or 27th work that's going on now.

You're building a shared use path on the north side of Bear Creek and on the east side of 27th or the west side of 27th.

Why not both sides?

Why not both sides of 27th?

And our answer is we just we can't.

Like we can't afford that.

We have to stick to the original intent.

So right now, what we've built on 27th is a shared use path on the west side, and we're just putting in missing sidewalk on the on the east side, which which is great.

It's a dramatic improvement, but it's it's not as far as we would have hoped to have gone, given how our standards have evolved since 2020 in the passing of this.

So just an understanding, I think would be best for staff of we can't do everything we would all like to see.

We just don't have enough left in the geobond to do that moving forward.

So from the dice, not resi requirements for designments creep, is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's scope creep, right?

Yeah, and it's not uncommon because nobody would deny that a shared use path on both sides is a better option.

You've got the bikes out of the roadway, you have a 10-foot path, in some cases, a dedicated bike lane and a dedicated sidewalk behind the curb.

That's amazing.

I would love to build that everywhere.

Um, but it requires right-of-way purchasing purchases, it's a utility movements, and all of that just adds up and adds up.

So we we can't keep doing as much as we would like to do.

I I really appreciate that, Ryan.

And I think that one other thing that I was thinking about is in our growth plan, part of that is transportation system update, right?

That it that and and so I I feel like there's gonna be some friction there as we as we hit that.

What what can we do to avoid or or smooth that out as we approach that?

Yeah, I mean, I like one thing council did not long ago, or a couple years ago, maybe is you know, key we want all 12 key routes built, but we really want a bend bikeways north-south, east, west.

That is the priority.

So we were willing to overspend on those specific ones, but as we're building these other key routes, you know, we're gonna stick to what the original description said.

So that's kind of where we need to come back to.

What is the intent?

You know, we we're gonna build this backbone, and then over time it's gonna take a while, we will connect things to this that will, you know, and then we'll we'll market, we'll wayfind it, and eventually, but we just can't deliver everything everybody would like to see in such a short time frame.

And so, yeah, as we're going into this TSP discussion, it really is a prioritization effort in saying, yeah, we all agree that would be a nice thing to have, but we we gotta we gotta price everything out appropriately, we gotta factor in inflation since 2020 that you know the cost of oil and everything we're experiencing, and the understanding that we can change scope somewhat, but if we do it here, we gotta pull it back somewhere else.

Thanks for the background.

Absolutely.

So yeah, sorry, can I just add I think I also want to because we're having this discussion, it's not we're just not coming up with things.

Told the diet structures.

When they come to the open houses, or when they do the projects in their neighborhood, or they think about how they want to get around, are asking for a lot of these things.

And so I think we've refined, I've seen us refine over the years, helping our community understand option A, B, and C, if you want both sides, it's gonna be shorter.

Right, don't have money to go all the way here, right?

And just really helping people understand the trade-offs with the with the restriction of our money.

I'm also gonna say something here is about our our grant for the read market bridge.

That reflects a federal administration that was um keyed in on infrastructure across this country and put historic levels of money towards infrastructure.

That if that had continued and we had an administration that was continuing that right now, we'd also I think be seeing a lot more opportunities to enhance these projects with grant funding.

Um the current DOT priority appears to be moving away from all of that.

Just purely the funding itself, but also the idea of any kind of transportation that's not in a car.

And that doesn't align with our community values, right?

And that's a huge resource that we are basically fighting against.

While administration also is causing the chaos that you just mentioned around inflation, oil costs, tariffs, everything else.

So there's a lot of headwinds, and I think it's a good question to ask on how we stay focused on trying to deliver these projects.

And that people need to understand that there are gonna be restrictions.

Yeah.

And we're gonna have to find other sources of money if we want to make some more enhancements.

Yeah, that's a great point.

A good good case in point is midtown crossings, right?

We all understand Franklin Greenwood and Hawthorne.

If you go back to the original language, it said explore all three, try to build one of them if you can.

Yeah.

Because we won grant, we're building all three of them.

Like we did not expect to be able to do that.

So Hawthorne grant money, read market grant money, like we struck while the iron was hot, and fortunately we were successful.

I mean, that's an additional 60 million dollars worth of infrastructure that we secured to supplement the geobond.

So good news.

So uh key items for the bond.

Um the biggest thing right now is that ODA or at council's guidance, we took all of the ODOT contribution money, which included 10 million from Murphy, and then another couple million from Powers, Colorado, Butler Market, and even some Empire money.

We pulled all that together.

That's a 17 million dollar bucket of money.

And so the options we displayed at that, you know, questions to consider is would council like to continue trying to find a way to partner with ODOT?

Um, or is there a different plan of attack you would like us to explore?

So uh ODOT contribution money is a bucket that you know we we can do something with, but we'll we'll dive into that more in more detail when we get to the question slide.

A few other things that we're exploring as staff right now is there are a couple projects on the geo bond that you know, as time has passed, you know, staff has taken a closer look, and it's like we understand the intent when the TSP was adopted and when the bond passed, but we're we're not sure if that's the right thing to do today.

We're not sure.

A good example of that is it's called the Colorado Capacity Improvement Project.

There's seven million dollars allocated for that, and the intent was really uh thank you, Corey.

It says uh incremental approach for Colorado Avenue widening, right-of-way acquisition, uh including intersection capacity at Colorado and Simpson, as well as Colorado and industrial way.

So, what could we do with the roundabout?

Do we need to widen the bridge?

What can we do with the signal?

And we've done some feasibility work in it's not a seven million dollar investment that's gonna really move the needle.

So is there something we could do there?

Probably.

So we'll come back as staff and recommend for for a million or two million or whatever, we can do this, and that'll help a little, but an extra five to seven million is not gonna really do much anything different.

So we're looking at projects like that.

We're looking at um I've got uh Chase Peril Powers listed on here.

That's another one kind of connected to the powers interchange.

And another one I was talking with staff about today is the Ani project.

The original budget for that was 14.

But the Timber Yards master plan development is taking a good chunk of that off of our so we're are we gonna have leftover money at Ani when we're done building it.

So all that to be said, there's there's the ODOT contribution bucket as well as other buckets that that I you know at six months, a year from now, I think we can have a really good conversation about here's where we would actually recommend we should spend that money and what could we do that would give us a better rate of return on this investment?

A few other things to have.

Well, I mean, yes, please, yeah, sorry.

Um, the Chase Peril Powers is is that a similar thing where there might still be some smaller investment than what was originally envisioned because that's a five or six million dollar fund.

Yeah, I think that total all in, if we could find it, it's connected to the Chase Roster House roundabout in the transportation fund.

So that 90 degree turn in roster house and private development has built right up to it.

And so putting a roundabout in there would give access from chase down to peril.

And the question then is how do you get from chase to powers?

But I guess what I'm saying.

What I think I heard from you already was that the original intention on that project was that it would help with the flow of traffic when during especially during the closure.

During the remote work, yeah.

And so doing some of these projects before that happened.

Um I think what I've been hearing is that that's maybe the modeling is not showing that it really makes much of a difference anymore.

So if it's if the scope is there's still a smaller scope that would be required.

So if that's five million.

So if that's five million dollars, it might still have to spend one and a half still.

Right.

And so we're not we're not netting five million out of that, or that one we just not doing at all.

Yeah, well, that that would be the question is do we just let it be it what it is with these offset intersections?

I think the all-in concept was maybe like a dogbone roundabout that would allow you to smoothly go from powers to chase.

Um the modeling doesn't show that it's gonna really make that dramatic of a change because ultimately it puts you on to the powers interchange, which is still signalized, and it's not an ideal setup for where we want to push people.

Uh again, if if ODOT was able to work with us and in build an overpass at Powers, which we would all like to see, then a project like that would probably mean a lot more.

Uh so yeah, that that's another one where we're questioning whether that investment is really gonna give us that much of a of a difference uh when it comes to where the traffic's gonna go.

So uh a couple other things to hit on the bond side.

Uh you will see that we're proposing to capture what I'm calling butler market phase two.

Right now we're building Butler Market phase one, which is from the 8th Street roundabout east up to Brinson, and that includes money from the transportation fund to build the Butler Wells roundabout, but it's all the bond is paying for all the shared use paths between the 8th Street roundabout in Brinson.

We now need to come back and finish that gap from the Ben bikeways, and so we have a small section that we need to do between the 8th Street roundabout west to the Butler Boyd intersection.

So we have programmed that money into the bond.

We've also programmed the money to improve the intersection itself in the transportation fund.

So the idea is we've lined these up and we can in an ideal world, we can re we bid out this other work and we basically move straight from phase one into phase two, and then that will complete the the north-south area of the Ben Bikeways project.

It build a protected intersection at Butler Boyd, and then somebody could be on a shared use path all the way to Brinson down through the Butler Boyd intersection.

So that is currently reflected in the draft CIP on both the bond and transportation side.

We've also plugged in money for what we're calling the Hawthorne extensions project, right?

So we've had this conversation of what's gonna happen when the bridge lands, what's gonna happen once we get over to Harriman and once we get to Third Street.

So we've got geobond money programmed in there to at least design something.

There is no money program to build it yet, so that's another what if when we're talking about this flexible bucket of money, whether it's ODOT or other projects.

So we're gonna design it.

That's the money you see in the draft CIP.

But if we want to fund the construction, we need to still develop a good cost estimate of that.

And if that's something council wants to move forward, we would plug that into the biennial budget uh that we would bring back to you in eight or nine months.

And the third thing that we have put in the draft CIP is reflective of the IGA that council signed with the parks board, and that is to fund the design and construction of the Gillcrest Bridge, and that's a 1.4 million dollar contribution that will take that currently city-owned asset, and it will uh it's a it's an allocation to the parks district, they will design it, they will build it through their process, and when it's all said and done, they will take over ownership of that bridge.

So it's one less of an asset that we as a city need to own, which is it's interesting because it could connect the Deschutes River Trail to a park.

So we really probably shouldn't be in the business of owning that bridge to begin with.

So that is also reflected based on the IGA.

Keep that in mind as we transition to the transportation fund because we could do something similar with the Drake Park Bridge if you're interested.

So I'll pause there to see if there's anything further on the geobond side.

If if you want to go through any of the projects shown in the draft CIP, we can we can go through any of those individually, but that's that is the summary of the draft bond CIP you have before you.

Any questions?

Yeah, yeah.

So the ODOT contributions, did they are there restrictions on that?

I mean, so you're saying it sounds like you're saying we could just take it and do whatever with it, but within yeah, no, this is a great question.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

So the the bond resolution obviously has bumper pads, right?

We can't just say we're gonna take this 17 million and put it on a completely different project that's not in not in the geobond resolution.

ODOT, they they have five million dollars in their proposed STIP, which is their version of a CIP that they're trying to adopt for their 2027 through 2030 STIP.

That's a five million dollar plug to do some signal improvements at whether you call it 20 or 3rd street, it transitions there and empire.

That signal has gotten worse since North Corridor phase one has opened up.

So their intent is whether the city's gonna play with that play in that sandbox with them or not, they recognize the need for some improvements at that signal.

It could be a right turn lane from Empire on to 20, it could be some other modifications.

So they're looking to do something there to begin with.

The options we listed there is would the city want to uh would the city want to contribute to the empire improvement at a at a limited amount of money because we see the need to do improvements across the interchange at the exit and on ramps and off ramps.

The other option we presented was the the missing key in all of this that everybody has known for years, is there's no southbound direct connection from 20 to 97.

Yeah, so an idea that we're kicking around with ODOT that they're open to is maybe we take some of their five million dollars, if not all of it, and some additional money from the city, and we just build a direct connection, which would alleviate a lot of traffic off of Empire.

Sure would.

So we're we're working through some initial cost estimates with ODOT now.

I don't have those yet.

Uh, but but that is a consideration of what what we could potentially do with some of that ODOT contribution money.

So and that would be well within the limits of the bond resolution.

Doing doing an improvement at Empire, in my opinion, and we of course could run this by legal, doing doing a direct connection is a benefit to Empire.

That's an improvement on Empire.

So I think we are in safe harbor there.

But we we would could we can vet all these in terms of the resolution language.

Um and if Elizabeth or anybody would love well, you know, they could jump in if you have a more direct question really.

That would be helpful, thank you for a future conversation too.

And I just want people watching to know when it says ODOT contributions.

This was in the bond that this is little pieces of money we give to ODOT, assuming ODOT is bringing their big pot of money to make all these big improvements, and we're just gonna help out, and that is not what's going on.

Four years we've known that's not what's going on.

Yeah, so I think when we had that discussion as a round table, we were recognizing if we sit this pot of money and wait for ODOT to come to the table on a Powers Overpass, it will not be within the bond, period, right?

So we're trying to figure out how to use this money in a way that's actually gonna build a project, right?

So yeah.

So I have two questions, one related to this project.

So do we not have some money in the bond measure for empire?

Yeah, so outside of this 17, there's still a 1.4, 1.5.45.

What 1.45 is uh for empire.

So if you don't want to use any of this 17, we could take that 145, add it to ODOT's five, and we could focus on Empire alone.

And I or we could add it.

Or you could add more.

So we're developing kind of three different tiers, kind of the small, medium, and large package.

Small is really the ODOT focused work.

The medium is ODOT plus us, and the larger package is that direct connection southbound from from 20 to 97.

And as part of that, can you um do you do the modeling for looking out a little bit in a little bit of time, at least you know, let's say 10 years out, which I takes us beyond the current growth plan, maybe what was done for the TSP just to because if I'm assuming a fair bit of new growth's gonna happen.

Right.

Oh, yeah, so we'll continue.

In and out of the community.

Um are you able to do any quick and dirty, like, well, if we had X amount of new houses up there and the jobs that are associated with June for Ridge and see how it influences uh these possible solutions?

Yeah, absolutely.

And then that's part of the exercise.

If you want to give us guidance to take a deeper dive into that with ODOT, yeah, we would run a full model of different scenarios and say, yeah, if if we build this direct connection, it's gonna take the level of service at Empire from an F to a B.

You know, 20 years from now, it's gonna climb back up.

Yeah, but it would do a lot to uh yeah.

So yes, the answer is we we will model that.

We will come back with cost estimates for each of those options and the resulting traffic impacts for doing those.

So shifting gears to Hawthorn then the design money.

Um tell me a little bit more about the scope.

I mean, are you thinking like designed all the way to uh like fourth street or fifth street or on the east side?

And where on the west side?

Yeah, so yeah, because it goes to like right now.

We're going to Hill, right?

With the bridge itself.

The current bridge scope is taking us to Hill Street.

Yeah.

So the extension work basically looks north and south of Harriman.

So this takes you from Hill Street to Harriman.

And then it looks to connect south into crossing uh Greenwood, and then ultimately Franklin, and then tying into the Bend Bikeways system.

And then north, it ties into the only improvement work that we have done up there recently.

So it's not looking to go into downtown or anything, but it's really focusing how do we connect bikeways.

Yes, on the bikeways, uh, you know, low stress network that we already have identified.

So it's really a north-south focus on the west side.

But it is an eastern focus to on the east side, it's it's crossing third, crossing fourth, getting all the way over to Larksburg.

Or Juniper.

Yeah, give the part.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's how do we more safely cross third?

How do we integrate with CET?

We've had conversations with them about you know what it could look like in terms of where buses park and but then but then it transitions for a block into a highly residential area.

So yeah, the extension project is there's that full scope.

So I think we should talk about that a little bit.

Looks like you're talking about the roads and the to me when I read that, I see something that's in fact the driving.

So just it makes frame games the right way for the public.

What we're talking about is the bikeway project and how we better connect what we've built into uh moving primarily cyclists but also pedestrians, yes, right?

Roads probably misleading, that's probably the not.

Yeah, yeah, it could just be the Hawthorne extension.

Yeah, it's a bike bag to continue that connection.

All right, let's get in the transportation fund.

Okay, jumping to the transportation fund.

So uh highlights here again.

If you compare the existing CIP that you've adopted versus the proposed one, it's really just a slight prioritization of some of the projects based on feedback.

Uh T Bach made some recommendations, council said yep, that's fine.

Uh, we we got some feedback related to an NSSP project that we were trying to do on century, so we adjust the timing of the tetherow slash century/slash bachelor view drive intersection.

Uh key takeaways though is we're we're servicing a lot of debt on the transportation side.

So uh if you look at the draft CIP, you know, there's a decent amount of money in there.

You'll see the read market grant funding show up on top, which gets added to the total sum, but that's a that's a good portion of the of the money.

So you kind of gotta ignore that that line and then look below that.

And the I the idea is that you know, two, three years from now, our transportation construction fund really after servicing the debt will only have enough money to maybe, you know.

I like to say seven or eight, finance tells me five or six.

You know, we'll we'll find some common ground in there.

Um, but basically you'll see there's maybe a couple intersections a year, and so in years three, four, and five, you'll see something like we're gonna design two intersections while we're building two.

The next year we're gonna design, you know, build the ones we were designing and design two more, and it's just kind of a two at a time moving forward as we go.

So we are a little bit limited outside of the next couple years.

So that being said, the key differences you'll see is we have moved Tethrow and Century up.

I think we all see the benefit of creating a roundabout entry coming back from the mountain.

You're really transitioning from the rural to the urban, and we want to slow speeds down.

Uh, we would also integrate a safe crossing there so so people can connect to you know out to Phil's Trail and up through Tetherow.

So uh that was a priority we heard from council.

Uh I mentioned it a little bit briefly earlier, but we are funding the Butler Boyd protected intersection through the transportation fund tied to Butler Market phase two.

The bond and read market roundabout is an interesting one.

At council's request, we have accelerated that.

I'm about to push that RFP out on the street in the next week or two.

Uh, I have shown an increase in funding.

So in the current CIP, I think there was four, what did we say?

Four and a quarter at that intersection, which was an evolution from the 750,000 we had originally when we were gonna consider something like signalizing the roundabout.

So I took it from there to four and a quarter at the October work session.

There was a good discussion about what are we going to ultimately build there?

There's the hybrid option versus the full double lane option.

So manage to squeeze a little bit more money into that project so that council isn't limited by funding.

I would rather you have the discussion and decision be made based on capacity, safety, speeds, and other things.

So if you want to go a full double, we will come up with a plan that we think would be safe to do it.

And so you'll see an increase in funding to a little over $7 million at that intersection because it will be a complex project.

Either way, and I didn't want funding to be the limiting factor of whatever the decision may be.

So that's important to note.

And we will we will present a couple options for you on that one.

Drake Park Bridge.

So this is piggybacking the Gilcrest Bridge.

In the current CIP, you have uh even in the draft CIP in the next two years, we're showing half a million and half a million.

And the idea behind that has always been let's get the design moving.

Let's get something, you know, on paper, and then maybe we'll go for some grants.

Maybe we'll find, you know, we'll use you know, some other funding options uh to fund the construction of that.

Uh we obviously we have some success on the Gilcrest side.

So one of the primary questions the council is if you want us to be aggressive here, we could bump that up to say a million and a million rather than a half and a half.

And I think two million all in would probably be enough for us to sign another IGA with parks to say, here you go, we'll make the contribution, have a nice day, and ultimately it's another asset off of our books that is connecting a you know two sides of the same park.

So that that's a good question for council if you'd like us to do that.

I'm hoping I don't break the model by asking for an extra million dollars.

I don't think we will, but uh, but if council would like us to do that, we will we'll rerun the model and make sure that's something we can afford.

Ryan, just on the Drake Park Footbridge question, could you remind me again why uh or what the cost would be if we just just resurface the you know the planks and make them smooth.

Good question.

I I couldn't give you uh a good good number for that off the top of my head.

Okay.

Uh, but if if we yeah, if you try to maintain the existing piers and structure that's in the water and just kind of worked above that, I mean I would need I would want some some guarantee that the piers are gonna last for another 50 years, which I'm not confident they would.

Uh but uh we could explore that option if if you're interested in doing that.

I I'm gonna throw out a number of maybe you know a few hundred thousand dollars if we wanted to look at rehabbing the existing bridge, uh you know, rather than the strollers use you know, bump bump bump bump bump as you go across that thing.

Um, but I'd want to do a real good structural analysis of of what's under the under the surface there.

Um that's gonna cost us some money, right?

Yeah, yeah, that would yeah, just just doing this this rehab consideration.

I mean, but behind the the feasibility side of it and the cost, I mean, it's probably at least a half a million.

Um, in that would maybe we could get another 10 or 20 years.

Um but it's an interesting idea.

I wouldn't want to throw that out if that's something planar out there and right, yes, yeah.

Yeah, we also have an up.

I mean, I hope we have an opportunity to um pursue some funding through the uh sustainability fund through the city.

Yeah, yeah, there's other funding buckets once this project is shovel ready.

Yeah, and I I can't promise that parks would say great, we'll take this asset that's not that's not new and guaranteed to last another.

Maybe the only bridge that's not been improved, or there's been some new ones, and then there's been some that have been replaced, or I guess the one is being replaced at Gilcrist.

Yeah, right.

So this is the last bridge that's we haven't made a full investment to sort of guarantee that we've got 50-75 more years.

Yeah.

So would the idea be if we were gonna do new, we take whatever either the 500 over two years or the the one million over two years, hand it to parks and say, now go forth, go find some grants parks, or are we helping with the grant like how is when how is this working?

If we if we go from a million over the next two to two million over the next two, that should fully fund the whole thing.

So that yeah, that that would be us saying, hey, parks, we will build you a new bridge if you take it off our we could build a new bridge for two million.

Yes, I believe we could.

Okay.

If Gilcrest is 1.4, this one's a little longer, a little more complex, uh but I think two million should be enough to get that asset off of our books and onto theirs, and then 50 to 75 years from now, we're not worried about having to rehab it or rebuild it.

This is this is built into their system.

Got it.

Okay, that makes sense.

Okay, last two bullets on here is uh you'll you'll remember you know the Galveston project, which is 15, 20 years in the making.

Uh just was at the River West neighborhood district meeting last night.

Thank you to the counselors who showed up to that.

Uh there's some good buzz about that project now, but we are going to get going finally on building something on Galveston.

So that will start this summer with uh transportation and mobility crews doing driveway and alley uh replacements, and then phase two will be in the fall, and that will be a raised crossing out 17th to the west, which when we mentioned that got a good applause from the audience, which never happened, so that was exciting.

It was even more than just good applause.

Yeah, yeah.

I was ready to walk out of the meeting, right?

Yeah, yeah, right.

That was great.

Um, someone said mic drop event.

Yeah, yeah.

Um and then phase three, which is more the Galveston proper area, will will happen kind of from the winter into the spring of next year with a final grind and inlay of the asphalt and a reef striping.

And so Galveston basically is gonna start this summer, and my goal is to get it done by either by the spring or summer of next year, and we can finally cross that off of our project to-do list that's been been hanging over there for a while.

And then last thing I'll mention, um, and it is intentional that the word study is in all caps here, is one of the few remaining projects from from our transportation system plan uh for the first 10 years, which is really an amazing thing to say, is we basically have every project that we wanted to do after the adoption of the 2020 TSP accounted for is a southern crossing river crossing bridge feasibility analysis, and so uh there's no money allocated for design, there's no money allocated for construction.

This will kick off a very healthy conversation that I imagine.

So, but but we we did program this into our TSP, and I think it's important that we do it.

As you probably all know, parks is a little bit ahead of us with respect to developing a pedestrian bridge crossing, and um and these things are gonna kind of work hand in hand, but uh we do need to at least initiate a feasibility study.

The initial guidance was to focus between uh between powers and uh Murphy.

Um I'm gonna put an RFP out that just says anything south of Reed Market we're willing to look at.

So it's gonna be a very high-level study.

It's gonna outline all the pros and cons of considering doing a southern river crossing, all the legal ramifications that we know would be we'd be getting into, all the environmental impacts that that would be outlined with with considering doing a southern bridge south of Reed Market.

So all that is to ultimately say, you know, we talked about the bond and read market roundabout, but at some point, no matter what we build there, you know, the the Bill Healy Bridge and the rest of Reed Market is is going to hit capacity at some day.

So is another bridge south of there in a growing city like ours something we should consider.

So the feasibility study may come back and say no, don't consider doing it.

Um it may come back and say, sure, go ahead and consider it, and here's the things you need to do if that's gonna become a reality.

So we're open to whatever this study may result in us doing.

Questions on any of those key items.

Okay.

All right.

Uh let me let me kind of overview this.

So we're we've got like 20-ish minutes.

Okay, I'll try to wrap up the the last.

We can go a little over that bitch.

Time check.

Yeah.

So I know this isn't the easiest read, so the next two slides will be a little bit easier, but this is just an overview of projects that the either the geobond or the transportation fund will be building over the next five years.

This doesn't include any utilities work.

This doesn't include private development work.

This doesn't include things like street preservation projects uh or anything like that.

So as you can see, it's a it's a good amount of work on some pretty important roads in the city.

So breaking this down a little bit tighter.

Uh this is the north half of the map.

So uh we are programmed to do a roundabout at Empire and Obi Riley.

We're currently building Butler Market phase one.

We would be adding Butler Market phase two.

We have two roundabouts at 20 on 27th, both at 27th and Wells and 27th and Connors.

We have the NEF uh pedestrian improvements project, you which you'll see a contract for here next week.

We've got what we call the four-pack of intersections, then so we're moving on that.

We've got the Hawthorn Bridge that you're intimately involved with.

We've got the rest of the Franklin work for midtown crossing.

We've got the Yani Improvements Project as well as the Galveston stuff that I mentioned.

So all of that work is going to be built on the north side of the city in the next five years.

The four-pack is are some of those kind of the many roundabouts.

Is that where they're drawn smaller?

No, so yeah, good question.

So I don't have a legend on here.

But yeah, the Cheerio looking things are roundabouts.

And that's intentional because Fourth Street is so close to the signals at Third Street.

When you put those two side by side, it removes the capacity that you get from a roundabout because the cars are coming out of the signal in queues, and that just interrupts the whole idea of a free-flowing roundabout.

So likely gonna build signals at fourth and only fourth and revere, but that's far enough away from the signals that we would be looking to build roundabouts at eighth and only in eighth and revere.

Okay.

On the south side, it's a little bit lighter, but uh you can see here's the Tethero Century roundabout.

Here's the bond read roundabout, here's the Chase Broster house roundabout.

Uh this isn't quite as dramatic as it looks, but the key in all this is the read market bridge crossing over the rail, right?

So that's that's gonna be a full closure of read market for what I'm saying to be safe, is probably most of all of 2028 and all of 2029.

Hugely impactful to everybody.

Uh we'll also be building the shared use path on the night on the on the west side of 9th Street, shared use path here.

We're gonna be double laning 15th and read, shared use path down 15th, and then uh finally building that roundabout needed at 15th and Ferguson.

And then we also have a couple other roundabouts on Knott Road, both at Country Club and Broster House, um, which are just problem intersections and have always kind of especially country or yeah, country club is always high on our crash uh crash data.

So uh these are all programmed to happen.

So just in that area, you can see there's not only new roundabouts, but it's it's the the widening of two existing roundabouts.

So it will be the highest roundabout per capita for all this.

Almost still way behind Carmo.

Yeah, no, farmal Indiana has got over a hundred of the buttons increase that it is a lot of roundabouts.

A lot of them up here.

Yeah, no, it's it's a good number to either read and build new or rehab.

Yeah, council.

Um about roundabouts.

So the eighth and only, I've received some concerns from folks in the community, and I'm I'm pretty concerned about it too.

Um, because I don't believe it's a very high crash intersection right now as a as a signalized intersection, it's it's really large intersection, so it's kind of difficult to get through as a pedestrian um or a cyclist.

Uh but um it just seems that there could be a lot more low-cost safety measures down there, as well as like maybe some you know smart signal improvements there for way less than what you would pay for a roundabout.

Um so was that considered?

Yes.

Is that evaluated side by side with the roundabouts?

Yes, it has been, and I'd be happy to share share that information with you and the rest of council.

So at peak hour, that intersection backs up.

It'd be give it a level of service F at peak hour.

Uh, but it but it's only really during a limited window of time, right?

So the fundamental question is could we do some more minor improvements?

And really, what this boils down to is uh you know, as you know, the the western leg of this has a retaining wall on the south side.

So, unless we're willing to bust into that retaining wall, we can do some signal modifications, but it's not gonna buy us a lot of time.

Whereas the roundabout footprint, because it is an existing intersection, uh, it would buy us a lot more in terms of capacity and for a longer period of time.

So, yes, a more expensive option.

Uh, but that that's kind of where we've landed as a staff evaluation.

But uh, of course, council can direct us to do something different if you want to see something different there.

But every intersection we dive into, we run it through an intersection evaluation form.

Uh, we we lean towards being a roundabout for a city, and so that that's where that specific evaluation landed in kind of two of our three main criteria.

Um, but I will share the information and be happy to take a deeper dive if needed into that.

And it's coming up on our agenda in June.

It is, yeah, yeah, it'll be it'll be something coming up that yeah.

And maybe if we can go to the council touch points and kind of keep moving here.

So yeah, real quick.

Um, yeah, this is just what we're gonna keep monitoring over the next next you know, year and even the life of the rest of the bond.

I'll kind of skip through that though.

Council touch points.

This is just to highlight how often we're gonna be coming back to you with geobond or transportation related items.

So you're gonna see the read market grant, the NEF improvement contract, GMP four for Franklin, which is the final it's the undercrossing work that we're uh negotiating right now.

We've got 15th and Ferguson, we've got the four-pack to your point, mayor, uh neighborhood street safety contracts, the adoption of the proposed five-year CIP and a few other things.

So multiple touch points over the next couple months with council just on getting more things moving to build what we showed you we're gonna do.

So that being said, it brings us back to this overall council considerations.

So I'll pause there and see um you know how how we would like to dive into these options or questions and if there's additional guidance you'd like us to take as staff.

Sure.

And I think um we can start with, and we don't have to stay there, but start with this idea of the uh ODOT contribution money, which came out of the round table we had last October of pooling that together and maybe doing something else with it.

So I think it would be helpful um for staff to hear if folks have particular leanings of which way we might be um thinking about using that money.

And just to be clear as well, like we're adopting a CIP plan in June, um, and there will be further budget decisions that happen after this, as Ryan mentioned.

Um so that so there are also possibilities to to make changes in the future if we feel like we have to, but staff is sort of trying to figure out what direction we're heading and how to incorporate our feedback from that round table into the actual CIP for the next five years.

So there's one thing I haven't heard about yet, and that is just contingencies.

Do we need to be considering any kind of contingency reserves for both in particular the Hot One project and for read?

Yes, I think.

Uh I mean, we're there we're a million shy of the resources, right?

So we're basically equal.

But um I so I'm asking the question.

That's not on the list here.

It's not beyond the list.

Contingencies in the budget though, right?

Right, but that's so that's part of it because of the question.

What amount of contingencies of the case?

So a good example is the read market bridge.

We're at about a 30% design, we're about to get the the grant funding.

Uh we estimate that's a 46 million dollar project, but costs will evolve between 30% and 100%.

So it wouldn't surprise me at all if that goes up to 47, 48, 49 million.

So yes, the answer to your question is we've budgeted 46, but we probably do need to reserve some contingency, especially for those two bridges uh to as the designs continue to be finalized.

Knowing that when we get to the place where we know what the costs are, then we can if that money's freed up, you know, then you're on with flexibility.

I feel we need to hold back.

I I think that needs to be part of what we consider.

What is the contingency that you assume now?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, so for something like read market at a 30%, you you could still go up or down anywhere from 20 to 30 percent, I would say.

Uh you know, by the book it might go up or down 50%, but I feel pretty confident in the work we've done uh in working with the federal rail administration.

So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.

I mean, I don't think we're gonna go up 20 or 30 percent, but that would be normal to account for at this point in time.

And how is that how is contingency reflected in the CIP as you budgeted it now?

Yeah, it's it's so 46, you know, that factors in a little bit of that contingency.

Like 10%.

But yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's not a huge number today, but I mean when we get a 30% engineers estimate, which is we had to run it by the rail, we said great, you're you're providing 32, so we're gonna account for our match.

And so that's the other you know, 13 you see out of the out of the geo bond.

So there's there's a few million in there, but I wouldn't say it's it's the you know 10 to 15 million, but I I would be disappointed if we kind of went beyond that.

But it would be safe to say let's let's make sure there's a little bit held in reserve just in case.

Okay.

Council Mendes.

Uh thank you.

So uh it's a it's a little bit hard to make these kind of allocation directions with without price tags on.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

I I think I'm I'm not interested in option one, mostly because it's I think it's an ODOT project that ODOT needs to own, and I don't want to see the city get involved in funding um what really are fundamentally ODOT projects.

My question is, you know, we have partial investment up there.

Um how do we think about breaking this down into different parts?

You know, is it we have to go 17 million all for option two, or how do can we provide the direction in terms of 50-50, or how do you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, you I I have cost estimates being developed now that that my consultant is doing.

I would need to hand that over to ODOT and they their team would make their own cost estimate, but I I can't even tell you now if this southbound connection is gonna be a five million dollar, ten million dollar or fifteen million dollar investment.

My my gut's telling me it'll be less than 17.

Okay.

And so you you could you could if you wanted to now to say we're interested in throwing maybe seven or eight into that kitty, and you know, if it winds up coming back that the city needs to put 10 in there, that's something we would discuss with you over the course of the next you know eight or ten months.

Okay, so I think I would of the of the options up there.

I think option three has the probably the highest merit because of the safety component to it.

You know, we had uh 362 applications for the NSSP, the neighborhood safe streets program when it first opened.

These were extensive applications, and we've only built 22 to date.

Not saying that we would have to build all of them, but there's no funding for that program left, and it's one of the most popular programs in the city.

So I would be interested in saying, you know, let's reserve some funding to continue the NSSP uh study Hawthorne connections and think about what it would take to actually fund those connections and then see what we have in reserve to do something at Empire.

Okay.

I just want to remind um council.

We I've mentioned a couple times the um ODOT capital planning process that started this year, and it's gonna you know go forever and ever.

But eventually dollars will be allocated, and we had come up with a list of projects um that aren't on this uh that aren't on this list.

Um so I feel like I kind of feel like I wish this information was presented um along the lines of what councillor Mendez was saying, with um some criteria that we could judge and compare them.

Um so like cost data, um, what we looked at.

Compare what, sorry, I'm confused.

The different projects, the different options.

So first I and and I and I believe I see two projects on the near-term transportation list that I think are not allocated and worthy of doing, but maybe I'm wrong.

Um Colorado and 97 northbound on ramp.

Is that funded?

No, it is not.

It is not funded.

Okay, so that is on the near-term TSP list that I I think a lot of people in the community would agree is probably we we talked about it in our comments to ODOT, and then also revere the revere and wall street intersections in the revere off ramp, that's another one.

That's not funded, I don't think that's kind of an ODOT city contribution.

Yeah, we we've developed a design concept with them, but there's no funding beyond that.

Right.

So, like those, so those are the kind of things that I think would be nice for us to be able to like see them all sort of side by side and see like crash data, for example, related to each of these and kind of rank a low, medium, high level of like urgency to them.

Um I know that's uh you know, probably sends you back to the drawing board a little bit.

You're probably hoping to get either option one, two, or three from us today.

No, to be honest, like I I anticipate a good eight months of discussion, potentially working with the transportation committee to do exactly what you're asking.

Okay, like if you want us to put revere on the what if table, we will do that.

Like we can absolutely whatever list you want us to investigate, we will do.

Yeah, this is just high-level council direction, like okay.

Do more people think we want to put all of it on Empire?

Do we want to do that today?

No, do we want to hold it into this fund and look at these different projects?

Do we want to focus on what Ariel just said?

Like that's the high-level discussion we're having today.

We're not making a final decision.

No final decision needed now.

The other, I mean the other ones that come to mind are we talked about um the read interchange, which ODOT did have on the list and then took it off the list.

And so now there's nothing allocated for it, but we know it's not a very safe.

Yeah, 97.

Yeah, 97.

No, no, so there's a cut there's a kind of a couple things there.

So I I think it would be nice to see sort of the landscape of projects with some comparison criteria.

Okay.

That's yeah, that'd be helpful.

And and I and I agree with with um Council Riley, like modeling it would be really helpful for me.

Um absolutely we can do that.

Um, but I will, and and Councilor Mendes will not be surprised that I'm bringing this up, of course.

But I will say again that when we did a city survey, they said congestion was the number one transportation issue that that the public would like us to deal with.

So I don't definitely do not want us to discount option one or two.

Yeah, thoughts?

I I really like option one and three.

If I say out of about three, I totally agree with Councilor Mendez at the NSSP.

I constantly in meetings, I'm always hearing about neighbors bringing up improvements that can happen in their neighborhood, and so I think it's really important that we continue to fund that.

Um, but I'm not necessarily wedded to put pulling all the money in any one option.

Maybe we could spread it out a little bit, but I would like to see some you know more analysis financially as those models get developed further.

Steve?

Ryan, the five million in the draft stip for uh at the empire project that ODAT has it's draft, right?

Yeah, yeah, we have it.

How confident are you feeling that that those dollars are gonna materialize?

Very confident.

That's okay.

Yeah, that they've adjusted they said that's their number one issue here in the city is addressing the empire signal.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think that's constituents' number one issue if you were to ask them about anything along Odata Proctor's facility and Ben.

So I think I think um we should do more than we originally allocated in the bond towards Empire, whatever that is to help with that.

Um, but I also agree, I think we need to fund an SSP and I think we need to look at at contingency and hold and it it the volatility in the market and materials inflation, all of that, I really think we need to be cautious.

So I'm what and I would love to see um if we could get the transportation committee involved also in helping think about um some of these things.

But I I don't I don't think I need to see a total every ODOT project project to know that I think I I want to increase our contribution towards empire.

Um that I do feel strongly about that.

Not that I don't I don't need to see it for that, but if we're gonna do more on ODA facilities, or we're gonna look at other things, then maybe yes.

So that's where I'm at.

Yeah, I mean, generally I'm in agreement.

I think we need to spend some of the money on the fix up there at the north end um for the highway 2097.

I just don't think we should be paying for the whole thing.

No.

And I think if we can at least persuade them to ideally they move the five million from the just the the third street empire fix to this larger project, and they give us a few more million, so that maybe we're getting close to half sees on this project.

Um I think NSP and SSP round three is really important that that we we do another batch of that for all the reasons people said, and it's what we hear about constantly speeding, you know, and all the little things we can do and maybe some bigger projects.

And then last, I would like to see the Hawthorne connections um at least the study and cost estimates get done.

So we have a that that way budgeted for, yeah.

Fully budgeted.

So I'd like to have some sense of what what it might cost us to at least to be see that as an option as part of the final discussion as decisions are made.

Um because I I think that is a part of the the greenways and kind of delivering on the promise of how easy it's gonna how well that bridge is gonna work for people who are cycling and and walking, because it's not just the bridge itself, it's the connections that otherwise people are gonna be less likely to use it.

Yeah.

And it's not gonna deliver on the pro the I think the promise value for the community.

And one thing I think it should also be in this, it's not listed here, but that you mentioned is this look at a couple of projects that you're looking at and saying, are these worth doing as described, or do we need to tune these down?

Yeah, I think that also frees up a little bit of that money that might be going into contingency or to over NSSP.

Um and I really I do see this as a conversation that our transportation committee can have is really take a look at these moving parts.

We've sort of indicated a direction we want to go and let them dive into some of those details and help us with that is sort of how I think they should be involved next, is knowing this is gonna be a little bit of a process.

Yeah, right.

So other comments.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then on the construction fund um side, let's talk about Drake Park Bridge.

Yes.

How people feel about that.

I mean, we had our meeting with parks.

I I think they'd be receptive to to trying to get this done.

Um, I do I do appreciate the sort of can we resurface?

But I think the the bridge just needs to be more accessible.

Like even if we resurface it, I don't think it's big enough for the amount of traffic that goes through there to be totally accessible to everyone.

So I unfortunately I think it is a new bridge that's that's on order.

But I mean, I've been advocating for this for a while.

I think we need to do it.

I think um park and rec's gonna want the new bridge, right?

Yeah, as an asset that then is off our books, we don't have to worry about the maintenance costs, like that becomes their issue over the medium and long term.

Um and I might hope I'm hopeful that we can get again some grant funding in particular um through visit band, but also maybe through the state.

Uh maybe we'll see where we're called off.

Yeah, probably not.

Yeah, yeah.

So we're gonna do that.

So um, but that could that could be a significant contribution once the project's shovel ready.

So uh the proposal was to increase the amount that we're listing in the transportation fund up to two million dollars over the state.

Hoping that we'll get a grant too to claw some of that back or in addition to the case.

So our plan is we're gonna still pursue, but let's put in let's program in the So I guess we need to hear from council.

Are people comfortable with that, or do you want to stay with our sort of level of well, we're kind of about a half funding and then we would need to pull in money on top of that before we could really move forward.

How do people feel about listing this at two million?

Two two thoughts on that.

One is the first just the question if it turned out, for example, that it was gonna be 250,000 and the structure was sound.

Would there be interest?

I mean, from my perspective, I I'm on that bridge probably six times a day.

Um, you know, the extra 15 seconds it takes to walk and squeeze by people is not that big a deal.

What is a big deal is how bumpy it is, and it's not accessible from that perspective.

So if it's gonna be 10% of the cost of the bridge replacement, I would be interested in at least learning if that's an option.

And then the the other point is just to say we are gonna have a conversation around uh uh the transient lodging tax and and how we might think about some of that funding, and I I feel like this might be a good candidate for for some of that too.

Okay, other thoughts.

Can we see a show of hands how many people support pumping to a million million per year over two?

I would as long as it we are definitely applying for grants.

I'm okay with that.

Yeah, I think that's I mean, that's given yeah and BPRD couldn't, but I can't recall there, they're just not willing to chip in any funds.

Uh no, I mean it's our asset today.

So yeah.

But even if we eventually returning it over, I don't think they'd be interested in and then programmed in their budget.

Yeah, counselor mandate is like, yeah, we we can as a part of this design, you know, like we can like let's do a quick, you know, would parks be willing to accept an asset that we just resurface.

We can ask that question.

I'm okay asking that question.

I think I know what the answer is, but right, yeah.

What what level of improvements would be the minimum they would like to see before they take that another 20 years?

And I I wouldn't care if we gave it to the parks district because I feel like that's a pretty good deal for 20 years of use.

Okay.

Okay, so yeah, so can is everyone okay with increasing this to the two million level in the CIP over those two years?

Okay.

Okay, yes.

Thank you.

Um Ryan mentioned that he is showing increased funding for the bottom green market uh roundabout.

Does anyone have any issue with that showing in the CIP again is not necessarily what we're gonna spend, but that's the plan in case we do need to do a doubling and we do make that decision.

Well go ahead.

Yeah, I I would I mean I would take issue with the the way it was framed, just to say, you know, I wanted you to have the option to expand where money was no issue.

I mean, money is an issue on every single one of these projects, so I'll I have a hard time with that, right?

Um I spend some time at uh 27th and Butler Market, the one at uh where Empire and Butler Market and 27th Connect just watching to get a sense of how people navigate that both driving and on foot.

And um it's pretty tough.

The speeds are very high, it's very hard to cross.

I think people do appreciate flashing lights, but I think what they would probably appreciate more and hearing and hearing them say this con in conversations is uh reducing speeds.

So I'm I wouldn't support going full two lanes.

I think that's not a situation that we want to replicate across town automatically without consideration of budget.

Sure.

Um but if we if we do, regardless of what we do, I I would like to see us consider something like raised crossings to make it easier to actually drive the 15 mile an hour target that they're supposed to be driving out roundabouts, and also that would make it easier for people to cross, including people who are visually impaired and have a really hard time with roundabouts as they are now.

Yeah, and just to be clear, we're not making that final decision today, we're just deciding how it's listed in the CIP.

We we did they make the decision to move it up, right?

So um, I guess the question, Ryan, is like if if there were to be raised crossings, would that still fit within the budget as well?

Yeah, I think the seven and a quarter in there should be enough to explore every potential safety option you would like to see.

And I mean good example, right?

Trinity Lutheran, they have flaggers out there, even though it's a push-button RRFB, they still have volunteers out there escorting the kids across this double roundabout.

So fully acknowledge, I mean, there's nothing preventing us from doing raised crossings.

We we we can explore all those potential safety options and we'll look at the geometry, we'll look at other things, and so we'll we'll go all in on our safety options in this one.

That's what the more money provides us the ability to do, and I think as we've seen in other projects, when we add more safety enhancements, it does cost a little bit more, and that's we're doing what the communities asked us to do is make our transportation system safer, but there's no way to do that, generally speaking, without some additional cost considerations.

Right.

Can we just build bridges instead of roundabouts?

Because they sound cheaper.

Let's go bridge federal government.

Um other final thoughts, um, or other final thoughts about the transportation committee's involvement.

I think that's great.

Yes, please have them.

Okay, add to the details.

What I what I would say is I I think synthesizing what you've heard today, we might need one more touch point to frame what we want the transportation committee to to advise us on to help make sure because it's a lot.

It is and so I think we need to narrow down what are the questions that we're asking.

Yeah.

Um and so maybe staff can do some work.

Absolutely.

And we'll have one more touch point before it goes to them.

And also we need to revise their code and get that all figured out first, too.

But um, I think they could be very helpful in helping to figure out some of these questions.

So okay, sounds like there's support for that.

Okay.

Uh quickly.

If we would like to skip this, it's fine.

We can revisit this in June.

We'll be coming back.

That's totally fine.

Yeah.

So yeah, it was just a couple more slides highlighting touch points.

So you will see a lot of us over the next couple months, even related to the water and sewer side of things.

Great.

All right.

Thank you for your time.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, all right.

Next is our um transient lodging tax discussion.

I'm gonna step off real quick.

I'll be right back while they get going.

You guys can go ahead and get started.

All righty good evening, council.

My name is Cyrus Mooney, business development manager here at the City Bend.

And I am uh Jeff Knapp.

I serve as the CEO, uh President CEO of Visit Bend.

Thanks for having me here.

So a little bit of intro, really the intent with our conversation today.

This is the first time we've had a council discussion post short session of last year where there was legislation that was passed uh in House Bill 4148 that allows specific jurisdictions to make some changes to their TLT allocations, and um, with that, want to have a broader conversation about considerations and sequencing and timing of any changes that the council might like to pursue.

And I also just wanted to take a moment to recognize the collaboration that we had between the city and visit bend as we navigated this piece of legislation.

Obviously, a contentious issue, but I think um we showed some really strong partnership and how we talked about trade-offs and what was negotiable from each perspective.

So I think that's something we should be prideful of.

And I'll I'll second that.

Um, you know, it's a privilege to serve in a sort of quasi um as a partner with the city on its economic development goals, and the staff uh has been uh really great.

And so um we uh have shared goals with the cities.

We you know our goals are in line with yours.

Uh we are an economic engine uh for the city uh for the both the general fund and for businesses here locally.

Um this year, uh pouring over nearly 405 million dollars in visitor spending back into local businesses, uh about 1.5 million dollars a day.

Um, and counting visitors accounting for about 31% of all the spending in the city for this past year.

So um we share your goals and deploying grant programs and uh staff support to uh preserve infrastructure and um and work collaboratively across uh to reinvest our resources back into both supporting business and community.

This is uh you've seen this a million times probably, but um, as of right now, and this is what we'll be talking about as far as percentages go.

Uh, this is a mixture of uh decisions that have been made along the way.

Uh currently the city receives 64.6 percent of all uh uh transient room tax, so people staying in hotels, vacation rentals, bread and breakfasts, RV sites for under 30 days, and 35.4% goes to uh our efforts at visit bed.

Uh you can see the large the blue part is uh the destination uh getting folks here, keeping that engine primed to grow that pot of resources, and the other two slices are the resources that we put directly back into the grant programs of the community about roughly a million dollars.

Alrighty, just to give a little bit of background of TLT within the city of Bend dating back to 1983, where the city of Bend established our first lodging tax at 6%.

Um, there's been various changes at the city level and at the state level over the course of time.

What I really want to hone in on and emphasize is the change that happened in 2013 when ballot measure 994 was passed that increased the citywide lodging tax from 9% to 10.4%.

So that one percent uh delta of increment is really what is enabled to change or have altercations based on the legislation from House Bill 4148.

So that one per 1.4% increments really pivotal in the conversation we're gonna have a bit later.

Um also want to note that that legislation is enacted January 1st of 2027, so no changes can be made overnight, but it's something that we would like to have some time to plan for and get direction from council on.

That's a great slide, very informative.

Yeah.

Nate at visit bends is uh a huge history buff, and you can definitely help me put that together.

Yeah, and just to be clear, yeah.

4148, it was very intentional that this only applied post-2003.

So it left you alone if you'd implemented anything before 2003 that just stayed frozen in time and then only looked at post-2003 increases.

Thank you for that clarification.

Yeah.

Um, for 4148 specifically, there's two different components.

Um, as we noted, that reallocation of tax percentages for the restricted funds.

Our portion, as Jeff mentioned, is 64.6% that could increase to 67.3%.

Um, because the legislation gets enacted in the middle of the fiscal year for both visit bend and for the city of Bend, that number in fiscal year 26 would be roughly 200,000.

In future years, it would be more upwards of 400,000 plus.

Um, and then the other piece of the legislation was around business resiliency grants, which I think we have consensus.

There's a lot of skepticism of the vagueness.

Um, there's not any thresholds of how many dollars can be put towards it.

I think we've heard some concerns that because of that vagueness um and how it was rushed into the legislation kind of last minute that it could potentially be heavily altered or go away in the long session this next year, and then another consideration with that is just visit's history of standing up implementing and um evolving their existing grant programs.

So is it does the money for the built built business resiliency grants?

Should we choose to do it come out of the city's portion or visit bends portion or 50-50 split or it would come out of visit ben's portion separate from any changes that the council would pursue for that 1.4% increment.

Okay.

So you can just give it flexibility double less if they want it.

Okay.

I think we would yeah, if our position is going to talk about whether we want to do that, yeah.

No, that's okay.

We'll get to that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, now more for the considerations outside of just specifically House Bill 4148 working with procurement uh for the destination management contract services that we um have with visit bend currently.

We're hoping that because their contract expires June 30th, we'll need to get direction finalized for any changes that council would want to have implemented into that RFP before it goes out to bid by the end of this calendar year, with the hope that we would put that out on the street at the start of 2027 and have a contractor on board and finalized in the May time frame to give us some time before the contract expiration, so there's no lapse in services.

Um, so just to put things a bit in perspective, those because of the scope of the contract being as significant as it is, we need a fair bit of time to make sure that the administration of that is handled accordingly.

Bigger picture for TLT.

Um, there was another piece of legislation that was passed at the state level that raised the statewide TLT 1.25% this past year.

I think that's just something to think about in relation to the overall tax burden that our visitors are experiencing.

Uh the city may consider a future room tax increase in future years.

I think it's no secret that we would need to garner industry support from visit bend and all of the partners within the those that they serve uh to make sure that was a successful process, and that would need to be something that goes out to the voters for um council to pursue.

So I want to make sure that that's clear.

Again, visit bends current contract expires in about a year, June 30th of 2027.

And then Jeff, if you want to Yeah, I just think in general, right now, as we're looking, we'll be here next month talking to you about uh projections for next year around uh budgeting and all of those things.

Um we've had a very very good year, um, and we are uh very cautious about what we have ahead of us for for revenue.

Um with food fuel prices skyrocketing.

Uh, we're in the middle of a super El Nino year uh predicted high high temperatures, a lot of smoke pressure.

We know when we see that, especially in July and August, it has a huge impact on businesses year, you know, maybe even being able to survive through a full year.

So um visitor spending right now is up 10%, but we're seeing local spending down nine percent.

So that visitation really is kind of carrying small businesses right now.

It's sort of a fragile balanced time.

Um, and then yeah, we're can we're also as we're working with the data with Oregon State to look at you know, with 1.5% on the state, where is that elasticity where visitors may choose to not spend that much money to make a trip?

So uh we are in a better place than a lot of folks in the type of climate that we have.

Well, that the this type of economy in the sense of that we are a predominant drive market and people still do travel, uh, and hopefully we can press our fingers that um we have some snow next year, but with that Super El Nino as well, we're looking at potentially some uh another dry um winter.

So is there recent data, or you're saying that there will soon be some new data that tells us this about the relationship between taxes paid and occupancy and kind of willingness to spend?

I think I thought Todd published it.

Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.

There's a recent study we'd be happy to share with you that came out around that.

This uh looking at the kind of the sweet spot of lots of different destinations and their tax rates and the impact.

There's a threshold by which you hit a certain level of tax and you start to see negative returns.

We've also done some modeling in general around just you know uh and our modeling shows that if uh visitors uh visitation drops four percent.

We we basically are operating flat.

We start to not see any growth in the revenue for the city or for ourselves, and then anything below that starts to go down.

So, again, for us it's just balance of how we invest.

So everything I'm not hearing a punchline related to that data in terms of how it impacts Ben.

So I'm just asking like what's the I don't know what I'm just saying we should consider that we're like I'm not um I could be happy to provide the study.

I'm just saying as we're talking about.

And I think it's just basically showing a curve, it's not giving an absolute data number, but it's saying there is a point where you raise the tax enough that it starts to you start to lose revenue because people aren't coming.

Yeah, and I'm not gonna there, that's the whole point.

Yeah, room for growth.

Um it's just sensitive to Jeff.

Are you suggesting that the one and a quarter hits us harder on this side because people have to drive to get here and gas prices are high or statewide, right?

Yeah, just see.

This is a statewide thing, uh, the industry in general telling us right, yeah.

Yeah, but it's just the it's just the out of state folks, is what you're saying.

No, that's the hotel to the state.

Right, that's what I'm saying.

So it has that added to the matter where you go in in Oregon, you're gonna get that.

Yeah, yes, correct.

So that but are you suggesting it hit that one and a quarter hits us harder because people are going to be able to do that?

I'm not considering that it no, I'm not saying that it hits us harder, I'm just saying again it's layering more type of it.

And so, as we think about our decisions and how we want to potentially go out and increase and what we may do with that, those are the types of factors that we should be considering.

Um, one thing about that particular uh tax increase, also is that it goes to that 1.25 is going to support the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for Conservation efforts.

Um so you'll start to see that also on receipts when you do stay somewhere that that's happening.

Um so just trends right now.

Uh we are hitting a record year, so visitor spending is you know eclipsed.

So this says 400 million, we're gonna be about 45.

Um, interesting statistics 65% of all spending in Ben came from people who don't live within the city limits.

So that includes anyone 10 miles are out.

So a lot of spending from Central Oregon.

We see about a third of you know the spending from you know, just within our 50 miles, and then another third within uh visitation.

Uh hospitality jobs and health care jobs uh were the two things that grew this year as far as um wages.

Uh this is here in town, uh, 3.2 percent wages grow eight percent in 2025.

And we also have to think about our competitiveness with the growing uh investment from our our neighbors.

So, you know, that we do have leakage, about 50% of visitors uh here don't stay here, and they're staying and spending resources at our neighboring city.

So we continue to see increased leakage and benefit people basically coming.

You know, if you're staying in Rednun, or you're staying in the pine, you're staying in Sun River, you're gonna be here on the river or using our trails.

Uh so there's usage there that we're not necessarily capturing um tax dollars for to put back in to manage.

So all righty for council discussion.

Um, we have a couple different checkpoints and questions.

If council wants to pursue, then we have some additional direction that's needed.

So, first question is just generally does council want staff to pursue options from hospital 4148 related to the allocation of ratio split and/or business resiliency grants.

I think let's go let's break that down into the two charts.

Yeah, all right.

Um if the council wants to adjust that 1.4% increment that we discussed for tourism related services that is currently 70%, but could go down to 50%.

Where does the council think that that additional revenue should be allocated?

Again, that roughly 20% delta will equate to 400,000 of um anticipated revenue that the city would receive in future years beyond fiscal year 2026.

Yeah.

Actually, let's just go through all the questions, then we'll come back to the front so we know what we're doing.

So a couple different options in talking with other staff internally and our finance team about um things to consider for council of where that additional revenue could go listed below.

Does the council want to direct staff tax for the business resiliency grants portion of the legislation under Houseville 4148?

Again to Councillor Francosa's point that money would come from visit bins allocation separate of any changes that would be made.

And if we do go down that path, where who does council think should manage that program?

What kind of criteria or characteristics would you like to be included and options that staff could bring back for you to consider in the future?

I think those are things we would look for some guidance on tonight.

And then in terms of timeline, a couple different options.

If changes are to be pursued, um, when is the right time to do that?

Would that be at the time that we go out for bid for the new uh destination management contract services?

Would that be something more broad in working with uh Deschutes County and whoever that provider is in the future to have changes occur at that point when a potential eventual ballot measure goes out?

Um that could be a consideration, or would council like to move as quickly as possible and look at implementing changes before this legislation that would be enacted January 1st of 2027.

Great.

Okay, so let's go back to the adjusting the 1.4.

Um so council, I think just want to hear from folks today what you think about adjusting this.

Yes or no.

I do want to be very, very clear.

Like we're not deciding today where this money would go.

That would be part of a budget process where this would money that would be coming back into our general fund and would be we could say we want it to be allocated a certain way, we could say just put it in the general fund.

We could do a lot of different things with it, and that would be decided through the budget process.

I think we can signal today some things we think this would be appropriate for.

Um, but also just need to know if if folks want to make this move at this point or if people want to wait or other considerations.

So thoughts.

Yes.

Okay.

And uh, I mean, uh you know, additional funds for public safety.

I mean, there's a lot of needs on there, and I think there's merit to all of them.

Uh the one that I wanted to put out for consideration in particular is additional funds for public safety, but in particular, we continuously hear about the desire for more traffic enforcement.

And that is we have a very lean police department that's stretched pretty thin.

Um, so that would be an area where I would be interested in exploring.

Okay, what would this look like?

You know, visitors also violate our traffic rules and benefit from safe roads.

Everybody benefits from safe roads.

Yeah.

Um, so that would be one area to explore.

Great, Steve.

Yes, and ASAP.

Uh, and the reason the ACAP is I would like to have this percentage set prior to us putting the contract out.

Okay.

Yep, and that's part of the timeline question prior to the RFG first.

Steve?

Yeah, it's or or as we could.

I'd just like it to be baked in when the RFP goes out.

At least what I'm at least for the new contract.

For the new contract.

For the new contract.

Okay.

So that's set.

Is anyone opposed to taking a look at um putting this in the RFP and saying this 400K will be going back to the city?

I'm a yes on the RF putting in the RFP.

I'm a no for right now.

Okay.

For January.

Well, it doesn't go until January, anyways, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm very nervous about the summer and the thousands of jobs that that um depend on on tourists.

Um, and so I I don't want to make a move right now.

Okay.

Anyone with a different thought?

No, I'm I'm in agreement.

I mean, I I'd be open to thinking about it in January, but I think that's valid.

There's valid concerns about um we're not going to be able to impact in January what's already occurred.

Uh there may be you know some questions about what's to come in terms of the winter experience, and so you know, when we have a better picture of what that's looking like if we're really gonna be experiencing some trouble, it may be too early to do that.

But yes, on this, I I would like to see us seriously consider using some of these dollars for shelter services.

I think it's a part of our budget that we really struggle with, and um what we know is happening at the state level.

I think if we are serious about following through on our commitment to maintaining at least the level of service that we have now in terms of how we support people that are houseless, we really need to think about some revenue that's gonna support that that we have some authority and control over, and we're not dependent on other levels of government.

Um so I think that one, and I I would sort of look at that and public safety together along the lines of what Council Amendez proposed.

All right, sounds like there's a majority of folks that want to move forward with this, but not until basically fiscal year 27 starts, and so this would be incorporated into the RFP for the next provider that they would understand that this would change down to what we're legally allowed to take back.

Um other thoughts on allocation.

I um agree with Councilor Mendez.

Um, my thoughts on this is potholes and police are things that are impacted by tourism and also benefit tourists, right?

Um, and I think you know, in the argument to the legislature, cities across the state were making the arguments, especially around public safety impacts that visitors have.

And um just thinking if you could say this was allocated to an additional traffic cop and that's what it paid for to just put another person on the street that is out there enforcing.

Um, and I think our community would appreciate that, and I think it would also benefit visitors.

Um, but again, this is not the decision we're making right now, just sort of signaling where this might go.

Um, I I am committed to trying to keep it as as much of a nexus as we can to like the parts of our services and systems that are impacted by tourism and visitors and trying to put the money back into those those areas.

Okay, so on the business resiliency grant side, um is there any interest in pursuing this at this point?

Can Jeff finish his statement that he was gonna earlier response to the case.

Yeah, you're I'm just saying that my my position is well, we will deploy whatever the council feels.

I mean, A, we would love to if you decide to move forward with this, we would be happy to throw ahead in as the person who would um administer a grant program.

Um my concern is just that we it's a very broad thing, and uh if we were gonna consider it, I would ask that we maybe spend some time looking at the thresholds of what could really what impact we could make with the resources that would keep things in balance but have significant impact, and that would take to me engaging the business community and what resiliency they need.

Um at the expense of the other grant programs.

Um I think it will, I mean, everything that we're I think we would just everything would uh shrink in proportion.

Um, like the reason that's what will happen with the percentage that you retain.

We will if we add on another program, it will just streak we're committed to continuing to deliver the other grant programs, and we'll come to you next month and we'll talk about this.

But we're all we've been through this process this year with uh FM Civic to look at both of our grant programs and um see how we can begin to measure the impact and see what changes we may need to do to meet the community's needs uh in this current state.

So we're we're doing a lot of work around that, and um that will be part of our coming to talk about it.

In a way, it's just sort of expanding the eligibility of grant recipients for a limited pool of money.

Potentially, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's it's kind of an interesting idea because if we do have a terrible wildfire season, then businesses are really gonna face some hardship, and in that case, it might be better to invest in build business resiliency instead of cultural tourism or even sustainability.

Well, and I think that's the what we're we're committed to putting resources back in the community and this work we're doing with evidence that it might be that we may be doing it differently.

We may see that okay, this year we'll be focusing on the an issue and arts and culture is this year, and next year is uh or I mean it could look a lot of different ways, and we're really open.

Is it something we could kind of write in flexibility into your contract to virus?

Like, is that something we could we could in this RFP?

Could we say tell us how you would do this and how it would impact, you know, and that would be part of the absolute deal.

Yeah, yeah, and uh something that we've discussed previously, just in trying to pick our brains about the effectiveness of this legislation as it's currently written.

I think an idea to consider is that we could collaboratively come up with some sort of like definition of triggering of when these funds get deployed, so it's not just set aside 200,000 in your budget that goes out to business owners every year.

It's a little bit more compelling to say this event occur that requires some support to these businesses, and hopefully more directly to the workforce specifically that's being impacted by labor shortages or operational deficiencies or closures that have to occur due to weather conditions or you know, something like that.

Um but having it be more of a triggering event rather than a big fan of that process.

I think one of the things I'm learning when the discussion about grants with um via Borough.

I mean we have a small pool, 100,000 dollars, right, for economic development outside of Borough.

I understand that's outside of Borough, but within Borough, where we have these new grant programs that could they're they're not insignificant amounts of money.

However, they're not able to help with cash flow issues in the first round of grants, they have to be in capital projects only.

So I'm thinking about like my restaurant or my business couldn't work well because of the air quality, and I don't have a way to filter.

So there might be some capital investment you could support with those grants.

But if it's really just my cash flows down so hard, I'm gonna close if I don't get some support.

We can't help them through Borough.

So we this might be a different tool to be able to provide some support there.

But I like the idea of developing some criteria and triggers, I think it makes sense.

Yeah, just to sorry, Cyrus to give context from the um conversation at the legislature.

So the business resiliency grant was a late amendment to the bill, and what had been happening at several of the hearings um was uh there there was a call to action and there were many small businesses in the hospitality industry that all came in and said, you know, you can't pass this bill, it's gonna hurt my business.

And the one of the main sponsors of the bill said, why don't we put some grants in here?

Why don't we allow some of this money to come to you directly to address some of those concerns that we're hearing that people are bringing up in hearings?

And it also was a political move to try to help um get the bill passed.

But because it was a short session, it was all pretty quick.

There is not a lot of definition in the bill, and I think there are some valid worries about our cities going to use this as sort of a loophole to then pull a lot of money out of the the DMO side of the budget.

So I think if we are gonna explore this, I think it needs to be really thoughtful and it needs to be very detailed.

We are gonna have to report out all of our spending to the legislature as part of this bill.

And there was there was statements by cities saying we have transparent budget processes, we you will know what we're doing with this money, so I think we need to be very careful that we're doing that and and that we have very clear intention with it.

Um I'm actually really interested to hear from you how you are looking at your grant programs and restructuring those before I'm really to ready to commit totally to this, but I think this could fit in with maybe how visitben does grants.

Um and so maybe it feels like a good thing to maybe again putting into that RFP and sort of tell us how you think this might work or what the it might even be you say, Well, I need a six month period of sort of ramping up and figuring out how to do this, but we could do it, right?

Um but it sounds like there's enough interest from council to maybe include that as part of the RFP and explore this further.

Okay.

Just one other note um for council because sorry folks, I'll jump in for a second.

Um because we have a chapter in our code on room tax, uh, there's a section in there describing at a high level the allocation to tourism and other things.

So um if the direction from council is to move to that 5050 for the 1.4, um, we'll talk about when to bring that that will there will be a minor code change to go along with that.

It it could happen later this year, it could have a delayed effective date if we're looking so that'll that'll be a part of this process, a relatively small one, but um look for that at some point too.

Yeah, it sounds like there's support to do that.

Yeah, okay.

As ours on the timeline, I think we heard consensus about moving this into the RFP, so we're not looking at starting next year when the bill goes into effect, we're starting fiscal year 27 and through the RP process.

Um I think the second question here, I I'm not ready to really start planning for a a reincrease at this point.

I don't know how other people feel about that.

I think that's a conversation we have going forward into the future, but I also want to keep an eye on what's happening with our economy and and any other money measures that might be coming up from other districts.

Um, but in when we do look at that, I of course it should be in coordination with um the county and the DMO.

Any other thoughts on that?

I will also state for the record, like I would like to get to the point on that curve that's optimal where we're not hurting tourism, but we are um asking visitors to pay a fair share as much as we can.

Um that might be really the first question is what where what's the what's the gap between where we are now and where if there is a optimal or here's an optimal range, you know, no more than this to see what what the potential revenue might be.

So is there a way to get an answer to that question sometime over the next six to twelve months?

Yeah, I think we could definitely follow up and send some data and just anecdotally comparatively for our peer cities, we are at a lower rate at 10.4%.

I guess I'll be a little bit.

Um I guess I'll be a little more clear that I don't really see starting that conversation until we start fiscal year 27, honestly myself.

Yeah.

I I don't see starting that until we get this the contract with visit and we're in that next fiscal year and we're actually seeing how this yes plays out and what we're spending the money on.

But yeah.

Any other thoughts on that?

No, I think specifics are helpful.

Yeah, where where's that number?

I mean, a source of giant revenue that you know the city's gonna continue to struggle struggle with revenue stuff.

So yeah, no, it's gonna be on the table.

Should be on the table.

Yeah, and I think we already answered that question on the bottom too that we're not interested in that.

So anything else you need from us, Cyrus?

That was it for this evening.

Anything else for us, Jeff?

No, just thank you, and we're really excited to explore and innovate and um be back uh next month to talk about.

This year's plan and then soon back around um you know, looking to for the R forward to the RFP and crafting how we can uh both improve revenue for the city and quality of life for the people look here.

And next month is when we'll be hearing about the grant program results of that.

Uh well, we'll have our annual budget, and we'll be it'll we'll mention it in sort of what's coming up in the next year.

So we'll get a kind of a report of what uh we'll have a recommendation from BDAP, hopefully, uh, and then we'll come to you, we'll show you our annual budget, the plan uh, and then what we're looking forward and the this little report on where we're moving with that grant program.

We've been working for the last six months.

We'll have some information for you.

Perfect.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, thank you.

All right, our last item um is a wildfire season update from Riley.

Yeah, and I think we're okay.

I think we're okay on time, so I think we can dive in.

Just to introduce this topic.

So we had uh initially intended to have a joint meeting with the rural district.

Uh we're just working through some issues, so we're gonna pump that for a little bit later, but I wanted to have Todd here with the upcoming fire season just to share high-level messaging with you all to prepare the community.

So, this is just an informational item.

We're not asking for any direction here.

Um, and just to also be available for questions that council might have related to this upcoming season.

Good evening, Mayor Council.

Uh, I'm your fire chief, I'm not your climate scientist, so um bear with me through this.

Uh, just some key points about what we're facing uh this upcoming fire season.

Um, we are in a transition phase uh in our climate to an it's called an El Nino Southern Oscillation or an Enzo and neutral, which means because we're in transition, a lot of this is a coin flip.

We're not exactly sure which direction we're gonna go, but there is no strong wet signal expected.

Layman's terms, not expecting a lot of rain.

Uh yesterday was a perfect example.

We have persistent above normal temperatures that have accelerated drying and higher than average snow levels, high meaning higher in elevation, um, limiting the mid-elevation snowpack.

Um snow pack and moisture, the precipitation was uneven, and we received less than 50% of our normal rainfall.

Mid-elevation snowpack is gone, and because of that reduced snowpack, less spring moisture uh recharged our uh fine fuels.

Uh punchline here uh is big snow doesn't save us, and low snow doesn't doom us as as examples.

We had uh big snow years in 2011, 2024, and 2002.

And in those years, we burned 198,000 acres, 76,000 acres, and 622,000 acres, respectively.

On low snow years, 2015 and 2005, we burned 24,000 acres in one and 2000 in another.

So again, back to that coin flip conversation.

Our fuel conditions.

The mid and lower elevation fuels are drying quickly due to warmth and limited moisture.

Fine fuels are responding quickly to short dry periods.

Our 100 hour and 1,000 hour fuels drier are drier in central Oregon in the interior zones where we are.

And our heavy fuels, they're not available quite yet, but the drying trend is accelerating into the spring.

Recent fires we've had, the Trop Creek fire uh just southwest of sisters burned 43 acres, and then the Pine Mountain fire that started as a controlled burn, which turned into an actual event, is now 100% contained at 2,600 acres.

This early fire activity reflects the pre-green-up dryness and our warm conditions.

Our drought status, uh, portions of eastern and central Oregon are in moderate to severe drought.

Limited improvement is expected without this uh sustained spring precipitation.

The risk of our drought expanding if spring storms underperform is very real.

Our early summer outlook, so June and July, uh, there's significant fire potential increasing in June.

Above normal potential fire potential expected across central Oregon by June.

Our peak fire risk is in July, and fuels are expected to cure earlier than normal.

And key concerns for us here in central Oregon.

Uh early fuel availability due to our warm temperatures and our absent mid-elevation snowpack.

The green up period was very compressed due to temperatures and increased likelihood of large fire conditions by early summer.

And our analog comparison years of 2015 and 2018 shows similar patterns with an early fire season onset.

So what's the bottom line?

Is we can describe the setup, but we cannot predict the season from it.

Central Oregon has less water stored.

We have more grass on the ground.

We have earlier than normal drying, early ramp up in fire potential, and a high fire risk by July without significant spring moisture.

How was the preparedness fare on Saturday?

Yeah.

It was well attended.

Great.

Melissa Steele also did a wonderful job.

She's really pulling in a lot of our partners and making sure that everybody can appreciate the risk, and everybody does play a role in not only keeping us safe, but the mitigation before the fire starts.

Great.

Own year zones, not just a one and done.

It's kind of a recurring thing.

Stuff grows back.

It grows back in the fall.

Yeah.

But uh that was very interesting about the correlation about wet years and dry years and how much is burned.

Because I know there's a question about what the effect of that is, and it sounds like it's it there's a lot of uh other random elements involved.

Right.

One doesn't determine the other.

Yeah.

It's about the rapid melt melt off, like earlier in the spring, too, right?

Either rain on snow events, right?

Things that happen.

Yeah, snow water equivalent, right?

Like how much how much water is in that snow and and what does that pertain to?

It helps with the uh the green up.

So when we see early season fires, it's because there might be a lot of moisture out there, but the fuels are still they haven't absorbed the molten moisture yet, and then they green up the fire activity goes down, and now where we are today, those fuels have dried out yet again, and so they're curing, and you see the cheap grass change color, and they're really receptive to fire.

Yeah.

Right, my mountain bike yesterday up a little higher.

It felt like we were at it was at least a month ahead of where we wouldn't normally there was not a sign of snow anywhere.

Yeah, in the forest.

And even in the floor is where it's well shaded.

Like not a stick.

And the dust that we experience when we're on the trails, it's like this is normally late June.

Right there.

Yeah.

Chief, you're uh your folks are in a four-shift schedule now, right?

Not yet.

Not yet.

That happens in the middle of July.

In the middle of July.

Yeah.

Well, that provide some relief for folks, a little resiliency.

What will provide relief is this academy that we have right now graduating and getting those uh firefighters on the street?

They're our our folks are working a lot right now due to all of our vacancies.

So yeah, that they graduate in two weeks, and then we'll have a month of observation.

So really by July 1 is when we're gonna feel our workforce is gonna feel some relief.

Okay, yeah, thanks.

And I've seen carries here.

I got a message from Deschutes Alerts today.

So everyone look at your messages, make sure you're signed up for the shoots alerts.

Update usual and update your information.

So that it's all accurate.

Yeah, it's good to know that's legit.

I was questioning.

If you didn't get it, go to the shoot alerts and find out why and make sure you're signed up.

Um, because we get so many emails.

Are there any controlled burns plan that we should be aware of?

Are we kind of hitting that stage where we're hitting the stage where that window is closing?

Yeah, they can be pretty responsive to changes in our weather.

Um, yesterday was record heat, and then today we're 20 degrees below normal.

Yeah, um if we get a rain event, they can their burn burn window opens up again.

Um, and so anytime they burn, we often find out about the same time that you all do.

So we're working to improve that communication.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you for your vigilance.

Yes, Chiefham.

Thank you for your time.

We can all play a part, yes, by reducing how we are causing risk in the community.

Past call was great that we all got.

Yes.

Our neighborhood just said our big cleanup.

We did all the like five feet, you know, no branches off off the ground tree cutting and a lot of brush clearing, lots of dumpsters.

Yeah, thanks to everyone in the community that is taking those efforts because it's really important.

All right.

Thanks.

Thanks, Chief.

Thank you.

All right, I think we're ending and um there is a reception for the artists that are responsible for the public art that was installed at Public Works Campus at Scalehouse.

So we would love to have a right now at the reception.

Yeah, it starts at six.

So we have a little time to just reminder tomorrow.

We have uh forks opening too at the actual campus.

Two different locations.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, well adjourned.