City Council Meeting Notes 03/20/24
WOooooooo done with finals! Finishing Winter quarter with 3 A's and a B. Sorry this summary is out so late, my plan was to knock this out real fast and enjoy my break, but instead I procrastinated and watched all 50 episodes of The Untamed on Netflix.
Thanks for all the fish
I have about a year left of school. Consider this your official notice that meeting summaries will stop at the end of this year's summer break! YAAAAAAAAAY! These summaries are an incredible amount of work and effort, and only happen because I have scheduled my entire life around making them possible. Juggling committee work, Bend YIMBY advocacy, school, my personal life, and these summaries is already very difficult. Swapping school with a full-time job will make the situation untenable.
Don't feel too bad, Tailor isn't going anywhere. I'll still be around watching council meetings, and posting my various musings about local politics here and on social media. The newsletter will continue for voter guides, and other infrequent content focused on Bend politics. Maybe I'll also finally put some creative energy into Tailor's Tangents! I am still figuring out exactly how I am going to orchestrate this transition and what this future will look like, but one thing that I've decided is that when the meeting summaries stop, I will convert all paid subscribers back to the free tier, and yearly subscribers will get a prorated refund. Financially supporting my future work will be an opt-in scenario.
Thank you all so much for trusting me with your attention. I consider these summaries to be the proudest accomplishment of my life. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this during fire season, but for now lets go back to our usual business.
TLDR:
Meeting summaries are going to stop this Fall. This is my 4-6 month notice.
Bend is starting a two-year, contemplative process to explore different options to promote electrification, starting with working with a consultant to better understand the legal landscape and our options.
The City is using Room Tax Revenue to design improvements to Brooks Plaza downtown
Everpine/Timberyards, one of the 4 projects that got in to the MUPTE pipeline before the program closed, got its MUPTE approval
The Transportation Utility Fee has been adopted, and Phase 1 should show up on your utility bills in July.
Bend Electrification
This meeting's work session was focused on looking at what the City can do to promote electrification in Bend. 48% of Bend's carbon emissions come from buildings, and 23% of that comes from natural gas. Promoting electrification is part of the City's goals, and this initiative is being accelerated thanks to concerted political advocacy from the Deschutes Youth Climate Coalition and other climate advocacy groups.
Staff presented on the Federal and State laws they've found that preempt and limit how the City can regulate things like gas furnaces and stoves. Since the city is not a health authority, the city (probably) cannot ban natural gas for health considerations, for example. There are no other places in Oregon that prohibit natural gas, or require electrification, so if we did those things, we would be first, and that opens the big ol' can of worms that is establishing precedence.
AKA: Guaranteed lawsuits from natural gas companies.
As such, staff recommends that instead of shooting from the hip, we approach this carefully and explore our options. There are a lot of ways the city can approach this other than a blanket ban. The City can provide incentives for electrification, use fees or other mechanisms to disincentivize natural gas use, advocate for statewide policy, or implement other measures.
Staff want to move forward on this issue in a two-step process over the next two years. Step 1 is contracting with a consultant to better understand the legal landscape and figure out what all our options are at a high level. The results of this would go through the Environment and Climate Committee and come back to Council in October. After that, Step 2 would involve identifying a short-term path forward and go through the city's usual public / stakeholder engagement and policy refinement process, coming back to Council again for implementation or next steps in August 2025.
Council, except for Councilor Campbell is supportive of this path forward, and would like to see the process move quicker than this timeline, if possible. Councilor Campbell is not interested in opening the city up to the legal eye of Sauron banning natural gas would entail.
Regular Session
The regular meeting began as usual with roll call and Land Acknowledgment.
Using Room Tax Dollars to design improvements to Brooks Plaza and also maybe the Mirror Pond Bridge
The city is contracting with a design firm to look at making improvements to the downtown Brooks plaza and the surrounding area using tourism tax dollars. This is really exciting because finding ways to use TRT dollars for things normal people also value is incredibly challenging. These funds are earmarked for tourism related facilities, and the city has gotten in legal trouble in the past trying to divert them to other places. Brooks plaza is a rare public space where these dollars can legally be spent. This project will look into adding bathrooms to the plaza, adding bike parking, and improving wayfinding for people trying to navigate around downtown and Drake Park.
Council is interested in diverting any excess funds not used for this project towards improving the bridge over Mirror Pond. The bridge is pretty much inaccessible for anyone with mobility issues, and it's in really poor condition compared to the other pedestrian bridges we have in town. Using TRT dollars to improve it will be further considered when this project comes back to Council at a future touchpoint.
Everpine MUPTE application approval
Everpine, the new name for the first phase of the Timber Yards Development, had their Multi-Unit Property tax exemption approved, with support from all Councilors except Councilor Riley. The building will have 246 market rate units targeting a market rate of about $3 a foot. This translates to around 85% AMI. It is one of 4 projects that were added to the pipeline before MUPTE was paused to either be reworked or never heard from again. I'm not going to explain the whole TIF District / MUPTE process again.
The short version is that MUPTE gives a limited 10-year tax exemption to multi-unit properties that fulfill certain criteria in the Core Area and some other surrounding regions. Since it is in the TIF district, there is no direct impact to the City, School, or Parks budgets. Its intention is to incentivize the development of denser developments that would not otherwise be financially feasible. A 6% return on investment is considered a bare minimum for a development to be viable. With this exemption, the project has an ROI of 5.9%. The project is still paying $3.3 million dollars of SDCs, and after the10-year exemption expires, it will pay $517,000 a year. If the development is not built, the current tax generation for the site is around $40,000.
Here are some edited comments about this project from our councilors:
I'm planning to vote against this request. While timber yards development I think is very, very exciting for many of the reasons we heard tonight, and it's why I enthusiastically supported the master plan approval last year. I think there's no question this sort of development will be very valuable addition to the community. However, I think this specific tax exemption application before us for this first phase does not address the actual acute housing need doesn't contribute to helping address the acute housing needs. We have for dedicated deed restricted, affordable and middle income housing, and Ben, and I believe we should be focusing our limited policy tools and resources to help meet that need. So for that reason, since this is a discretionary vote for us tonight, I can't support it. - Councilor Riley
I think that you (Riley) and I share a lot of your concerns about our acute housing needs. I think this clearly complies with the code that is in place but legally, when an applicant complies with the written code of the city, I think it's important that we apply the facts to the law, and everybody can exercise their own discretion, but I don't see any way to not approve this since the applicant has clearly complied. These are 80% Ami, homes. These are not 120%. These are the missing middle that we are targeting, a really important part of our housing continuum for teachers, foresters, people who work at the city, people who work at the parks district, people who work in my business, and people who work for all the small businesses that make this community run. There is a need for housing at every level so that we don't have people at a higher income level outbidding people at a lower income level. But assuming that these homes stay at the range that the pro forma suggests, we're talking about middle housing for 64 of these units.- Councilor Broadman
I plan to vote in support of this because it is 246 homes that, although they are at market rate, this (development) will provide homes for about 500 to 600 people using the average Deschutes County number of people living in homes and households. So to be clear, yes, these are high values for rent. However, that means that these people will not be out-bidding other people in our community for existing homes. That's the mechanism here in my mind. That's the primary public benefit of building new homes, adding to the supply in a way that does not displace existing residents in a central part of town. It means these people will be close to amenities, close to jobs. It means less congestion, less sprawl. We're nearing the end of this program as we know it. We've already paused this program. We're looking at one application after this one. So I think looking ahead, I don't expect this program to be in place after this for this development. So I plan to vote in favor of it. - Councilor Mendez
I'm just to add that when we decided that we would use the MUPTE Program, this body decided that we wouldn't limit this kind of tax exemption to only deed restricted affordable. This body decided that we need to incentivize middle income housing. It's not just a crisis in the lower to affordable levels of housing. And so with that in mind, yeah, it's 250 homes, and 250 homes we need sooner rather than later. I believe that this kind of support can really make the difference. Just in time, you know, that between whether we get apartments in a year or two or whether it's five or 10 years down the line. So I'm in support of this. - Councilor Campbell
I think it's important that we put some life into this area, and I think it's housing units. You know, I know, for my day job that it's very difficult to make these projects pencil and rising costs, construction costs and loans. I know that just getting that 6% was probably really hard. So I'm supportive. But I do also very wholeheartedly agree with you that we need to also prioritize our workforce housing and mental housing as well. So but I am supportive as well. - Councilor Norris
I disagree with the implication that this does not help us with our housing crisis. The evidence is pretty clear over the past few years that building more homes, even new market rate homes, does help lower rents across the board. It does create those moving chains. It does provide a newer product, which is always more expensive than an old product for folks who are looking for a new home. So I think it does help with our housing crisis. But fundamentally, the MUPTE program is about incentivizing and catalyzing growth and getting better projects than we would get the market could provide, and getting them sooner in an area where we want that to happen, and where there hasn't been that growth despite our best efforts in the past. And I just want to point out that President Biden just released a plan to build over 2 million homes in which he says in his policy brief, will lower rents, make houses more affordable, and promote fair housing. And of course there's lots of investment in affordable housing which this city has been a leader on, but even the President recognizes we just need more homes at all levels. So I think we are contributing to helping with our housing crisis with this tonight. And we'll continue to do all of our affordable housing and all the other work that we do on that side as well. But yeah, I'm supportive of the application. - Mayor Kebler
Phase 1 of the Transportation Utility Fee was Passed
After almost two years of discussion and refinement, and like 22 public meetings, City Council has voted to adopt the Transportation Utility Fee into city code. Phase 1 rates will begin July 1, 2024. Two rate increases above these rates are anticipated in 2025 and 2026. Before phase three, the city is committing to look at alternative funding sources that could capture more users of our transportation system like tourists, in the form of a seasonal gas tax or some other mechanism. How this money is used will be communicated to the public using a public dashboard that will be updated quarterly.
Other things of note
Properties owned by the nonprofit Central Oregon Veteran and Community Outreach received a nonprofit property tax exemption.
This year's street preservation projects were approved
Meeting Adjourned.