City Council Meeting Notes 10/18/23
This is where I would add an introduction if I wasn't already super late in getting these notes out.
Work Session
Quarterly Council Update
Presentation
We are three months into the new goals, which means that we have a Council Goals update! This process starts with Manager King talking uninterrupted for 10 minutes on the status of the City. It is truly a remarkable amount of information condensed into a short period of time.
Cool things that have happened
State of the City: This event at Alpenglow Park went well, over 400 people, including me, attended. This event is an example of the City iterating and trying new ways to reach people.
Supplier Diversity: The City has started an initiative to increase supplier diversity, we will hear more about this in the second quarter of next year.
Public Works Campus: The city has broke ground and is starting construction on the new Public Works campus up in Juniper Ridge.
Stevens Road UGB Expansion: Misspelled in the presentation, some amendments will be coming up for council to approve in December.
Permitting Times: We are now meeting most of our goals for permitting times. We are exceeding our target for residential new construction.
Behavioral Health Response Calls: The City has set up a behavioral response team to route these kinds of calls away from police. The team has handled 250–300 calls during some unknown time period.
Emergency Alerts: 7400 additional people signed up for emergency alerts in the last year.
Key Routes and Wayfinding: A design contractor has selected for the N/S and E/W key routes, and the contract will come to Council in November. Wayfinding for bike paths will start to be installed this Spring.
In-Conduit Hydro: The draft report for the feasibility study is out, Council will hear about it in a work session in December.
Cool things that will happen
Housing Code Amendments: A Housing Code amendment intended to reduce barriers to developing in High Density Residential zones will come to Council in November.
Hawthorne Crossing: To move forward with building a bridge over Hawthorne, we need an Intergovernmental Agreement with ODOT. We hope to have that in November.
Updating System Development Charges: There will be a work session on updating our SDC methodology in December. The City hopes to have an ordinance amendment in front of Council in January or February.
Climate Friendly and Equitable Community Rules parking code: The City needs to make additional changes to comply with CFEC rules coming from the State. These changes will come before Council in December.
Juniper Ridge: A Request for Proposal to use surplus property in Juniper Ridge is coming out soon.
Automated Traffic Enforcement: Scheduled to be discussed in January.
Transportation Utility Fee: Roundtables about the TUF have been completed. The Bend Economic Development Advisory Board is working on fleshing out the Non-residential side of the fee. The TUF will come back to Council in a Work Session early January, and a draft of the TUF should be available in the beginning of February. If you have questions or comments about the Transportation Fee, register for this event happening at Summit High on Oct 25th. I hear that it's going to be full of upset people, so maybe just go if you want to be part of an angry mob.
Website and Dashboard Updates
The City has been updating the website to make it nicer to use and more accessible. You may have seen some surveys floating around about it. Many of the changes are live. The homepage has been completely re-organized to help guide people to the resources and services they are looking for. The search functionality is no longer completely broken. The team is continuing to make improvements. The long term plan is to move the website to a new content management platform.
The Council Goals Dashboard and Open Data Dashboards are being merged. Soon, all the data and the progress reporting tools will be available in one place. It also sounds like we're trying to replace Granicus, which makes me VERY HAPPY.
Give feedback about the changes at bendoregon.gov/web-improvements
Bend Works
The City is soft launching a new Service Request system called Bend Works to handle all of your pothole and burnt out streetlight service requests. The website is live, and an app will be rolling out at the end of next month during a formal launch. This tool is going to be great for data analytics and resource prioritization. Unlike the previous tool, this service will help the City identify trends and problem areas that could use more attention.
Defining Equity
Today, Council is tasked with defining equity. Our Equity and Inclusion director, the Human Rights and Equity Commission, and the City of Bend Accessibility Advisory Committee are working to develop an equity framework for the City. One part of this process is to define equity. Council has been asked to choose between these 4 options. HREC likes Definition 4, and COBAAC likes Definition 3.
Everyone likes a different definition, but after thirty minutes of intense discussion, Council decided that definition 1 is our "here is where we are now" for operational decisions, and Definition 4 is an aspirational lens, AKA "here is where we want to be".
Why have two definitions? Because we need one to match and work with the State, and the other is for working with Staff and for use as an educational and training tool because definition 4 is a lot.
There are also recommended changes coming through the pipeline to change how the City allocates funding and sponsorship for events and community programs.
BPRD is getting in the way of affordable housing development
The Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) is asking the City to encourage Bend Parks and Recreation to continue their program waiving system development charges(SDCs) for affordable housing developments and shelters. In 2018 the City and BPRD both implemented SDC exemption programs for affordable housing, and this tool has become one of the more powerful incentives to develop this kind of housing in a very short amount of time. AHAC claims that the exemption has let the city go from developing 100 affordable housing units per year, to just shy of 1000 in the last biennium. Developers point to this SDC exemption explicitly as a reason they are able to build affordable housing developments at all. BPRD's SDC exemptions expire at the end of 2024.
Regular Session
Regular Session Raw Transcript
The regular meeting began as usual with roll call and Land Acknowledgment. It is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Public Comment
Freddy is a youth climate activist who is part of the Deschutes Youth Climate Coalition. He is calling to advocate for electrification. All electric homes are a great way to reduce our emissions, and are cheaper to make.
Dorinne is here to complain about the Bend Airport.
Debbie and Cody from the Riverside Animal Hospital don't like that the left hand turn to go into the hospital is being removed.
Eric has a homeless situation in his neighborhood that is escalating, he is requesting that the Council look into changing the car camping code. There will be a work session on this in November.
Consent Agenda - Passed
Application for the PRO Housing Grant from Housing and Urban Development. AKA, what if we had twice as much money for housing development than we do right now?
Issue Summary
Grant Application
Presentation
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and Congress have created an $85 million dollar fund called the PRO Housing Grant. PRO is an acronym for Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing, which is cute. The grant is a dollar for dollar match, up to $10 million dollars. Our Housing Department has scrounged up $9,268250, made up of the Affordable Housing Fund, CDBD Grants, and other city sources. The grant is intended to help communities who are actively taking steps to remove barriers to affordable housing, which sure does sound like us. With double the budget, our housing department hopes to spend this money on 5 projects. The first project is a third party audit of our permitting, zoning, and land-use processes to identify barriers to housing production. The second project is to get accurate, bend-specific data for market analysis and planning. There currently is no Bend-specific data, and the Fed data is questionable. This has made it challenging to get federal investment. The third and fourth project take up the bulk of the grant request, and it is to add 8 million dollars to our efforts to fund affordable housing development and homebuyer assistance. The last project is an initiative to streamline and simplify housing production. Currently, development is very difficult for a homeowner or individual to participate in. The city wants to make it easier for people to step their toes into development, whether that is building an ADU or a Duplex. This project would add more pre-approved building plans and create a toolkit to help people through the permitting and development processes.
It sounds like our application is very strong. We have a grant writer on staff that does good work, and Bend is identified as a priority geography, plus we have letters of support from Bend YIMBY, Hayden Homes, Housing Works, Rooted Homes, Bethlehem Inn, and Habitat for Humanity. Mayor Kebler has reached out to our State and Federal representatives, asking for additional letters of support.
The application deadline is October 30th, so we'll find out if we get the grant by... I have no idea.
Meeting Adjourned.