City Council - Regular Meeting

There's something 67. All right, we are ready to get started.

And I just want to welcome everybody here to our wonderful Ben Senior Center that is now part of the whole Larksburg community center which is a great amenity for our neighborhood here in Southeast Bend. We're really happy to have this presentation for you all tonight. We're going to then have a round table discussion with some representatives from some neighborhood district boards. And then we've left time at the end for counselors to come and talk and answer questions as well as we'll have staff around at each of these tables to help answer your questions as well around all of the growth activity and change that is happening in this corner of town. Um, and that's going to be a lot of what we're talking about. We know people are concerned about growth and change. We know people are concerned about wildfire um and other topics that we're going to touch on tonight. and just kind of have a discussion up here and then be able to talk with folks individually in the crowd and help get questions answered. Um, and so some of those questions might actually be answered by our staff and Ros is going to kick us off with a presentation kind of giving some history and and what's going on in the neighborhood.

Thank you, mayor. So, my name is Russ Grayson. I am the chief operations officer for the city of two assistant city managers and with me is Brian Ranken who is uh who leads our growth management group that looks at all of our our long range planning for the city. So tonight's presentation is really going to be about how do we plan the city? How do we do that? That's what Brian's going to go over all the components of that and we're also getting ready to to look for the next 20 years updating our growth plan and Brian highlights on that and then I will give you an overview of all the current things that are going on in your neighborhood which should be a couple including all the developments going on and the infrastructure that's coming um just prepare you for what we're going to see over the next five years after that as Melanie as mayor said there are tables after we're done with the round table she comes be able to talk about that at the end. There's also we have a fishbowl in the back for just any general comments to grab if you want to drop in about concerns or questions around the neighborhood or just input that you want to provide to the city. Please do that in the back. Um so please as we go through this, we're not going to take questions during the presentation, but there will be times for you to ask questions for staff. So please drop those down and then I will give you kind of operating instructions after that. So that I'm going to turn over. Thank you. Well, God gave Russ the height and he gave me the hair.

You don't usually get all the things.

So, let's advance the slide. So, Rean, I uh I get to lead the city's long range. It's an honor. It's a privilege. Um and it's a challenge to to lead the long range planning program at the city. So, as Russ said, I'll start out and then u Russ is going to finish up this presentation. We'll get to the more fun discussion. So, first question for everybody. Is there anyone here who was either born here or moved here before 1975? Oh, wait. Put your hands up. Hands up. And that's awesome. Okay. I love this. So, I have a friend who's local and she she's like, "Well, if you're born if you're born and raised here, especially that long." She's like, "We're unicorns. We're like magical, rare, magical animals that are just hard to find and hard to spot." Um, but that means the rest of us moved here after that point. And I know it's going to be hard to see the details of this. It's not about the details. I don't even think I have to explain this to you, but this is a chart of our population growth here in Ben from 1975 till today. And we're going from about 20,000 back in the day to over 100,000 now. And I just want to share that because we often think of growth as something, you know, it's the next guy that's coming into town and it's rarely ourselves, right? But we're all part of this process of growth that has occurred over this period of time and have led to all the changes in our community. And it's also we've also raised our families. We have friends. If you look around this room, I'm sure there are a lot of friends and family here as well. And so that's part of growth as well. And so I know there are a lot of difficulties as Russ said, we're going to talk about those. We're not shying away from them. We're trying to shine you on. But also to offer that, you know, two sides of the same coin here, right? Sometimes there's some

really good things that come along with this growth and change. Um, so maybe let's let's switch the slide here. Next slide, please. Thank you. All right. And again, you're not expecting to see the details of this. This is a picture, an aerial photograph of the southeast area in 2014. So, right, just 12 years ago. And that 12 years ago, you look at that, you go, "Well, okay, I see a few subdivisions." And if you could look closer at the roads, you see rural roads for the most part, right? Rural roads, two lanes, shoulders, no sidewalks, no roundabouts down here, very few new schools, not a whole lot of new parks. What you can't see is they didn't have there's no sewer system for the most part down here. Um, but let me ask a question. How many of you wish that you it could just look like this again? Good. Fair enough. And there's no wrong answer here. We're not going to this this is let's be honest with each other challenges. All right. Well, how many think Okay, this is this is really the city. The city is making this growth happen. It's the city or the developers. They're making this growth happen. They want it to happen. I see some nodding heads.

But don't worry, we're not, you know, we work for you, you know, so it's okay. It's okay. Um, and then how many of you might think there's just no plan because it doesn't feel like there's a plan right now. I imagine there's no plan for this. It's just happening around us haphazardly. And so what I'm hoping is that tonight at least with this this presentation that you can come away and maybe have a different perspective on some of the answers that that you were just providing to me to yourselves to to your folks. Next slide please. So, first and foremost, um we all live in the grand state of Oregon. And in this state, we have what's called statewide planning. We have a very robust system of planning in the state, very unlike other states. So, we have state law and we have administrative rule. And I'm not a tall guy. It might actually if you stacked it all up I think it would be taller than and just pages and pages volumes of how cities are supposed to plan. These are not um just plan if you want to. This is this is how you must plan and this is how you have to plan. And one of those major features I'm sure a lot of you know what a German growth boundary is. You ever been in Oregon for a long time? This photograph here is kind of an illustration of that. There's kind of a hard line. It's an invisible line, but it's a line that says in this urban growth boundary, this is where we put our urban need for housing and jobs. And we have to plan 20 years out. So, we have to have a supply of land for housing and for jobs in that urban growth boundary. And so, about once every decade, the city re-evaluates this to figure out if we have enough land for that urban growth boundary. Um, another feature of that is that we are all under a plan right now. I just want to assure you there is a plan. I'll get into some more details here that is guiding the

development that you're seeing. Um, in addition to that, after we do our land use planning, we figure out how we're going to grow in terms of commercial areas, residential areas, industrial areas. We also do similar plans for our transportation system, sewer system, and our water system. So what you have ideally is a really well aligned package but I had said looking 20 years into the future so that these things make sense over time and can occur logically. Let's go next slide please.

Another feature of this is that there's these laws always change. So, there's a new law that just passed. Oregon Housing needs analysis. We don't have we don't have to get technical and I don't expect you to see the pie chart, but here's the punch line is this new law requires us and Ben together. This is not this is a city thing. The city's responsible for doing these plans, but we do these plans with the community, of course. And this new law says that you have 34,000 new dwelling units that you have to plan for the next 20 years. 34,000 new runs and more importantly this number it's a mandate. We have to figure out how to accommodate these and they also provided affordability levels. And so this pie chart shows you generally how what the affordability levels are. So, we have about 9,000 units, close to 10,000 units that have to be affordable to people making under 60% of the area's median income. And to put that into perspective for you, an average house in the market now is going for $800,000. We have an obligation as a city, as an organization, as people within this community to come together to figure out how we are going to provide for 9,000 dwelling units that are priced at what a home would be about $250,000. That is a mandate in the state. We're going to talk more about that as being a driver for some of the change that you're seeing here in the southeast and also that's going to influence the planning for also what it means is not it's so what we're talking about providing a greater variety of housing types to meet a variety of these housing need that's why you see if you move through say 20 years ago like the houses used to look this way there wasn't as much density there tended to be larger more single unit

attached homes and now you're seeing more and more dense housing you're seeing more apartment complexes, your single cottages, town homes, and the reason is to meet the state's requirements as well as our obligation as fellow vendites to provide for a variety of housing people of different incomes and needs. So, next slide, please. So, I showed you that picture of that aerial photograph in 2014. Keep that game in mind, okay? So, it was pretty quiet in the southeast for a long time. And something I forgot to mention too is back then uh back before then in 1998 there was an how who was here for the annexation in 1998. Okay. So, a lot of folks there, right? So, in 1998, these parts were added to the city, right? They were in our urban growth factor. They were added to the city and most of this land has sat there for a long time without a lot of public investment. And I think there was a lot of animosity from folks in these neighborhoods at the city saying, "You have not invested here. You brought us into your city, but you haven't built roads. We're still on septic systems. You haven't built sewer systems yet. Where are the parts? Where are the schools? Like, what's the deal? We're paying the taxes, but we're not getting any of the billions that come with it. So, in 2016, after that aerial photo that I showed you was taken, the city did a forward-looking plan up until the year 2028. And this was a process to meet our state requirements to provide for land to support our economy as well as land to support our housing needs as well as parks and schools and other public uses that you see around town. That plan was approved. It was about 2,380 acres plus or minus that was added to our city after the city went and met the laws by assuming that almost every property within the

prior urban growth boundary that could be developed would develop which is staggering when you think about it. So in order to expand your urban growth boundary, you have to demonstrate becoming more efficient. But before you expand, you don't have to assume that the land that can develop will in that in that urban growth boundary. So that took place in 2016. Part of that proposal also made a lot of changes in particular to the areas in the southeast by providing a greater mix of uses. So planning for parks, planning for schools, planning for more commercial areas, especially in the areas that were added to the urban growth boundary. The reason being is that it's really hard to go into existing neighborhoods and put a commercial center. You all know that. If you don't live here, there's no way in heck you would want that to happen,

right?

So, they were added to the expansion area in order to provide those amenities, not right next door, but within a comfortable distance at the fringe of the city. So, try to make those areas inside the existing urban grill boundary where you were living have a greater access to those amenities. Um the other part we also work with Ben parks and we also work with school with school district. We do some of their land planning for them. So we put in land for schools and land for new parks as part of this as well. So we do the land planning for those two agencies. The idea being that when we're expanding, we're going to try to provide a greater mix of uses to increase and improve the livability and function of the city in the southeast and other parts of the city. So, next slide, please. So, back to that lack of public investment. In 2018, Southeast Interceptors, this is a photo of a giant sewer pipe called the Southeast Interceptor that was constructed to serve the Southeast area. We I could I I couldn't remember the how many tens of millions of dollars were spent, but it's in the tens of millions of dollars. It's 20 30 something in that reach to provide a sewer system for the southeast area.

What's that? That is the where is it? It goes more or less down forest.

Kings forest 15 kind of from north to south. It runs north to south and connects to our sewer plant and other systems to our sewer plant in the northeast. So that occurred that was a huge improvement. Now you can get off septic over time here in the southeast. Next slide please. Another big public investment was Murphy the Murphy corridor for those who remember that and that was probably the first and biggest public investment that was made in the southeast in terms of the transportation facility that transportation. Now you see okay it's bike lanes and sidewalks it's getting over the tracks it's providing that great east west connectivity. And next slide please. So when you put those things together, what you have become the ingredients for the vacant land that was sitting there for a long time in the southeast to all of a sudden become available and ready for development. Without those public investments, you couldn't really develop much, which is why southeast stayed relatively stable. But other parts of Ben like southwest, west side, northeast were going nuts during that big growth period in the early 90s and early 2000s. So in 2020, the city said, "Well, we need a new transportation plan." That new transportation plan is a city-wide plan. It assumes that pretty much every major road in Bend in the southeast, we're talking southeast here, someday is going to be upgraded from a rural system, two lanes, shoulders, no sidewalks, no bike lanes, to a complete system of roundabouts or some kind of intersection improvement, but mostly roundabouts were roundabout first town. Roundabouts at your major intersections, sidewalks, bike lanes, and travel lanes. However, a 20-year plan to to accomplish that end of a complete system does not happen overnight. So, Russ is going to

he's going to share more about that. Um, next slide, please. So, just some quick slides and maybe a bit of reassurance looking forward. There's a lot going on. It is it is disruptive. It is change. It's changing areas that you've known and love for a long time. I'm a Ben resident. I feel the same thing even though this is my job. So I understand that and I I live that and feel that as well with you. But at the end after build out, where are we going with this? So part of our analysis of the buildout of the plan that we're under now calls for about 62% of all households in the city being within a half mile of a school because of our coordination with the school district. So basically more than half of the kids could ideally walk. Do kids still walk to school though? I don't know. It's like they're zipping around on things. They're skateboard in their electrical, you know, they have better options than they did back in the day. Um, so we'll have a majority of majority of households within a half mile school. Next slide, please. We'll have we'll have about 86% of households within a half mile of commercial and this is also including the southeast. There have been concerns about the loss of commercial land. Um, I've spoken with a few folks here earlier tonight because of your concerns. I think in speaking with our city council, city council directed staff and our lobbyists to begin working on a change to the law that allowed that conversion of commercial land for affordable housing and there's still an allowance for it. But in essence, that bill was just recently passed in short session to provide protections for that commercial land. So these commercial areas can still provide some affordable housing, but not all of it is going to be used for affordable housing and preserved for commercial. And just to give you some quick, if you have 10 acres of commercial, the idea is you have 10 acres for 10 acres of commercial in one of these areas, you can use two

of it for restricted affordable housing and you preserve eight acres for 80% of it for the original intended commercial use. So that is a big change that just occurred and that is now on the books. Next slide please Russ. I think the really cool thing, this is one of the things I'm most kind of excited about. Ben Ben Parks and Recreation District does a fantastic job of acquiring sites. They do a great job of running and managing their park system. We coordinate with them on a number of fronts in terms of providing the space. They acquire their own sites by themselves first of all. So they go out and buy land. This is a photograph of Al Park. That was something they did. But we also coordinate with them providing open space as part of large development. So any development that's over 20 acres that comes to the city, they have to dedicate or provide some form 10% of that land for an open space and usually that goes in concert with Ben Parks and Recreation District who will partner with the developer to own and maintain that park over time. So these bigger developments will provide these parks over time. The city also protects open spaces through what are called areas of special interest, knockout cings and things like that. The city also just recently adopted a new tree protection code and ordinance in order to protect trees that are outside parks because of a lot of concerns raised by the public. So, this council has taken these direct actions in response to people's concerns to try to keep this place more in line with what people are hoping that becomes over time. Um, yeah, let's go to the next slide. And ultimately um just this picture I don't know about you but that library is incredible. It is incredible. I think it is in a sense to me this is just me your thing. I think it's like it's a statement of what the Southeast is like this is where

the Southeast is. This is a huge public investment and I think a sign of what's to come in terms of vitality that continues to show up here in this part of town. Um but I think there's another point remember two sides of the same coin that with the development come some of these public benefits. It's hard to separate the two things. So parks, schools, library district are all aware of the development potential in this area which is in part why they have made some of these sightings sighting decisions to provide a new school and to provide a new park library. It's a good investment because people are going to be here and use it in this part. Um and next slide. There are two develop developments in urban growth battery expansions. You've probably heard of these. We have Caldera Ranch and Legacy Village. So Pala Ranch is off road to the south is an expansion area that will provide a variety of housing types and school as well as as well as a small commercial area. And then Legacy Village, which is east of Stevens Ranch, another one you've probably heard of that will also provide amenities for new a new kind of downtown. We're not downtown, but like a little commercial core, a 30 plus, I think a 30 acre park, a region, another regional park in that vicinity and housing in this as well as some employment land. So again, that concept of mixing those uses is taking and manifesting these new developments. But the most important reason why these developments I think were something that city council the public really were hoping could happen and are going to happen is because that these will provide what's called deed restricted housing that is affordable. Right? So there are upwards of 800 units between these two developments that will be derestricted which means they have you have to qualify based on your income to be in this unit and it is pointed

towards people who are of moderate to lower incomes in order to be in that unit. And that back to that slide I showed you that is something the city is under city and we are under an obligation to try to provide for our community. So these are two really important projects because without those expansions it is really difficult to provide that level of affordable housing on its own in an existing built environment. In addition these areas were designed built to have higher standards for fire resistance. The city council has recently just passed and provided direction to use a new building code to create so units are now more fire resistant in terms of the materials. They're also going to be discussing vegetation landscape management. We have our fire man. Where's our fire fire tables over there? No, I'm not going to say fire large group. That's not um but point being that Carrie is doing fantastic work with her team uh in terms of increasing our awareness, emergency preparedness, clear zones, um natural hazard mitigation plans. So, she's doing fantastic job of doing that. So, please talk to Carrie about that. Last slide. Because we're a growing city, we're going to have to keep doing these plans. The state requires us to do these plans. So, we're about to head into another planning effort. And that planning effort is going to look at the next 20 years for what Ben is going to become. Um, so get used to the the hair and the height because we're going to be back talking about that plan. And I think what's really important and I why I love this so much in this occasion is that we this is a conversation. We need you. We need your ideas in order to make this plan work, in order to make Bend the incredible place it is, and to make sure that continues through time into

the future for our children and our children's children. Um because you know I think at this point I'm like am I going to be alive this thing? I don't know.

But you know back to the original sign we all built this we built this community together. We're part of this growing community and I think we did that by lending a hand. And I hope that when we're doing our plan looking forward that you lend a hand in that and it's my job to try to make that easier for you and more meaningful which is my intention. There will be more details involved but we want to make this easy for you to come and provide that into the future. So thank you so much. All right, I'm going to go I'm going to try to go a little quick here just for time sake. Um, so I'm going to talk about all the current activity going on in this area of town. So, first of all, um, just want to say thank you for putting up with all the construction to date that has happened in this town. Go back one real quick. Um, there's been a lot of activity. I will say this is your your breath moment right here. take a breath because we got a whole another wave coming that I'm going to go go over. Um, so everyone's got this this exhibit right here and this is what I'm going to go through. We're going to build a map together as we do this. So, quick quick fun fact between the the reception and co how much how many dollars do you think the city invested in infrastructure for the city? Take a guess.

I don't know. 10 million 20 million.

A billion dollars. a billion dollars in a 10-year period. That's what we that's what the city built. Just the city, this isn't development and everything else. The city invested a billion dollars in a 10-year period. So, we got a whole another round coming of that right now. So, let's go to the next slide, Brian. So, if you look at the map, all the areas in green, these are all the current developments that are going on, the major developments. It's not there's a bunch of other things going on at this time that are not marked, but these are all the major master plans. If you have any questions about any of those master plans, which correlate to exactly what Brian was saying about how they were planned and how they were all supposed to relate to each other, schools, parks, walkability, all that kind of stuff, you can go to this table over here. They're raising their hands. That's our current projects table. That's our current planners. We'd be more than happy to talk about that. But what I'm going to do is talk about infrastructure. I'm going to use transportation. That's something everybody drives and feels every day. So, next slide, Brian. So there that's all the recent infrastructure that's been built in this part of town I would say over the last 5 to 10 years. Murphy corridor 15 got improved not country um not 15th the roundabout in front of the high school 27 um improvements just happened in front of Steven's Ranch um we did the Murphy interchange and some other improvements around town including Wilson Avenue. Next slide. Here is what is planned in the next five years by the city to be built in green. So now we're starting to build out bikeway systems. You're hearing the term bin bikeway. That's so you can commute north, south, east, west across town in the safe system. Um we'll be building roundabouts at 15 and Ferguson. We'll be building extending the roundabout at Reed Market um in 15th. Um, as well as we are planning a major major event for this part of town in probably late 27 where we're going to do the remarket over crossing over the rail. That means

we're going to probably have it shut down remarket for a significant amount of time over a year possibly two between a year and two years. If you have questions about that, I'm going to turn over to our engineer.

They'd be more than happy to take your questions on that. That's a major project of the 2020 general obligation bond that that everyone passed. Thank you very much. But what we've been doing is we've been building out the system all this stuff to be able to do that project and be able to move people around as effectively as we can. But still a lot of growth, a lot of development going on more than having to talk about it and keep moving for time. So next slide, Brian. So what you see now kind of in that blue, this is all the infrastructure that the developments need to build. We require them to mitigate their development. As Brian um said when we brought in this area back in the 90s, he mentioned we did they're not they didn't bring the infrastructure with them. We now require them. So as things annex in, we require them to build all this infrastructure not only for the development but also to mitigate some impacts in town. So you start to see a system evolve here. More roads, more roundabouts. This is what we call this is all coming out of our transportation system plans. It's all part of these plans of how do we build up the network over time. Next slide, Brian. And then what you see in yellow are additional improvements that are in our transportation system plan, but we don't have funding for yet. So when we did that plan, it showed another billion dollars over the next 20 years that need to be invested um in the transportation system and capital improvements and also operational cost. At the time that we did that plan, we had funding for half of it and council's been working hard. general obligation bond, transportation fee. Those are things that we call to help fill that gap. And we're still short. We're still trying to build out the additional ramps to go uh north and north and south coming off of Murphy that we don't have the money to do that. China road improvements and we are fully aware of the remarket third highly 97 interchange. Problem with that is that is probably a 20 30 $35 million investment. we do not have funding for. The other thing I just want to mention real quick before we wrap this up is um the remarket. We

heard this question a lot. Why didn't we just do the bridge when we did the remarket the last time? Didn't have the funding. That bridge is where you're at $35 million,

$40 million to build a bridge. The general obligation passed at the time didn't have the money to cover that. So, we just didn't have the funding. So, now we're coming back. We have the funding. We actually got a federal grant to to do that. We chase federal money every where we can, but I would tell you the majority of the infrastructure that's built in town, it's built by the developers and it's built by us. We pay our utility bills, the general obligation bond. So, we always try to balance what what's the kind of affordability uh and and how much can the city sustain with what's needed and what type of improvements we build around the city and where we're building. So, that's how this map is built. If you have questions around that, there are a lot of people um around here to help answer those questions and I will point that out in a sec. So, next slide. So, if you have questions, I told you to jot down your questions. We have several tables that after the round table with the counselors and the neighbor districts, we're going to we'll wrap that up and then you you'll feel free to mill around and ask questions and if you don't know what to ask, there's a fishbowl in the back again. So, next slide. So, we have five tables. So if you're interested or have questions for transportation planning like how do we plan the system? How do we do that? This is that table in the back Suzan and David you mind raise your hand over there. So that's where you go for that. If you have questions around all the infrastructure projects the city's going to build talk to Eric and the team over there. If you have questions around wildfire and what we're doing and just kind of um emergency manage it. We have Carrie in the back over here on the on this side. Uh road planning growth questions. this middle table right here between Michelle and current projects. You go over here and you can ask you questions over here. Myself and Brian and counselors will probably be milling around. If you don't know where to go, you can find us and we can help direct traffic for you. So with that, I know that was a lot of information. We appreciate you sitting through that. We are here to answer your questions. So please keep them and let us know what we do. And after that, I'm going to turn back over to the mayor.

Let's hand these guests. Thank you, Lisa and Brian. I'm going to have our counselors and our neighborhood district representatives come on up to the table at this point so we can sit down and have our discussion and we have a lot of you here which is amazing but we cannot have a direct discussion with all of you. I know it's going to be frustrating to not directly participate here but we do ask for you to just listen in and um if you have questions to write them down. if you have ideas, if you're excited about something, there's um a series of questions, the same questions we're going to be asking our district representatives up here that for you to write down your ideas, your concepts, your input as well. Um so, please please do that and do that with us. And then I said there will be time at the end um we're going to this discussion, but then we're going to fan out and we'll be available to talk directly with you or we'll be able to answer any other questions as well. So, appreciate everyone being here tonight. get to buy seats.

And the other um little hiccup we have tonight is that we only have two mics. So, we're going to have to be passing mics back and forth. There is hand sanitizer for everybody at the end of the meeting. Um if we can send that one down to the end of the table, I'd like us to do introductions and just come down from from councils all the way around. Um and then we'll get started with our discussion. Hi, my name is Megan Perkins. I'm Steve. I'm also council Russ again from city staff

Norris Ben council Ross Tin District Benson Johnson City Council Mayor Greg Tannerburg Eric Kane City managerial communications and engagement officer city Mike senior assistant city attorney Jim Crystal Southeast Bend Sarah Moss Mike Riley and city council

and I'm also gonna introduce Juan who is running all of our tech. Thank you Juan. if we could get the slides advanced and we'll get into um our discussion here. Any of you have the slides for me too.

The internet's not working. That's always fine. Um so we um are going to have a few questions for our neighborhood district representatives. And the idea of these roundts for council and we've done a couple before is we really want to hear from from you all. And they're not hard questions. I promise they're not hard questions. They're about things that are going on in your neighborhood and how you can help us help the city be better. and we really want to hear from you. So, we're going to try to talk as little as possible and have our neighbors be the ones who are talking as much as possible. Um, and sorry, it's hard for me to see the screen. You can read the question for us, Rene. Thanks.

Thank you. Sorry about that. So, the first question we'd like to go over is around fire safety and prevention. So, we'd love to hear from the three neighborhood districts questions, ideas, perspectives that each of your own neighborhood districts have around fire safety and prevention, such as what actions would you like the city to consider? What additional support or resources would help you feel more prepared? So, there's a mic right there next to Southeast Ben. You want to take it off? And again, there's no one answer. We're just here to have a discussion. So tell us your thoughts.

Okay, great. So there we can hear. Good. All right. So just um we were just talking about Caldera Ranch just a moment ago. So I think one of the issues that or questions that's come up concerns maybe around that is just you know if there is an event how do we manage that as we just have you know not grow just there. So what can we do as we think about that or maybe you could let us know what you're thinking about? Yeah. And Sarah, I what I would love to hear from you all too is like what would be helpful to hear from the city? Not necessarily let me answer a question, but what kind of information do you think people want to know about evacuation routes for um you know the wildfire response? Um things like that. I mean, if your neighbors, if you were explaining to your neighbors, what do you think they would want to know as far as what we the city should be providing?

I think it's exactly that. just number one an awareness like an appreciation what's happening and awareness around um you know you you kind of couple Calder Ranch with China hat road and just that concern about fire um and our freshest forest so just just an an appreciation awareness that you already have about that and that you're thinking ahead so that uh like you said around evacuation routes um and planning for that because I think sometimes it feels like the planning happens nicely olation and just looking at that big picture and that you've got that covered for us.

Um Jim, do you have anything to add from Southeast Neighbors? Especially um we we've been really trying to help people prepare their own property. So, anything you think that would be helpful for your neighborhood that the city can do to help people be aware of and prepare their own property to be wildfire safe?

And that's that's a good thing I believe. But uh I guess the other thing I've heard from people in the southeast area also people south of not road that are not in the city is the cost of the home insurance home hazard insurance. And there's a claim here that Caldera Ranch is going to cause an increase in home insurance rates which means that all the homeowners end up paying a lot more. For example, my home insurance in Timber Ridge is more than doubled in the last year. and if they go higher next year. So that's that's kind of a big concern. That's in addition to what Sarah is also.

Great. Thank you. If you want to pass the mic this way and we can come to Lark Spur and just to reiterate something that um I for Brian said that we council did just um direct staff to adopt the R237 code which is the home parking code and one of the benefits that potentially is maybe some insurance savings of building new home of those materials. I was going to say that's one of the things I I really appreciate that codes are adopted. Um however that doesn't help us learn existing benefits, right? So that's a big thing for me having resource pages and I mentioned this law but I know there's free instructions you can sign up for. So that's great. And then where you can materials and contractors you might do some of those upgrades. Um I would also like to see some support for maybe neighborhood cleanups or at events like how can we actually get and clean this stuff out do that as well as the community. I know there's free um you know you can take a vegetation to a dump on certain days but not everybody has a vehicle transport it there's other options that you might be able to have those vehicle for software for that to do that um and maybe a way for for people that can't evacuate yourselves that need extra help and to have that be some kind of thing that the neighborhood districts can have access to so we know who those neighbors are that we need extra help if there's something.

Thank you for that. And I I'm going to take the opportunity to do a plug for Dashoots alerts. Um everyone in this room should be signed up for counties to shoot alerts and you can actually indicate things like disability or other things on that so that people know um that's something that's going on in your house, right? Other things that we can do to help your neighborhood feel prepared for wildfire? Uh I was part of the brainstorming session at the wildfire preparness session we had recently and and um one of the one of the thing a couple things that come to mind is uh with the variety of income levels of people we have in our neighborhoods um there there's there people that have lack physical ability to do their own remediation projects. there's uh financial constraints. People don't have a way to haul their materials um or don't have the funds to pay for disposal. Um and I I had a I I did a little spreadsheet that that showed um what their needs based on their abilities and financial position would be. Uh, and I don't know if the city would be in a position to um subsidize some of those that are lacking resources. Um and and one of the options I I I listed was the possibility of um it would it'd be uh basically a kind of a loan program where the the uh city could set up an application process and if they if you fell into a certain bracket either physical inability or or funds availability, um the city could contract with remediation teams to come out and and help or or get their

properties prepped and then um do it as a feedback over time on as a utility add on to their utility bills or what have you. But brainstorm ways to help people um and and also neighbors helping laborers. Um I I do that myself so not a pat on my back but I'm physically able to stay out so I don't have any problem doing that and I have some resources to help. Is anyone here in the firewise community know that's going right to the garden? So correct, same question to you about how we can help the beach which has 16 acres of green space, very large trees um which is dedicated developments of open space and but we produce a lot of fire. Um fact 78 since February 17. So last year I think we got rid of about 450 tons of material. Um we created a we became fires committee. We had a volunteer committee and one of our board members is very active with Melissa Steel and a lot of the other resources the city and county and state. We got certified on a number of different training. there's there's a lot of of available information and help for communities that want to organize and and fight or be prepared. Um, one of the things that we wanted to ask the city about though was was in areas like Cal Ranch where I know that based on the presentation, uh, there is the affordability that

you're trying to build an entrance. Uh, that has been zoned as RS, which only has 5 foot setbacks. That seems on the edge of town to not be the best idea for fire safety. Um, as an example on the west side of town, uh, the last um, it was on RL and they have much bigger lots of hard for the four. We're just curious, you know, as we start to develop on the edge of town, should those things be considered?

Thanks for that question, Ross or Karen. Anything else you want to add to the bold farm inspired question?

Well, you're the you're the only to say um Okay. I mean, I want Yeah, I want to reflect back, you know, some of the starting Sarah. And anyone else have anything else they want to add after hearing? No, we're good. Okay. um you know, thinking about evacuation routes and awareness for people, thinking about communicating with thinking for things like healthcare ranch and and how we're incorporating um fire safety into those types of plans for neighborhood that's um concerned about insurance and how that is affected by how we build our town and how prepared our town is. Um resource pages and I'm just wondering, can I just clarify? You're talking about um pages where people can find resources that they can then hire to to make their okay to take their property

or go materials. Okay. Um events and we encourage neighbors and maybe I want to reflect that one back a little bit. Maybe I'll start back with if we're talking about how we can have neighbors. What kind of things can the neighborhood districts what role do you think the neighborhood districts could play in that? And then how can the city support that as well?

Well, I I'll give the mic up to anybody wants it, but I would say um while your committees, the neighborhood district can kind of help organize those things. Um make use of all the available resources that are already out there for grant money. There's a fair amount of that that's available if you look for if you can organize groups of people that can go get that money. Um, again, in my HOA, we we have a lot of volunteer help that helps people that are elderly that can't do their own cleanup or we'll we did free assessments and we work with Melissa Steel on on some of those assessments, too, where people can find out if they have us.

Great. Pass the mic this way. Um, has anyone in the audience had one of those wildfire assessments from steel? A few. Okay, great. Great. Um do you have any other um ideas around how how we how the neighborhood districts could help with this neighbor to neighbor and how the city could help with that as well? Just one thought is that doesn't have a lot of we don't have a lot of HOAs so we might need different places but that makes it hard to find kind of the common defined space of a group of people working together. Great point. That's kind of a difficult question to answer because basically Southeast

Yeah, we're kind of inactive right now due to resignation from several board members. So, it's very difficult for us to do a lot of stuff right now. In fact, I'm the only board member right now. So, I'll just have maybe Sarah's got some ideas. Well, what I'm very interested, you know, if you need to help get your board and recruit some post to the board and and get that going again and maybe we can help with that. So, Sarah, you agree? Who wouldn't agree to that? Yeah. All right. All right. So, I just I want to open it.

Yeah. I didn't finish my sentence. I was going to throw back to you. So, there you go. Yeah. And I and again I want to um I want to make sure we have enough time for everyone to talk but before we close out this topic I wanted counselor if there's anything you wanted to add or questions or anything else. Yeah.

I just want to make that point for Southeast. Um I'm the council on to Southeast and your farm and um I think we would like to see as the city council more activity down here and more ability to organize and you know address together some of the things talked about tonight. But it's going to take a few people to be willing um to step up and maybe get a little bit more involved in that neighborhood district. So if anyone's interested that night tonight would encourage you to talk as well Sarah and Jim or myself as well just start to collect some names and start to generate some interest there. I would make a quick observation um having lived on the west side I live on the west side of town and while it's not an apples to apples comparison between my part of town and your part of town I do think that there already is to some extent a bit of a buffer with the development that happens that's that's just outside for example of Caldera Ranch that didn't exist on the west side. It was pretty much raw land over there. And so there was a big effort to say, how do we organize that transition between very dense to less dense to less dense to no development in in the actual forest? And when I drive around down here and when I look at the maps, I see that transition already existing. So I think some of that buffer um already exists. I don't it's not to say that we don't need to think about that going forward, but I do think some of that already exists in that.

Yeah. And if we can pass back up and start pulling in the next one, some of that too is working with our rural fire district partners for the folks who are outside the city to help them make sure they're preparing to have the services they need as well. All right. Any other council comments before we move on to the next one? Okay. So, um our next question, which I hope is appearing on the screen, um is around that sort of um you know, growth, infrastructure, all those things that Brian Russ were talking about. And so we would love to hear your perspectives and um ideas and questions around um growth and development. But specifically some things we'd like to hear about are what types of commercial amenities would you like to see added? Like what are those types of commercials that you want to have within our neighborhoods? Um what are the specific kinds of changes to our streets and sidewalks that would make you feel safer when you're traveling, including um when you work or school? and um what types of open spaces, parks, and recreation opportunities would you like to see in your neighborhood? As the state of the parks and rec board, we work closely with them and we want to hear from you about those type of amenities that you might as well. So, we'll throw you over to Old Farm to start.

Well, I'm hoping that the the stations will gather a lot of information about what kind of specific commercial development that folks want. We we did do a survey and sent some uh some some questions out for folks about what was most important and we didn't ask specifically about whether or not what kind of commercial they wanted, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to gather some of that information at the stations. We are very curious and hopeful about preserving space and the passage of of HB 4037 is we're very excited about that. Thank you for lobbying for that. Um we're curious when we when we might see some of that lead being replen southeast area. Um in terms of other things to make the roads safer and everyone's concerned obviously about congestion but already have a lot of congestion south close down roads for the past. Um but I mean what can the city do to kind of improve some of the of the transportation arteries that exist in the southeast question also I mean you talk about sidewalk saf I don't know if this is possible or not but um or enforcement of kids riding bicycles on the sidewalk going wrong direction. I mean, you look at one direction as you get ready to pull into the intersection, the kid runs in front of you on a electric bicycle with no hel. It's not just kids. I mean, there's a lot of people on bikes that don't follow the rules and more enforcement. That's the same.

Anything else, Ros?

Yeah, a few things to add. Um, with the commercial that was has already been converted. Thanks. with the commercial that's already been converted. I think it's great that you guys are working to uh basically restore that. I don't know exactly how that's going to work when you're stealing from here to PayPal kind of a situation or whatever it happens to be. Um but and I don't really want to see 20% of all of our uh commercial planned by the city planning department converted to affordable housing. I would rather be an actual complete community be completely planned that includes affordable housing in that plan. But I understand there might be some state laws that keep that that prevent that from happening, which is unfortunate. Hope we continue to push for that to improve over time. I'd also like to see some incentives given to help push commercial land to actually be developed in Southeast Ben. It is um lacking and it's just kind of widely accepted that it's that it just gets built out like 10 years later. um whatever we can whatever the city can do whether they're reduction SDC's or tax breaks whatever it happens to be to get that uh incentives in place to get the commercial um built out I think would be something great to happen as well.

Thanks Ross. I'm going to ask a follow-up question on incentives for commercial and that was sort of what we were getting was what type of commercial because we don't want to incentivize just anything. We want to incentivize what's going to be really good for the neighborhood. It's going to build communities. It's going to be a place. So if you have any ideas like if you were to incentivize certain types of what would those be?

Well again I hope you're going to get some of that data. I'm looking for the word grocery store. We know it's hard to have schools in order to get those amenities, but we're happy to do another survey to the southwest to see what kind of specific people. Yeah, we would love to have that information and we'll pass them back down so we can ask our other neighbors just because if we are going to and we are considering what kind of incentives we can do, we want to make sure we're targeting correctly. Right. So, all right.

Well, I'm giving you an example. We went through this with wildflow. Um there was six acres of uh Emmy zone land in that development and and uh the developer uh presented to the city that because of the geography the topography of the property that wasn't really could sustain that much commercial. So it was dropped down to what had the net result was about usable is about a half an acre. Um and that development started at 571 units and as it dropped since to 538 and it's all rentals. So that many units I could see as an example what commercial. Well, how about a daycare center? Um, how about a a combination bakery deli? Um, how about a little bike shop or repair shop or um people are trying to promote riding bikes more? Well, there's if we get even a third of those people riding bikes because 538 units, if there's two cars per unit, the the traffic's coming out of that flipping roundabout right there. Um, so we don't need big commercial buildings like uh I mean down further southeast I can see a Safeway or Albertson or a grocery or some place like that but little markets you expressway is down at at the corner of Reed Market 15. Something maybe bigger than that could have gone in there. Um but yeah, the the if the the city's goal

of having these complete communities that hasn't been attained yet. So that's what we need to focus on, I think. Richmond. Sure. Yeah. I mean, now there was like three different things. So, and I think um just heard a lot of really good information about kind of what kind of commercial amenities um what changes to streets, sidewalks would make you feel safer traveling to work or school and what types of open spaces and opportunities do you want to see in the neighborhood as well?

Oh, and the open space for our community. Okay. Um to continue kind of on the theme of commercial, I was in Discovery West this morning and I went into the little corner store bakery and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is what we need." You know, we need more of that. Um, I really like what's happening with Crossing that has a lot of that kind of corner store plus some of those other businesses, gathering places, things that we can go to that we can hopefully walk or run to. So, seeing more things like that would be really really nice. Thank you also for advocating and listening, advocating for having those legislative changes made in session. That's going to make a huge difference. Um, I would like to see also more corner stores and businesses. And I know there have been some kind of talk about that where you just take one house, right, or something on a street and that gets turned into some kind of commercial business. Um, so that would help those existing neighborhoods. Again, my big concern is not necessarily I mean it is with the new ones and having commercial cut down. Um, but those amenities and those existing neighborhoods and how we start building those in more, you know, as far as getting to those places like everything new is so great with all the transportation and uh trails and parks and everything, but existing neighborhoods um you know, how do we get to those new resources? Um, and trying to fill in those gaps between the trails or between these these big projects that you're doing um would be really really helpful. I would love to see more education and enforcement for rules of the road for everybody beyond just like kids on the bikes going the wrong way. Cars do not stop for people standing in street corners like they little education and understanding about that and I would like to see more education would be great but enforce that sucker. People are seeing people get pulled over for doing stuff like that they're going to start paying attention. So I would love to see that. Um, and then I was just overarching it's a huge question, but how can we make transportation improvements faster, especially faster? It's causes so much disruption to have

things shut down. I'm really really worried about the new market reconstruction uh because it's already bad. Like I take Wilson as an alternative and that already could take two, three light cycles to cross

and so I just really that's my way to work. I'm very worried about that. Um, and how we can make it more cost effective because I know part of it people are talking about is reason market didn't do the railroad crossing before is because it was really expensive. Well, how can we try to make things faster, more efficient, more cost effective so that we get more bang for the buck, get it done with less disruption. Great. Yeah, just to add on the concern with the remarket overpass, you know, that's going to force a lot of traffic on alternate roads. And it would be nice to have some sort of, I guess, information about, you know, how to get around the city quicker instead of getting in uh situations where six bikes get through. I had that on Third Street already. um maybe I don't know maybe a website or something like that you know but it would also require you know having basic traffic counters at all the roads around market like Wilson Murphy and not road so I think that might be a good thing to do for the people you know help them out I know it's going to be a huge disruption march is such a major go through and secondly about what kind of business do we want? Um, you know, a market, you know, we had a situation on Murphy and Broster House where people wanted to put a gas station in and we didn't want it. But, you know, if we could arrange it so that we could like a market, a daycare center, a bakery, a restaurant, you know, things like that that wouldn't be so auto dependent. I think that would be a good thing. I think that would be very much appreciated for the southeast community. Thank you. Sarah, what else can you add?

One last that because so many great ideas were raised and so much consistency and ideas. I think only thing I was going to add is just on that, you know, Roster House being 35 miles hour and Murphy being 35. Um, and then there's that school zone that is very small somehow right in the middle of that. So, as a neighbor, it seems very hard to figure out how to change that. There's so many parties involved in that. But I know just in Kansas, the neighborhood that there's a lot of support for that. So I don't know how we can show that support, get behind you to do that or take more action around making that happen, but interest there.

Great, great perspective. Um, and I think a couple things that I'll add um around the speed in the school zones and speed in general. That's something that we're looking at within our street standards that we're going to be working on this year and we're going to be inviting the community to give feedback as well is how do we change our standards? So we're designing roads for slower speeds going forward and then how do we perhaps look at retrofitting current roads to reduce speeds as well as an overall safety measure. Um but really good information hearing a lot of good um listing out of different commercial amenities a lot of them around um either essential services like daycare or food like deli market you know coffee shop those type of things and I really like thank you for for votes to make sure that we're supporting that as well. Um, and then hearing a lot around um, uh, concerns around, and I, and I heard this from folks I was talking to before, too, um, around that closure of the Remarket Bridge and just really having good communication around that, thinking about how to lessen that impact as much as possible. Thinking about how the construction is also impacting congestion in this side of town. Um, thinking about how we're educating people on bikes and cars and um, also enforcing the rules of the road, so to make everyone safer. Um and the new idea someone mentioned sort of trail gaps or even sidewalk gaps that might need to be filled in in neighborhoods. So, um, any other thoughts on this topic before we move on? Are any council comments, um, around this? It's really, really helpful information. I'm hearing a lot of, especially when we said bakery del. Yes. Yes. So, that's really helpful as well. Um, I did want to, um, dig in maybe a little bit on the open spaces and I just want to I'm just going to brag and say I think Alphablow is the best parking event and I'm super excited that it's in our cornrow town. Um, I'm wondering if there's any, if anyone wants to just think for a moment, any other kinds of parks or open spaces that you think we need more of? Do we need more dog parks? Do we need something? I know there's some amenities for like kind of bike riding amenities that the parks has done. Um, anything else we have that we

can gather as far as thinking about open spaces in parks. There's a lot of amenities for little tiny kids. Now my kids have gotten older and they're like I've gone all the playgrounds so we don't go to the parks a lot. So maybe some like teenage or adult like challenge types of things. Something different. But yeah, for older thoughts. Oh, just really quick. I am not a big uh player of this, but I know I have a lot of neighbors that would absolutely love pickle ball courts in there. Yes,

just trails kind of like corner trail through the southeast would be great. I have to say that the meat market closes I'll be able to bike down safely again.

I used to do it all the time but the traffic there was so bad that it's not safe. And that's why we're so hoping we'd have a grocery store across Codier Marta High School. Um, yeah, it's I know the city wants people to bike for, but it's scary. No, you know, forget it. I'm not going to do it. But safe biking is most important.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um, okay. Well, we still have a bit of time left and so we can get into some other discussion. Um, I do want want to jump off and just to hear what else it is you want to share. Um, but I do want to ask and I always try to ask folks what it is you're excited about that's that's happened or is going to be happening in the southeast area. Um, so let's start with that. Give us something you're excited about and then um feel free to share anything else from your neighborhood's perspective that you want to share with us. And and if you're excited for the rework groups to be done, that's an okay thing to be excited about. Yes.

I'm actually pretty excited. I live pretty close to 15th in Ferguson. I'm pretty excited about um there being a a roundabout being put in there. Everybody kind of helped move that up. Really, very much appreciate that. I also listen to enough noise on 15th from all that traffic. It would be nice to have that be uh pretty subtle for free for months. I would add that I'm excited about some of the traffic improvements that I see on this map and things that are coming. I did have one question. I didn't see anything in this presentation about more public transportation. Yes. Right now there are no bus routes south of 27 and I'm curious if that's

that's a that's a timely question. We just had a presentation from CCT um our Cascades East transit um last night and they talked about how to how they're going to be addressing some of these southeast routes to get some more frequency for the rest to go down and remarket. So we can easily follow up with you in your neighborhood about that. But we I hear that and we hear that that that is something that Southeast needs. So I want to congratulate CD for the beautiful bright blue bus seats that they're putting all over. I mean that is a huge improvement and and it's too

one thing that uh hasn't been brought up and I want to give huge kudos to the city for doing this is the flashing lights in the school zones. Yes, that's a huge improvement. Yes. And uh also the roundabout at 15th in Wilson that was long overdue more overarching. Thank you again for helping act on listening helping act on commercial um and listening about affordable housing open space fire. I'm super excited for the main library to be in our area.

Um and Steven's ranch um in Legacy Village with the commercial and parks um look like they're going to awesome. I know it's going to take a while to build that. I'm excited for the remarket over done. Yeah, not construction. That's awesome. Um and the affordable housing that's going in especially like I know it is called Legacy Village specific teacher affordable housing.

Really excited about that. I know I'm very excited about getting the roundabout at Kn Road and Country Club Drive because I've had difficulties getting on not road from Country Club Drive. I mean there's a little hill to the one side and you can't see the traffic until almost the top of the so I think a round belt would be you know a really good addition soon. I'm also uh would like to see the uh mean market overpass done in such a way that it kind of minimizes the congestion on other roads, you know, because it's such a huge intersection and it's intersecting road. So, that's a couple things I'm really excited about.

That's long already, but I guess I'll just double down on the library. That is incredible. We've got this larks for community center, which is amazing, and alcohol. I mean, we have a lot of enforcement southeast, right? Like I guess the underdogs underappreciated. There's so much happening. So awesome. Great. Well, I want to open it up now um for counselors if there's any reflections you want to have back to our neighborhood members. Um kind of go around the microphones down there. Okay. Okay. Let's come around um and I'll pass it down this way and we'll start with you. Sorry, Council Memphis.

Hey. Um, well, thanks everyone. I really enjoy hearing everyone's ideas and everybody brings a different perspective. Um, which is fantastic. This is really what this is all about. Um, so I have three kids. Uh, they all go to school here. Um, I spent a lot of time at Bear Creek. Now I'm spending time at High Desert and also Caldera. I love Caldera. Um, I think that they've done a really good job of of basically starting from a clean slate a couple years ago and creating a whole new community. Um, this is where uh my kids, their friends, their classmates, they're growing up. This is their childhood memories. And uh I do hear from a lot of people who don't feel safe when they can't get to school. There's no school zone at High Desert Middle School. It's pretty rough if you're a driver and it's downright frightening if you're walking or biking. Um, working with staff within the confines of state requirements is really challenging. So, things like school zones can only be installed when there is a walking facility. And since there's no sidewalks on 27, there's no school zone on 27. Um, one of the things that I've been really happy about with the library and and some of the development nearby is that 27th is becoming more accessible. There's a multi-use path that is running up and down almost all of it. Almost all of it. And it's up to us to make sure that we get those last little segments connected. And that's really where the rub is. That's the hard part is getting it a route is only as good as the entire network is. So, making sure that you can cross, making sure that it doesn't disappear into a shoulder or something like that. Um, all of that is is on our radar. I I just want to say also one last thing on transit. Uh, so we did hear last night from our Cascades

Transit executive director. Uh, transit is huge. It's a huge priority. Uh, council uh gave direction last night to create a working group. Council Riley is the chair of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council that oversees Cascades Transit. I'm the chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is responsible for regional transportation planning. The two of us are going to be spending the next several months figuring out what does it mean to have a more bend focused transit system. We have a regional transit system. It would be fantastic if the entire region improved, but we're not going to wait for that. Uh so we're going to figure out given our existing budget, what are some of the changes that that we can make that will improve transit and that means more frequency, longer hours. U so we're going to be working on that and uh I hope uh more good things to come. So I'm going to pass it on. Um

that's right. Great. I just wanted to thank everyone for coming tonight. Just appreciate all the change that and growth that is happening and it's so important that fun engaging and make sure your voices are heard. So, we really appreciate you showing up and just keep up the work. Join the neighborhood associations and get involved.

Hi, I'm Steve Flat and um the thing I want to let you know is I'm an old military guy. I retired after 25 years in the military. And one of the things the military does pretty well is most of the time plan for the long long term. You didn't go exactly where I was going.

As as fighter pilot, the thing that I I want to say though and what I what I want to talk about is what Brian talked about and what Russ talked about this evening, which is we're on a long-term plan right now. It's informed by the people that were part of the community at the time that guided some of the awesome construction and things that happened here in the southeast and also around our city. We're at the beginning of another one of those times. Now, we're setting another 20-year plan. Right now, what we're talking about is adding 80% more housing to this city from what's right now. 80% more that that 34,000 more homes is 80% from our current stock. So, it is going to take folks like yourself, folks like our our growing team to smartly consider how we want to shape that future. And so, I'm going to echo echo counselor Norris. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you walking to these tables and giving your thoughtful inputs to help us shape that future. That's what we're trying to do and that vision is really what we're trying to shape here tonight. So, thank you and please please up all these folks and hit us up. Thanks.

Um I actually checked in with Bob Towns and I'm Mike with counselors. Um Cascade East Transit today with this question about transit because we kind of knew ahead of time when we'd be talking about this. Um and consistent with councelor Mendes said we're going to be looking at how we can improve transit routes going forward with resources that we do have. We're going to need some additional resources if we really want to make dramatic improvements. But I think um while the reintroduction of fairs recently has been difficult for those who rely on the bus regularly, it is going to give us some different additional revenue to um to make some incremental changes which I think will be important here and in other parts of our region. Um there is a route now that does serve 15th Street is Caldera High School. Unfortunately, it is a 45minute headway which means that's how frequently the bus comes and you do have to go back to Hawthorne Station before you can get out to the hospital. Um, that's an example of some of the kinds of changes we hope to make in the not too distant future and maybe shorten those headways up a little bit. And it is going to be very soon shorter time to go from Hawthorne Station to the hospital than it is today. Finally, starting in roughly May, there will be a bus route that's going to get altered and we'll come down to the new library when it opens. So there are some changes that are coming and we're going to be digging into a lot more and it is a really important part of what we need uh in terms of our transportation system. And I just want to echo what everybody else has said. Thank you so much for being here. Um as the liaison to two of the neighborhood districts that are represented tonight, I've heard for quite a while just about the amount of growth that's coming and I well I don't want to pretend it's apples to apples comparisons because and I live on the west side of town. um we've gone through a lot of growth over there and I understand the pain that comes with it and all the change that's coming and um you know it's a big deal and I think there is going to be a lot of good that comes from it to help us meet our housing need and our employment and job need but um I I understand your pain and

the difficulty of having to live through that process of road closures and the noise and the dust and the sort of constant change and disruption. So appreciate your patience and I appreciate you leaning in to help us make sure we develop an even better plan that we have now in the new program.

Thank you, Mike. Um so um I'll close us out just just speaking as someone who grew up in the Kings Forest neighborhood. Um just actually met some new folks today that are living on the street that I grew up in. Um as a Bent High grad, as someone who now lives in the southeast and is going to be going through all this with you. Um, I'm just I'm really proud and happy to represent this community and I'm so thankful for you all to be here. Um, your ideas are great. We want your ideas. We want your input in and how we plan this neighborhood and we want to answer your questions, too. And so this I I'm baffled by this turnout. This is amazing. Um, this is better than any round table that we've had this turnout. And I just appreciate you for showing up and just I'm going to commit. I think you belong the rest of the council to continue listening, checking in, providing you information, giving you opportunities to ask questions, get your questions answered, and tell us what you think about your neighborhood. And and we'll keep working with the neighborhood districts and you to do that. And um now we have a whole hour to kind of mingle and for you to visit our staff and for us to talk some more in a in a more intimate setting. But um just really appreciate everyone being here and thanks again for showing up. All right.