City Council Meeting Notes 02/21/24
TLDR:
The In-Conduit Hydropower feasibility study is complete, and has a lot of potential. The city will explore installing it at the Awbrey Butte Reservoir Site to pilot the idea, and allow the city to figure out how to get through the regulatory process and funding assistance.
Three different bridge types have been selected for concept refinement for the Hawthorne Bridge Project. These concepts will be presented in April.
Projects receiving money from the Affordable Housing Fund for this year have been selected. This money will be used to support the construction of 98 affordable housing units.
Work Session
In-Conduit Hydropower
The city has been looking into adding hydropower into our existing water pipelines to generate electricity from the network that is currently being dissipated into the air. The feasibility study has identified 4 sites where in-conduit hydropower could be feasible, two of which they want to pursue implementing first.
The most impactful would be installing it at the outback facility. There is a 1000-foot elevation drop between the facility and where we intake surface water into the system, and 60% of our water supply runs through it. The second site being considered is the Awbrey Reservoir Site. This site is currently being improved through the Awbrey Waterline Project, and space is being reserved in the new facility to accommodate in-conduit hydropower. The city wants to use this site as the pilot project before starting on the larger, more complicated Outback Site. Going through the process on this smaller site will allow the city to figure out how to navigate complicated State and Federal regulatory requirements, and understand how to apply for incentives and grants to fund the installation.
Adding in-conduit hydropower would have several benefits:
generating power at the outback facility would make the operation more resilient to wildfire and help prevent disruption to operation in emergencies
Groundwater wells use a lot of energy to pump water to the surface, hydropower at the two selected facilities would generate enough power to offset over 2500 metric tons of CO2 annually
No additional water would be taken from our surface water source. The amount of water we can divert from the source is limited by our agreement with the forest service and the City's municipal code
This is the part of the section where I would add a link to the in-conduit hydropower feasibility study, but I can't find it on the city website.
Hawthorne Bridge structure type selection
A year ago, the Hawthorne pedestrian overpass was expected to cost the City at least 10 Million dollars, had an 18 million dollar funding gap, and wasn't expected until at least 2028. Today, thanks to Federal and State grants, the local contribution is $302,698, and the bridge is expected to be finished in 2027. The catch now, is it HAS to be finished by 2027. Also, to receive the grant, it has to be built by ODOT, a government entity the federal government has blessed with the right to receive grant funding. To meet this 2027 deadline, the City needs to hand a concept for the project over to ODOT as fast as possible. The city needs to select bridge types to build concepts. These concepts will be presented to the public in April, and then the city councilors will review this feedback and select the concept to hand over to ODOT in June.
The three bridge types moving on for concept refinement are cable stayed, extradosed, and steel truss. There will be four concepts coming back for public feedback in total, with two concepts made for the cable stayed: one that matches the "three sisters" concept that resonated with the public during the open house, and a second, cheaper version. The three sisters concept might require the use of some of the 9 million dollars of local funding originally allocated to complete, but we won't know until the fleshed out concepts come back in April.
Nonresidential SDCs will be phased in over three years
I am so tired of writing about SDCs. What are SDCs? Some non-residential SDC fees are increasing substantially. In order to ease the transition for the new construction projects that are already in the pipeline, these fee increases will be phased in a complicated way. If the Fee increase is less than 20%, the full rate will apply in July 2024. If the rate is greater than 20%, the fee will increase 20% in July 2024. If the increase is greater than 50%, the rate will increase to 50% of the rate increase July 2025, with the full rate applying July 2026.
Regular Session
The regular meeting began as usual with roll call and Land Acknowledgment.
People keep doing hate crimes downtown
The pride flag outside of Turtle Island Coffee Shop has been stolen 3 times. Council disavowed this behavior, and made a statement of solidarity. Mayor Kebler suggests you go to EverywhereisQueer.com to find a map of queer-owned businesses you should support.
2024 Affordable Hosing Funds were granted
Bend collects an Affordable Housing Fee on building permits. This money is used to fund affordable housing projects. This year, the fund has $1,577,222 dollars to dole out, and that money will be used to support the construction of 98 units.
What happened with Purcell?
I don't know if you noticed, but the Purcell extension project experienced a pretty substantial delay. The reason is that the utilities under the construction project are a mess. Coordinating with all the utility operators that have pipes under the road took more time than expected, and during groundbreaking they found a mystery 2 inch galvanized pipe in a place they didn't expect it to be. They had to spend a ton of time trying to figure out what it was, and who put it there. Turns out it was a dead communications line that was probably decommissioned during an intersection improvement project from 20 years ago. These problems put the project 6-8 months behind schedule. To mitigate some of these problems in the future, the City is going to backfill the right-of-way manager position that is currently vacant. This delay increased the cost of the project. A silver lining is that the additional cost of this project is about the same as the cost savings that were recovered from the Newport Project, so the city budget is not going to need to be substantially changed.
Building Permit Improvement Update
The City is continuing to work on process improvements for how they handle building permits. They have been doing both internal and external reviews of their processes, and have been implementing changes based on what they found throughout this exercise. They are creating materials to help people understand how it works, and are working with "frequent flyers" to streamline the process. City staff are also trying to make it easier for people engaging with the system for the first time, including improving the dashboard to better communicate the status of a permit, and experimenting with an AI assistant that could help people in the permit process.
We live on a volcano, y'all
The City is partnering with the Oregon Department of Geology and University of Oregon to host the Cities on Volcanos Conference in 2026. It is the first time this conference will be hosted in the US. The city made a video about it, which you can watch here.
Meeting Adjourned.
Follow me on Threads for updates on when these notes are coming out, and to be subjected to my hot takes and pictures of my cat.