City Council Meeting Notes 3/2/22
Hey it's the first Wednesday again, which means I'm back! Someone told me that I was like City Council Batman, which was both flattering, and an excellent line up for a self-deprecating joke. I think it's true. Like Batman, I too am a person doing work nobody asked me to do that someone more qualified should probably be paid to do instead, that I can only do because I am privileged.
Also, great news everyone, my start date for school has been moved to Fall. I don't have to remember how to use my brain after all! Let me know your ideas for keeping structure in my life during another fucking 6 months of stasis. I don't think I can sustain that much free time by just reading more Josei Romance webcomics. God my life is so unrelatable.
Editor: Get a job!
Shush. Continuing the good news, we have a light meeting! Love those. The headline of the meeting is a short term rental update. This is going to be the first time we're hearing from Staff about STRs after the Council asked them to look into it 3 months ago in December. The only other thing on the agenda is passing the 2022 Standards and Specs that Council discussed at length last meeting, and a notice of intent to issue debt to pay for converting the motels bought through Project Turnkey. That's all that's going to happen. Oh, and I am going to yell at you for not voting in the Primary election in 2020. What a happy day. You can stop reading now if you want.
Work Session
The work session began in non-public executive session to conduct deliberations with persons designated to carry on labor negotiations.
OH LOOK COUNCIL IS BACK IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS. Look at you all with your cute masked faces all together in person. Adorable. You are too tiny for me to write color commentary on your facial reactions anymore. So sad.
Short Term Rental Update
Presentation (definitely worth looking at)
Lorelei the licencing program manager is here to present. She and other staff worked hard on this. Short term rentals (STRs) are rentals of 29 days or fewer for the purpose of this discussion. STRs in Bend require a permit. The rules for STRs have changed over time, most recently in 2015, and again in HB2001 when they limited the number of STRs to 1 per property. There are six different kinds of STR permit which you can see on page 3 of the presentation if you care. STRs are taxed by the city.
Bruh, I have to try and do something requiring slight effort here, because you need to see this graph. Look at me inserting images. So fancy. Whole house STRs represent such a small fraction of the available housing units in Bend that I mistook the line for the bottom of the chart. 2% are you kidding me? THIS is what people want to blame for the housing crisis? Even if you took these numbers and tripled them this shouldn't be enough for me to care. GTFO.
The percentage of short term rentals is remaining constant as the housing supply grows. Most of the rentals are in Old Bend and River West. There are 1067 short term rentals right now. 450 are whole house rentals. STRs are becoming more and more dispersed thanks to a 250ft buffer requirement they added a few years ago.
They sent out a survey to STR property owners in Bend and got a 44% response rate. Of those respondents, 41% live in their STR. 32% live in Central Oregon. 25% live out of state. 85% of them only own 1 STR. Summer is the most popular season for short term rentals. SHOCK. To not do STR and do long term rental instead, survey respondents would want more favorable landlord-tenant laws, tax incentives rent to be higher, and removal of proof of use. MORE SHOCK.
The short term rental room tax represents about 20% of Bend's room tax collection revenue. It contributes 8.5 million to the general fund, 5 million to tourism, and 500k to police and fire. Love that.
The licensing program is a complaint driven enforcement model. They have received 286 valid complaints since the program began in 2014. They're going to do a complaint audit this year and partner with a third party to seek out STR listings that are not permitted. If you are running an illegal STR, you should probably get permitted now, lol.
Councilor Kebler wants to know if we have a ballpark for our housing needs for the next few years. Lynne is here to talk about it. We need housing at all levels, especially for the low income range, over the next 20 years. We are trying to play catch-up with our data. The city is looking to do a Housing Capacity Analysis to make a Housing Production Strategy, which is a new thing that the State is doing.
Kebler asks if all the STRs in Bend became regular rentals, how much would it affect our housing situation? Not enough, Lynne says.
Councilor Broadman wants to confirm that the rate of STRs has stayed at around 2%. Yup. He extrapolates that is about 30 units a year. How many new units become an STR? Lorelei says that the 250ft buffer requirement limits the maximum number of STRs possible in Bend.
Kebler suggests that CC&Rs can prevent STRs if neighborhoods want.
Councilor Barb Campbell asked why the number of owner occupied permits in the 6th slide is so low compared to the survey response. The survey data is self reported. Anecdotally there are a number of people who live in their STR part of the year and then go to their winter house, which is not technically Owner Occupied. Many people go for the least restrictive permit type possible so the owner occupied permit is less popular.
Kebler said that there were a few STR survey respondents that GOT THEIR STR PERMIT TO PREVENT THEIR NEIGHBORS WITHIN 250ft FROM BEING ABLE TO GET AN STR BECAUSE OF THE BUFFER. That's incredible.
Editor: These citizens are regulatory geniuses.
Proof of use of the STR permit seems to weirdly be preventing people from doing longer term rentals. You need to use your STR once a year as an STR to keep the permit. This makes year long leases scary to landlords because it means they lose their STR permit, possibly permanently.
Councilor Barb Campbell is pro keeping a proof of use, but change it to remove the barriers that are preventing some STRs from being rented out longer.
Someone wants to know how many STRs are operating without a license. They don't know. There is a third party that says Bend and Sunriver have a substantial number that are not in compliance. When they do the third party audit, many of these properties may not be eligible. Ben the business advocate pops in to say (I think) that it looks like the number non-compliant STRs is about the same as the number of current STRs.
Council briefly discussed partnering with STRs to do long term rentals for firefighters and others through the City or something. This would require hiring people to do that and fees to offset the cost.
Councilor Broadman asks how many of these STRs are in multifamy houses? Vanishingly small. He wants to know if a buffer increase of 50 to 75 feet would take staff away of other goals. Attorney says that kind of change shouldn't be a huge amount of work. The number of STRs in Bend is much less than Broadman expected, he's not sure if trying to change policy to incentivize STR owners to rent longer, like waiving STR use requirements for long term rentals, is worth council time.
Everyone has ideas. Councilor Kebler doesn't see a basis to increase the buffer zone. There is a map in the presentation showing the dispersal of STRs over time. She thinks they should look into funding more regular audits to ensure code compliance by changing the fee structure, and looking into hooking STR owners up with longer term tenants like workers using a city program. This idea was received well by both council, and by me.
City Staff Member Russ says that they can definitely look at changing the fee structure to support more staff for compliance. Lots of head nods, staff will take that direction. They want to look at cost benefit analysis for increasing the buffer size.
CRACK DOWN ON THE CHEATERS - Councilor Barb Campbell
Editor: LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!
Council is going to look into what they can do to connect people wanting to rent long term in Bend with people that want to rent to long term renters.
Breaktime yissss.
Tailor's Tangent - Vote in the Primary God Damnit
Hey you. Vote in the Primary in May. Don't try and lie to me and say you were going to. You didn't last time, I checked.
Primary elections are important. In places like Oregon, where which party carries the vote in the Generals is often a foregone conclusion, Primaries are where we have the most say in who represents us. If you are only voting in the general, BOOOOOO on your face. Is it because you don't know who to vote for? I'll tell you who to vote for if you want me to.
If you want to check your voter status or change party affiliation, you can do so here.
Regular Session
The regular meeting began as usual with roll call, the Pledge of Allegiance, and Land Acknowledgment.
Update on Temporary Housing Strategies
Councilor Megan Perkins is here as usual for the update, and as usual this summary is incomplete. The city is hearing from many people who are concerned for their safety. There are a bunch of unsheltered people in Bend. We need more shelters. Shelters will not be "Hunnel road with a fence around it". There are proposed code changes to allow shelters in more areas. These proposed changes have had more public hearings than required. Most of the questions raised in public input were also raised in the committee. The committee is going to deliberate and bring their recommendations to Council. HB2006 in 2021 from the State requires cities to approve emergency shelters as long as certain requirements are met. The proposed changes do not allow unmanaged camps in your neighborhoods. HB2143 passed to the State House today.
Public Comment
Three callers today
Daphna wants the city to ban sales of puppies, kittens, and rabbits from pet stores. Bend doesn't currently have any pet stores that do this, but legislation should be made as a preventative measure.
Tamara is here to talk about STRs. She says Bend has the 4th highest STRs per capita in the US. We should change the definition of short term from 30 to 90 days.
Rodney wants to give a written essay. He doesn't like the survey of STR permit owners because it didn't include people who do not run STRs.
Consent Agenda
Notable Items on the Consent Agenda:
Supplemental funds to are being given to medical transports through the 2021 Ground Emergency Medical Transportation Coordinated Care Organization (GEMT CCO) program Issue Summary
Consent Agenda unanimously passed.
Adoption of the 2022 City of Bend Standards and Specifications
Staff Member Eric and Alex are here to give a brief overview of this one last time. Bend's Construction standards and specs are old. Currently it is the 2008 ODOT standard. This has become a barrier for project delivery. They also updated the design standards, which were last updated in 2019. They are updating the standard to match the 2021 ODOT standard. They've added low stress route requirements, and street and lane width changes to the standards.
Public Comment
Nobody cares
Motion passed, minus Broadman(?) probably because he wants narrower roads than in the spec.
Who the fuck neglected to tell me Parilla's queso dip is so god damn delicious? Holy shit.
"Declaration of Intent" to borrow money to renovate the Rainbow Hotel and other shelters
The city is borrowing money they promise to pay back over time to renovate the new Rainbow Motel shelter. The notice of intent is for 5.6 million, but they expect to need less by funding parts of the build from other sources.
Motion unanimously passed.
Second Readings
For all intents and purposes, Second Readings are procedural confirmations of the actions Council took during the previous City Council Meeting.
Ordinance to amend the Bend Comprehensive Plan Map to redesignate 5.73 acres from Medium Density Residential (RM) to High Density Residential (RH) at the southwest corner of NE 27th Street and Mary Rose Place Issue Summary
Second Readings unanimously passed.
Council Show and Tell
Councilor Goodman Campbell went to a Neighborhood Association that was really interested in transportation safety, specifically the Galveston/Columbia crossing. That crossing is looking to be improved around 2023 btw. The stewardship subcommittee is giving American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to local charities.
Councilor Kebler went to a forum on child care. She wen't to a neighborhood association too. She went to several other committee meetings that I am too slow to articulate.
Councilor Perkins went to the Human Rights and Equity Commission. They finalized the recommendations for their bylaws. It has a really unique leadership structure. Also went to Neighborhood Associations. She has also been listening to the committee meetings about shelter code amendments, kudos to them also. She and Councilor Barb Campbell did a thing with Bend Parks and Recreation District (BPRD).
Councilor Barb Campbell went to Neighborhood Associations, exploring ideas for more inclusive membership. We need to standardize our Neighborhood Association websites and stuff.
Councilor Broadman says that HB2143 passed the house with only 1 person voting against it. It originated from Bend and has the potential to change how we are able to address the public houselessness crisis in Bend. Special thanks to Councilor Perkins also. HB 4105 related to automated traffic enforcement also passed. BOO SPEED CAMERAS BRUH. PROBABLY A GOOD IDEA BUT UGH. They're looking to work with the parks to spend those tourism related facilities dollars they have left over after that lawsuit.
Mayor Russell shouts out Councilor Kebler and King for going to a Leadership Bend event with her. It was the first time she had been in a room with more than 10 people for a long time. Shout out to the Planning Commission, they do impactful stuff.
Manager King Update
He talks about complicated important stuff, so he gets his own special section now.
April 8th is the meeting where they will start working on implementing HB 2143. 2nd and Greeley(?) was declared as an unsafe campsite. They delayed moving the camp because of the cold snap we went through. They have started issuing 14 day notices. Shepard's House, Reach, and many other service providers are reaching out to people on 2nd street. Reach has been there 2-3 times a week providing services. The city continues to allocate other resources like garbage collection. There are 14 beds in the Division Street shelter. 13 of those beds have been allocated to people previously residing on 2nd street.
The first element of the Wilson Corridor begins on Monday. 9th and Wilson will be closed for about 3 months. Newport construction is on track. They will be moving to the next block in April probably.
They are getting a fresh infusion of ARPA funds soon. The stewardship subcommittee will be in charge of allocation.
GOODNIGHT TAILOR - Councilor Kebler
GOODNIGHT TO YOU TOO
Meeting Adjourned.
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