City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I'm going to call this work session on April 22nd um to here. Um the mayor is going to be joining us online um from uh Pendleton in um a few minutes I think. Uh if she's not Oh, there she is. There she is. and councelor Norris will be here after this first item on the uh work session agenda. So first we are going to uh get to start with uh electrification and um I'm just going to ask us we have 50 minutes to talk about this and I would love it if we could hold all questions and comments until Cassie gets through the whole thing and then we can go backwards and ask questions and go through each slide.

Okay. Um, good afternoon, counselor. Just real quick roll call. Oh, I'm sorry. Roll call. I need to roll call. Councelor Platt, we'll start with you. I apologize. Uh, Steve Platt, she him. Megan Perkins, she her heard. Mike Riley, he him. Ariel Mendes, he Gina Franosa, she her heard. He her he.

All right, now we're legit. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm Cassie Lacy, senior management analyst in the city manager's office. I do have Daniel Walker online from Bright Line Group um to help field any questions um over Zoom. Um so I'm here to get the final pieces of direction that we need from the council in order to develop the code chapter and the ordinance for the climate pollution fee that we've been working on for the last several months. Okay. Specifically, we will be looking for your direction direction from you all today about exemptions or other adjustments and the effective date of the climate pollution fee. Those are the topics that we held the round table on two weeks ago. And then we also need direction from you on the applicability of the fee to specific building types and on the fee update and review process. And then the process for the fee looking ahead is that we're scheduled to bring the first reading of the ordinance in the code chapter um to at the council meeting on June 3rd and then the second reading on June 17th. And then one additional policy document that will come later is the actual fee resolution. This would be adopted shortly before the effective date of the fee. Um, so we will schedule a work session about two months before whatever decision you make on the effective date of the fee to review that fee resolution and review the updated fee calculation and fee schedule. So, next I'm going to walk through all of the different policy questions that we need for you tonight so that we can just see the full scope of the discussion and then as uh councelor Perkins said we'll go back and actually talk about each one. Um so we held a round table two weeks ago on April 8th to hear input from stakeholders on ideas for potential fee exemptions and the fee implementation timeline. We shared a few ideas to discuss with the group and then we also heard some new ideas from roundt participants. Um so we've been doing a little bit of research into the different ideas that were proposed for the fee exemptions and adjustments. We've determined that two of the ideas are ones that are relatively straightforward enough that we can go ahead and incorporate those

ideas into the policy documents that we'll be bringing to you on June 3rd. So those are the first policy questions we have for you regarding whether you want to move forward with these two ideas or not. So the first one is the option to create an exemption for deed restricted affordable housing. This would be an exemption on any affordable housing project that has a deed restriction. um we could potentially leverage um or sort of mirror the existing process that we have in place for getting affordable housing projects through expedited permitting which makes doing this relatively simple. Some of the roundt participants had requested that the city create exemptions for up to 120% AMI levels. This exemption would be based on the having the deed restriction and not necessarily specific to any particular AMI level. Um, so there are some, there's not very many, but some deed restricted projects do go all the way up to 120% AMI. So it would just be inclusive of any that had that deed restriction. Um, and then as a reminder, virtually all of our affordable housing projects are built without gas already. Um, this fee would not apply to multif family, which is also a percentage of the um, affordable housing projects. So we would not expect this exemption to be utilized very much. The purpose would just be to have it in place to ensure that there isn't an additional fee um on affordable housing in the event that the market conditions change or if there's sort of a one-off situation where a project decides to use gas. Um the other one that we need direction on today is how to treat dual fuel equipment. The options for this include an outright exemption for houses with dual fuel systems. With the new code update going into place in April, we do expect potentially significant increase in uh the amount of these dual fuel systems since builders will be putting in the heat pumps for the air conditioning units. Um so if you do create an outright exemption for these, I would expect it to be a very broad exemption or a pretty broad exemption that potentially a lot of homes um would fall under. And then the other option for dual fuel equipment is that we would create an additional equipment type in

the fee schedule for dual fuel heat pump systems. It would use a different number for the net carbon emissions than a standalone gas furnace. Uh which would be lower to account for the lower gas use, but there would still be a fee to sort of account for the remaining gas use that is still attributable to those systems. Um so those are the two that we like direction um so that we can incorporate them into the um ordinance on June 3rd. And then for the effective date of the fee, three options were raised at the round table. April 1st, 2027, July 1st, 2027, and January 1st, 2028. Some of the considerations for the um effective date are um one is that in order to get the fee into place, we need we are needing better clarity from Pacific Power on their compliance pathway for achieving the renewable energy standards from hospital 2021. At the round table, they shared that they might be able to get us that information in the middle or second part of this year, which um we did not think that was true before the round table. So hearing that new information at the round table makes me more comfortable than I was when I presented at the round table that a 2027 implementation date that would be less of a barrier for a 2027 implementation timeline. Um another thing to consider is the building code timeline. The updated building code becomes mandatory on April 1st, 2027. There might be efficiencies with aligning with the new building code. Um since builders will be building to new requirements at that time, including the um potential expansion of heat pumps as air conditioning units, it may be simpler to have those changes happen at the same time instead of just slightly off staggered. Um and then the third consideration that we discussed um is that there is a long legislative session in 2027. it has the potential to include energy supply regulation topics um which could affect how we need to think about the fee um and we just won't know how any of that shakes out until the end of June next year. So we're looking for direction from you all about which of those dates

you'd like to see to go into effect. Um and then there were a few additional ideas discussed at the round table for exemptions, adjustments, and timeline considerations. After exploring these a little bit, we've determined that each of these ideas is likely feasible, but we just need more time to figure them out, how they would work, what the implications would be. So, these four ideas we can explore further if um the council would like to, but to to do that before adopting the fee policy documents would require us to postpone the policy adoption date on June 3rd. So, these ideas include incorporating renewable natural gas into the fee calculation. this could potentially look like incorporating this into the net carbon value for each gas appliance. We've started to explore this. We've been in communication with the gas company about what information they could provide us to help get at this data. Um we feel we just need more time to better understand this one and so we can explore it further but just not in time to um incorporate it into the June 3rd policy timeline. Exemptions up to 120% AMI. the proposal that came up in the round table um I understood to imply that we would exempt all houses that are accessible to people at 120% AMI levels but not necessarily ones that are have a deed restriction in place um we don't have a mechanism to get at that necessarily so it is something we could pursue but it's just it's more complicated than the deed restriction since we sort of have a mechanism that we can follow for that one homes that have solar was discussed briefly at the round table. This is also likely possible. It just raised a few questions for us about how we would do it. Um how you would adjust the it based on the size of the solar, whether it's a discounted rate or an exemption. So again, just more stuff we'd need to explore. And then the last idea was the pilot project. The round table participants who advocated for this described this as a two to threeyear pilot of sidebyside construction of gas

and electric homes. My understanding is that the builder association is ready to go on executing the pilot, but we would need a little bit more discussion from the council about what our goals, timelines, and outcomes um of a pilot like that would be. And so the question for all of you regarding these ideas is are any of these ideas ones that you would like us to pursue and explore further before bringing you the ordinance with the understanding that it would adjust to the overall timeline. Um, so that covers the sort of followup from the round table. And then the other questions that we need direction on tonight are ones that are specific to the ordinance and the code chapter that we're writing for this policy. So the first part is we need to confirm what building types you want this fee to be applicable to. Council had expressed a desire for this to not apply to multifamily, but uh we've had some questions about where we cut off what counts as multifamily. So our recommendation is that we would apply this code to all new residential structures that are built out of the residential code. This includes single family, duplex, town houses, and accessory dwelling units. And it also includes new dwelling units on existing structures. Triplex and higher unit count structures are built out of the commercial code. And so the recommendation is that we would just cut it off at duplexes and stick with the residential code. And we had some questions since the presentation was posted yesterday about how many triplexes and quadplexes we build and to what extent they're currently using gas or electricity. So we double checked this and can confirm that within the last year there's only been one development that had three units um which was a commercial with residential. It was not just a a purely residential triplex. Um because it was part of a commercial development. Our data doesn't indicate whether the gas or electric was being used for the residences. We don't have a way of pulling out like what's for the commercial, what's for the res residential part. So right now we're just limited on the data on these types of energy sources, but we do definitely know that the amount of these kinds of

developments is very small. There was like one with three units and then the next smallest size had nine units and most have in the 20s and 30s of units in the last year. So this combination would be the easiest to administer. If you wanted to, council could carve out one or more of these building types and we should figure out we should be able to figure out a way to do it depending on what direction you wanted to go with that. Some might be really difficult administratively and some might be less difficult administratively. So um we can talk about that when we get there. And then the last slide is sharing what the plan and approach will be for updating and reporting back on the fee. The fee will be updated through a fee resolution every year in June as part of the larger fee update process. Um each year the social cost of carbon, the net metric tons of carbon and the compliance list would be updated. The multiplier or that 20% fee adjustment factor is in the fee resolution. So that would have an opportunity to be adjusted as well. Um, and then in addition to the fee resolution update, each year we are proposing that we would do an annual report to the council about the fee and the impacts. We would report on things such as the adoption rate of electrification versus paying the fee um, and keeping gas. We'd have information about which electric and gas appliances people are using and installing, how much revenue is generated, the energy supply mix, greenhouse gas reduction impacts, utility bill impacts, equipment cost changes, and then any additional administrative concerns that come up. So the question for you when we get to this slide is are you comfortable moving forward with these process elements or would you like to see something different as far as the ongoing review and kind of oversight of the fee policy. So those are all the questions we have to get through.

No problem. Are there any questions before we do questions get before we get before we do questions? I think at the end it might be useful to just review the other two parts of this whole sort of policy package development process in terms of the financial incentives and non-financial incentives just as a wrap up at the end about what those other next steps are because I know we won't be getting that till after June but just to remind ourselves and the community about that. Yeah, absolutely.

I do have a question because I see our building official here. Thanks for being here. Um, so, so I just Googled. So, and this was my understanding, um, is that triplexes and quadplexes when they're built in a town home style, they do follow the residential code, not the commercial code. So, I guess

that's that is true. Like, if someone built a town home with three units, it would be a town home. And though that would apply here, but those are built out of like the residential town home code and they happen to have three units. So the fee would apply to that, but there's other types of triplexes that aren't in town home format that we don't see very many of, but there is a separate code for that. Like that's out of the commercial code. So you could have does that make sense? You could have developments that are three units if they're town home. Is that correct? Okay, thank you. And so then is there an

um I guess the other question I had was um maybe just a little bit more talk about the tradeoff of including triplexes and quadplexes in the in the policy even if the commercial code might apply to them. Um other than the fact that we don't see too many of them or it's hard to g kind of gather data. I guess I'm just wondering if there's any other trade-offs or complexities or something like that cuz because from my perspective that the triplexes and quadplexes are infill housing. Um, and so it's it seems more like appropriate for them to apply, but if there's some something I'm missing because of the commercial code applicability.

Not that you're missing in the town homes. You can do four of them without sprinklers and just have firewalls and all that. That seems to be the trend of what people are building more often. If you go to the quadplex or the four unit, you're under the commercial code. All those commercial codes, those energy codes, those all hit. So the industry just kind of goes with the town home, I think, is a more popular right now. And that's why you don't see triplex, quadplex, diplex. Um you see town homes. Yeah. And then and but a developer could if they're following the commercial code, they could put gas in for a gas stove or gas fireplace or whatever, right? Just like you could resial. That's still an option. Okay. Thanks.

Sure. And we had heard from some of the other staff that I don't know all the details behind why, but that it would be it would their feelings that it would be very administratively difficult to just in the commercial code just pull out the triplexes and the quadplexes. So I know it doesn't sound difficult but it doesn't sound Thank you for saying that.

I won't get into software or anything like that, but it it it's time consuming and manually has to be done. I think it's something too that we could when we do the annual reporting, we could also be reporting on how many triplexes and quadplexes are coming in. We can I don't know if we can do this, but we can explore whether we can improve the data on those to see if we can see if the gas is going to the residential or not. And then that could be something that each year we report on. And if we're starting to see a changing trend where a lot of people are building quadplexes and you know the market has kind of turned like that then it's something that we could consider in a future time. That was going to be my suggestion. I agreed. It's let's just keep an eye on it.

Yeah. Um one more comment lastly. If you're lucky they're going to put triplexes and quadlexes in the one and two family code someday because there's a nationwide move to that that would help that more than just us think that would be good. So maybe it'll happen automatically. You guys have to do anything. Wouldn't that be nice? Mayor. Oh, there goes Can't hear you for just a second. Great. Can you not hear me at all? We can't. Now we can. Okay, go on. No, we can hear you now.

Oh, you can now. Okay, good. Um, I was just going to ask if we could go back a slide just so I know what we're talking about here because we're we're kind of discussing this, right? So, I agree with um Oh, no. We we're actually discussing the one before, right? Yeah, I I agree with um the suggestion to keep it with the residential code for now and to track the triplex and quadplex and see what's happening with those. Um, Cassie, just a question. You know, given the concern about affordability and uh some discussion of of pilots, can you share a little bit more about that that third to last bullet point under annual reporting uh utility bill impacts? What would that tell us? What would that look like

or at least what do you have in mind? Well, what we could look at is just is looking because one of the big topics early on is this question around on in from an operational perspective, is it more expensive or less expensive to use electricity or gas for a lot of the power needs? And our our data showed that because electricity has gotten so much more it's gotten the rates have increased at a faster rate than the gas rates have that it it is expensive to be heating with electricity. But that can also that can change from year to year like because the rates are constantly changing. And so it's just something that we can and should be mindful of if we're driving people towards a certain technology like what are the impacts of that on utility bills and um if what we see there you know could potentially lead to a change in direction if that you know becomes something that doesn't feel aligned with the council. So,

so would we be looking at like some you know hypothetical or average household? Yeah, it would be something like that. Like we can just look at the and that sort of the analysis that we did either in October or December when we were looking at rate, you know, kind of the long-term costs was just using this is the rate for a kilowatt hour, this is the rate for a therm and what does that look like at an average house? So, yeah, we would probably just be doing it like that unless we wanted to get more granular somehow. But that was the the general thought there is like let's just keep an eye on that and if electricity is suddenly 10 times more expensive or suddenly gas is more expensive it may just affect how we think about it.

Is that something we could ask Danielle to come up with a methodology for us to use? Yeah. And she's already um and I don't know Danielle if you heard the question. She's already done some of that. like we did it for the initial analysis and we've actually looked at it just um in some of our own discussions. So, she definitely has a way to do it and I'm sure she could set us up to be able to do it without her as well. But do you have anything to add Daniel? Wait.

Um yeah, it's all there and right now we're just using forecasted data. So, it would be great to like you said Cassie update with actuals over time. We could also, you know, maybe pick a few homes that would be willing to share their um billing data. So, we could actually see real impacts and change in energy usage and um the bill impacts to get some sample um real world data as well.

I have a question. Um one of the things we heard at the round table a lot was maybe not an exemption but a reduction. Um, and when I'm looking at the dual fuel particularly, I'm wondering if if that's something that um, you could sort of tell us more if that if that could work. um because it seems like it's it's something that's going to be happening more and more um with building types and um it's something that we would want to incentivize. But can you can to explain how that could possibly

Yeah, I so I think the the the option for the dual fuel equipment where we're proposing that it would be an additional appliance line would essentially be it would be uh I wouldn't call it we're not thinking of it as a discount. it would just be a different appliance and because that appliance has a lower carbon impact than a standalone gas furnace, the fee would be lower because of it. So, it just to us it seemed more straightforward rather than getting into discounting and you could kind you could go kind of far on all the different things you could potentially discount. It's like if this is just a a different technology option and someone can put that in instead of this other thing, let's just make it as one of the appliance options. And then because we update the the fee schedule every year including you know like that whole list we can be sort of revisiting that every year and determining is this is there anything we need to add to this just based on how it technologies evolve. So we don't have the data yet today um to know exactly what how different the fee would be from a dual fuel dual like a dual fuel heat pump compared to a gas furnace. Uh but we have a data source. We know we can get there. We just haven't been able to crunch the numbers yet. But we would expect it to be potentially substantially decreased from the sort of roughly $1,500 that a gas furnace is.

All right, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you, Steve. I have two thoughts on this. Um, first of all, the building code's going to come along and basically mandate this by April of next year. So, this is part of our policy. Uh, I think anyways, one of one of my chief concerns about this approach there, Cassie, and I'd like maybe you or Danielle to help us with this is if you set the the changeover point between when it goes from gas to electric to to a different temperature than our than our assumption right here, that can have a wildly different carbon carbon impact. How would you propose that we address something like that? Yeah.

The case being for instance, you could set the the temperature change over to gas at 40 degrees, right? As opposed to going down to a lower efficiency level and that would that would produce a whole lot more carbon. What what do you think about that? Do you want to speak to that, Danielle?

Yeah. So, that's a great point and a great question. You know, this technology is just kind of coming along in the market and in our energy efficiency programs in the region and we still are learning a lot. So I think this is why you know this part of it and estimating the carbon impacts of this part of it is going to take us a little bit of time. Um because we need to reach out to our regional partners like NIA who is doing a big research project on this and like Energy Trust um who are starting to to install these these systems to get a better sense of you know what are the changes across gas and electric? What what are those changeover points? How is behavior impacting that? So, all of this work is being done and those studies are out there. We just now need to take the time to collect that information and figure out how to incorporate it into our analysis.

So, we would essentially be looking for a data source that gives us an average of how these perform. And it it's not really that different than what we do for the other appliance types where we have an average for a gas furnace. There's different efficiency levels for that. Um, obviously on the electric side, there's the the broad ranges. So it it feels consistent enough with that approach and we just have to at a certain point do that. So but but your point is correct that those can perform really differently based on the settings and we wouldn't have control over that. Um for sure.

Oh I guess you know in in my so on this since we've gone back to the exemptions which I think is our first set of questions right and I think that's a good place for us to start. Uh I am not in favor of any kind of exemption for a dual fuel system, an exemption. Uh I think we can talk about the costing associated with that new piece of equipment right here, but it's going to be mandated anyways. So I'm not sure that as you suggested that that it would make sense for us to exempt those systems. I'm not sure how the rest of my colleagues feel about that.

I'm I I agree. I don't I don't see a need for an exemption. I think one of the adjustments that we made to our formula for calculating the fee was the net carbon produced. I think that's the right term, right? And that's where we get to the place where systems that are more carbon intensive where the choice to go electric is more carbon intensive. The fee is going to be lower or could potentially even go to zero, right? So, um we're already have a mechanism within our system to account for that um and to make these dual f fuel systems likely be cheaper than the gas equivalent. So to me, we already have it baked into our system and I think it's one of the strengths of the of the overall formula formula that we're using. So I think that's the approach and we should we should include this additional fuel type in the fee schedule.

So yes, no on those two. Got it. Okay. That's what I was just about to ask. Yes. No. Okay. While we're I guess we'll let's start with dual fuel then. Um I am also a yes no or the dual fuel are how are we all so the yes is the yes is the equipment typeclude use it on equipment type yes and no on an exemption yes no yes no mayor I agree yes and no yes put it on the fee schedule not exemption

well that was that was that was easier. Um, okay. So, there's that. Um, next is the affordable housing. Did anyone have any comments on on that?

Uh, I one of the things that I really think is important throughout this process and we've we've done our public um our comment a lot. We had a roundt discussion. We had a lot of builders come talk to us. Um, and I think one of the most difficult sectors for us to build both uh out just at large in our city and also those that that are um looking at alternative heating services right here is in our affordable housing. And so what I look to is the experts in that area, the folks that are talking to us about what they're doing on the ground getting out of the ground. And that is from two of our major builders of affordable housing in our town have written us this week and have said, "Please do not exempt our housing from the uh the climate impact fee for the reason that they're looking at the long-term affordability to own and maintain and the resilience of these homes right here. So, I'm leaning on the experts talking to me about they don't want to be they believe it's the wrong move for us. It's the wrong signal for us to to do any kind of exemption for affordable housing. So, for me, I'm a strong no on affording on on that. I will, you know, clarify that yes, we we received those emails um from rooted and from Habitat, but um other builders who are building larger scale developments um are actually are asking for this. So just just to

any other thoughts on this? I

I'm with councelor Platt on that. I mean, I'm just going to um read a couple sentences from some of these emails because I think they're important to emphasize that operating costs matter uh more than upfront costs for low and moderate income households. Um in their experience, um all electric high efficiency homes consistently result in lower and more predictable utility bills. Exemptions that allow less efficient systems risk locking homeowners into high lifetime costs. Um, I think they're also concerned that um, you know, that affordable housing not become the least efficient housing in the community. Um, and that really this is about um, you know, making sure that we treat our housing stock the same if we're trying to promote system that is lower cost on the operating side of things that this is the right route to go. So, I'm I'm a no on that. um exemp exemptions for deed restricted affordable housing.

Any other thoughts? I think um I had different different reasons but reach the same conclusion. I mean considering I think the fee is is already set at 20% of the social cost and I do think there's a virtue in administrative efficiency. Um and thinking about the tremendous cost of trying to retrofit a house provisioned for gas appliances. I think there's also other ancillary concerns about health and long-term affordability that I think um warrant not providing an exemption here. Mayor,

um yeah, I'm in agreement and I appreciate the feedback from some of our providers and I also understand the the wanting to keep the upfront costs down whenever possible when building affordable housing. I just don't see this one as particular the major barrier um for our affordable housing finance stacks that people are putting together. And um as long as we continue exempting SDC's and encouraging um other other folks to exempt theirs and trying to put our money right back into affordable housing, I think that's the biggest the biggest support we can give for them. So, and uh I think I'm in agreement to leave this one off at the moment. And I think our affordable housing providers, if this is in effect for a year or two and they're seeing that this is really causing problems, they will let us know and we can always adjust.

Yep. All right. So, it sounds like we have consensus on no for exempting deed restricted affordable housing.

All right. Next is effective date. Any thoughts? I I think it makes a lot of administrative sense for us to align with the the state goals for the building code. And so for me, one April 2027 is is the date. That's when these builders builders know that this code is going to go into effect. We put our our code in at the same time. It's a very predictable uh date. It is it aligns with the statewide goals. And I think if they start doing these dial do you dual fuel use systems right here there may be some change to the fee schedule as we get further down the line appropriate with those systems

that consensus or agree. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think that considering that we will be updating this fee each June via fee resolution and we'll have the opportunity to make adjustments. Um, I would be leaning heavily on the annual reports and expect that we'll be scrutinizing those pretty pretty carefully to make sure that we're actually achieving our goals here. But, uh, with that in mind, I think uh, April 2027 makes the most sense. Mayor,

um, I I worry a little bit about the staff being ready. So, I just want Cassie to confirm that they think they can do that with April 1st. If there wasn't the building code that was moving folks towards heat pumps already, I would want a longer runway on this because there is a real um a need for people to buy equipment, you know, get get supply chains going, you know, things like that if we want them to be putting the different appliances into homes. I'm probably more comfortable with July of 27. I do think there's probably going to be action in the legislative session that that may impact this, but we can always, I suppose, deal with that when it comes. Um, and I and I think there's probably going to be enough votes for April. Um, but I think uh sometime next year, either April or July, I'm good with those.

Yeah. And I I have talked with our staff that would be the most involved with sort of setting it all up. And they have said that I mean it's uh that's probably the the quickest we could do it is April, but they said that we haven't been able to meet that. So um I Yeah. All right. So consensus on April versus July. April. Okay. April. All right. Next is these additional ideas. Um does anyone have something they'd like to advocate for? Um or any comments on any of these? Can somebody else left?

I can let somebody else start. Let somebody else start. Okay. renewable natural gas. Um it's an interesting concept.

Um the idea um that there is methane that's going from sources up into the in the atmosphere anyways. You might as well get something for it. I'm not as a as a baseline against against that coming off a dump or something like that, not the landfill. That said, uh I've tried to dig in with this. I've tried to talk with some of our gas providers about what the realities of renewable natural gas is and for the actual users, the the residential users what their experience would be like if they want to do this. And I've talked with them on a call last Friday and I verified three times and went through the calculations with them once to make sure that I had this right. And the cost to a residential consumer is five times 500% the cost of normal gas to a user. Five times. So I do not believe that doing an exemption for something that's going to add a $500 co 500% cost to a user makes any sense whatsoever. And so I am not in a favor of any kind of exemption for renewable gas whatsoever.

I just wanted to add I was on um one of those calls with Cascade and asked the same question and they confirmed so both both of us heard this from them directly and at the round table their answer was four times. So I think it's sort of in that four to five times number. Um my expectation also is that this renewable natural gas stuff is going to be brought online and happening. is already, you know, there's plans and discussions for it at not landfill that has been going on for quite some time, having a history at not landfill. I've been hearing about this for at least 15 plus years. Um, and um I I think through the climate protection program, assuming it survives the most recent challenge of which Cascade Natural Gas is now a part, um it will um probably we'll see more investments in it because it's going to be one of the ways that they'll they'll try to meet the their requirements under state law. Um, so I just I really don't see the the need for um an uh yeah, including this.

Yeah, when I was when I was thinking about these um I kind of started thinking about phasing a little bit. I think like you're I agree with you like we're not there yet with renewable natural gas. Um I think the solar thing is is is really important. Um and in talking to people who build homes in our community, they were saying the 80 to 120 that's actually something that that would would really help. um if we could do some form of exemption or or reduction there, but I don't think we're there yet either. I don't think we have the tools for that. So, um I'm wondering if these are things that that we sort of put on the back burner and as they develop, we we talk about maybe phasing them in or as we learn how we can include them um into this. Just wondered what you all thought about that

potentially as part of the non-financial incentives conversation. I think that might be a good candidate for some of these ideas, too. Yep. Agreed. Any mayor?

Yeah, I agree with that. I think um you know, things that that I'm hoping are coming up in the non-financial is, for instance, if you're in if you're building in that 80 to 120 and you're doing all electric, we expedite your your process, right? Or even if you're not a deed restricted affordable home or something like that, right? So, I think there's other ways to get at some of the the places where those margins are thin. Um, I think solar we can encourage and work on in other ways. Um, and I did want to speak to the the pilot idea. Um, I I I'm not supportive of trying to figure that out right now. And I actually see what we're doing as sort of that minimum viable policy that we're going to try and report in on and learn and iterate and we've built a formula into it that we can adjust um as things change in real time. So, I think I think that's how we're kind of approaching that idea of of a pilot versus, you know, pausing on any kind of um large policy while we do a smaller look. Um, and I think I think um I agree on the renewable natural gas as well. I I would add that I think if we want to see solar really show up, I mean, maybe there's a way to do that through this non-financial and financial incentives, but we also could ask the ECC explicitly to like, we want you to investigate how we can get more rooftop solar happening in our community, come back to us with two or three options and give them a timeline to work on that. um that seems like it might be more more effective so that they can look at a range of things that work in the community rather than somehow based on what's worked elsewhere rather than tying it to this particular policy.

Yeah, I I agree with the mayor completely about the pilot. As I've said before, I think we're doing a pilot essentially. We're going to try this for a while. We're going to do regular reporting. We're going to have stuff that we track and the council is going to do a review and say, do we need to make any tweaks to this policy? So, I think we essentially have that set up and if we can get a group of homes that are willing to actually formally work with us and track um that would be fantastic. If there's a way to do that without it being too much work,

I took the primary motivation behind the idea of a pilot to be a concern about impacts to utility bills. And for that reason, for me, I want to see us develop a more robust way to think about that because I I don't think that this idea of having two houses side by side is really sufficient. I think you have to control for the you know the intensity of energy usage and things like that. So, it's a hard question, but I want to make sure that we develop it to a greater extent so that we have that available in our annual reporting and that we can use that to make fee adjustments going forward. And with that, I think I would be comfortable.

All right, we sort of talked about this. any new thoughts or look I mean I'm gonna go versus

I mean I I do think that triplexes and quadplexes even if they have to follow the commercial code um those are that is infill housing and um we we want to see more of that. We're hopefully going to be clearing out code barrier or not code barriers but like permitting timing barriers to those being built. And so, um, I I think it's important to employ those. Um, so, but I'm I'm open to understanding why City View can't help us uh make it a little bit more streamlined, but um but yeah, I think it it fits the purpose of the program. So, I think it's appropriate to include it.

But isn't isn't the most administratively efficient thing to leave it as they as they are? And considering that we have so few right now that that's something that we look at in annual reporting would be open to that. Yeah, that's that's where I would be. Yeah, I think I would I I I'm with Council Mendes on this. However, I'm with you, Council Franosa. I want to incentivize this type of development as much as I can. We're just not winning in that a whole lot right now, but I want to help that happen. So sort of commensurate with any successes that we have in that area, we start looking at it more is what I feel like

and we are going to have a a conversation in June about infrastructure requirements for kind of a focus on on infill development. So I think there's work happening in parallel to this to actually get more of this housing supply by removing some of those barriers. So I think it's a good thing to make sure that we're evaluating this as a as a housing type on an annual basis and include it as part of the tracking that we do and reporting on like what's actually happened in this space in terms of triplexes, quadplexes this past year. Has it changed how the code's working? You know, where people are, which pathway they're using to get there.

Like we have two hands online. Um well Danielle, did you have a response first? Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to note in terms of the analysis um on the assumptions we built of energy usage and therefore carbon um reduction estimates is that we based it on single family detached or single wall attached homes and we didn't do any analysis incorporating um more of your larger size tri quadlexes which I think is going to change the average energy usage and usage of the appliances. So, I just want to flag that if we were to incorporate those, I don't have as much confidence in the energy usage and therefore the carbon estimates.

So, if we wanted to include triplexes and quadlexes in the future, it would require like just some additional work on the fee calculation to make sure it's accurate. Okay. Yeah, Daniel. Daniel, just a a kind of a geeky question. Is it because that you get like heat bleed over and that and shared heat with those shared walls? Is that what's going on? Yeah, interactive effects across walls and yeah, um just different pattern usages. Sometimes different occupancy assumptions can drive the usage, too. Okay, cool. Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, I just want to say again, I'm fine leaving out those that are in the commercial code at this point and just tracking that when we get our annual reports. And I think if we want to incentivize them, I think it's not this policy. I think it's a different a different policy that we're we're going to be talking about coming up. So, I because I agree with that for sure. All right. And then last but not least, um the annual update. Are there any thoughts on uh editing any of these things or adding anything to this list that's not here? It's a lot of things on it.

Yes. Oh, yes. Council P. One of the things that I think is very valid concern that's been brought up by both our our our uh fossil fuel providers and our and our electric providers is what type of heating source that you're using in this home. Is it efficient electric or is it some kind of resistance electric type homes? A big concern of mine is really the question is Cassie, can we delineate between those two types of heating sources with the data that we have right now like the electric resistance versus yes

um I would want to double check with our CDD team that um does the city view stuff and I don't know if any if anyone answer the answer is no. I mean we can't do it or we don't do it now or both. do it. We'd have to create a data set and start gathering the data. But you could maybe you could come up here just so we can hear you in the microphone. Um yeah, it's a very important it is piece of information to have. So we don't do it now. Could we start gathering it? I think is the question. Like could we could we add that?

Yes. So with this whole policy, we would start creating new data sets at which point we could include that as a data set. So we had talked about how

we'll be able to add the part about even just gathering what the energy source is for the appliances because we don't currently collect that today. So it sounds like we could also add an additional field for like if if electric then tell us additional information. This is really important, I think, that we keep our eye on the ball on this one because net energy usage for a house, if you if you add up the therms and electricity, if you've got an an efficient electric house, it's going to be lower net energy use than one even with gas and and electricity in terms of total energy usage. But that is not the case if you use an inefficient electric and and I don't want to add more strain to the grid than we need to. So, I really want to have that data and I want to watch trends on that really closely. If we're trying to if we're trying to get under the wire building homes for the cost to avoid the cost of this fee and we incentivize that, that's the wrong way to go. So, I want to nip that in the bud if we can.

Yeah, that makes total sense. But that's what I'd like to have. Yeah, I think that that's the only one I was going to propose that we had in addition to the tracking of triplexes and above. Well, just legislative track. I mean, I know that that would be a part of this, but legislative tracking or, you know, major changes, utility changes, I think is another thing that we definitely would want to keep. I just want to Melanie, do you want do you mind introducing yourself just for the record, too? Melanie Paul, program manager, building safety division. Thank you.

Thanks, Melanie. Melie, I don't know if you know the answer to this off the top of your head, but you know, I know when you build a new home in Oregon, you have to fill out the residential energy checklist and you have to describe there there's certain things you have to, you know, do in a home to make sure that it's actually very energy efficient when you're using electric equipment in particular. Is like resistance heat even something you are allowed by code to do?

We don't know the answer to that question. So my I when I've talked with some of our other um building team people about this especially with the new code I think for the heat source it's it's very very unlikely that you would get electric resistance heat and that was one of the things um we talked about a couple of months ago when we were sort of saying we didn't think we there there wasn't like a policy mechanism in the fee to necessarily like restrict that. Um the code doesn't say you cannot, but because of the choices you have to meet the energy code, you would have to if you put in resistance heat, you would have to make up for it in other ways that don't seem likely.

And then I think that's just only more true with the new code. I think where there's the bigger risk is something like water heaters because and I don't I haven't looked at that one in particular and how that plays out in the options in the energy checklist. Um and clothes dryers and stuff like that. So I think that's where the water heaters being you're talking about a resistance water heater versus a heat pump water heater. Yeah. Because heat pump water heaters are just not very there's not huge market adoption of those yet. And so um put one in my house last year.

No, I it's they're becoming increasingly so, but I think when I think about the potential risk, that to me feels like the bigger risk based on the code and also just the like relative market adoption of heat pumps anyway. They have other benefits that are sort of known over resistance heat. Um, but I do think it's technically possible. So, a good idea to track. Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, they could do it in it. They have to do the efficient heating source if it's electric, but then so then resistance would be like duplicative if they really wanted to put it in probably the way that they could do it. Yeah, they could do it if they want to. So I suppose if we want to give Melanie another thing to do.

Well, I'm not necessarily bust about tracking this honestly. I think it's I think we're getting into, you know, code a building code thing. It's work that the building codes division actually does and they analyze and study in depth every year. So, it's probably information that's pretty much out there. But, um, if it makes you sleep better at night, well, it's been brought up. I'm looking to sleep better. It's been brought up. So, I I want to concern, right? I mean, so so I don't want to just reject that out of hand because it's come from the And if we can't add it as a city view, it might it might not be that tricky to gather once we get through the setting up process. And oh, mayor.

We can't hear you. We're getting a little feedback.

One of those live really loud like um space interstellar space sounds.

Okay. She's saying forget. Okay. Anything else? Do you Did you get what you needed from this? Yes, I think so. I think we did want to talk about you you had brought up about the the sort of next steps with the blended committee. I think we've kind of rethought that a little bit since we've narrowed the uh the process and so the only sort of thing left is the non-monetary incentives. I think for the financial and the financial I think we do I think we still

we would like to do I think we'd like to do a round table with those groups. I think that's our thinking is um kind of works specifically with the ECC on those items and then bring in the folks that we kind of a um the round table that we had bring that back uh sometime later this summer to review recommendations on non-monetary incentives and the use of the revenue as an alternative proposal and perhaps a little more efficient. Um so just the ECC first ECC to kind of think we could leverage that group to the development community with the development community on the non-monetary incentives to do that deeper dive and then pop back up with the review of the other uh representatives from the committees as a round table.

I I would it would be very important that they work with the development community otherwise if you're suggesting something that the development community can't actually it doesn't actually Yeah. Yeah. Great. All right. And then did we want to talk about the um Yeah, I'd love to have two counselors that we could work with as we're developing the code. Um so we're going to have we're going to have uh has already been so involved. Um the code will be published with you know our normal schedule but there's a good month or so in between now and then if just staff is looking to kind of bounce some ideas nominate counc buds you want I accept

let's do it all right thank you okay yeah the next step is that you know we'll bring the code and the ordinance to you on June 3rd it will get posted at the normal time but if we it will just I think be more efficient if we can get some of the drafts um some feedback on some of the nuances from counselors. All right. Okay. Thank you, Cassie. I have one more hear me now. Yeah, better now.

Um, I actually think we should try to publish this with a little more notice to the public besides our regular schedule. So, since we have a little time before June because it's a high community interest topic, I would love it if it was available, you know, a week or two before the meeting. So, that's just my thoughts. You know, we will try. We will definitely try to to meet that. That's a good good point. All right. From electricity to water. Exactly. On tonight. We're doing well. Feel good. All right. Thanks for coming everybody.

Should stick around and hear about our water update on Earth Day. Seriously, future meeting if you're here. Yeah. There you go. You can't leave them running.

Sorry, this is what happens. Yeah. Always happens to water. People just take it for they run. They run out. Lori, I was talking to third graders and they all love art. They're just talking about our water and how it tastes so good and they they appreciate it.

Yay, third graders. All right, gonna share here. No change to this one. Okay. So, um

or hold on. Okay. Well, to say good afternoon to um mayor and I think the mayor's still up there and and council. I'm Lori Fya. I'm environmental resources manager for the water services department. I'm joined by Dan Denning, our water conservation program manager. and we're here to do the annual state of the water update and happy Earth to everybody as well. So, it's it's great timing. Um, I just want to note before we move on the little picture in the circle here, I don't know if folks have noticed, but as part of our 100redyear anniversary of the water system in the um old mill district, they've put up these banners. Um, they we just had to provide them with the artwork. They created the banners, put them in place for all of April, um, Earth Month, and they're going to do that also for the next four years in April. So, uh, pretty awesome.

Looks like my coffee cup. I know. And looks like Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like your coffee cup. Yes.

So, this is an update, but also discussion. if um you have any questions. We're there's a lot going on in the water world right now and so we're going to skim through a whole bunch of topics. So please feel free to ask questions, stop us. Okay. Um just what we're going to be talking about relates to a couple of sets of council goals. So first of all, there's climate resiliency goals. We're particularly going to cover items that are the last three bullets. So items about per capita water use and different water conservation measures, collaboration about water in the basin. Um and then the next slide shows actually under a different set of goals. It's okay. Um under the transportation and infrastructure goals, there are also some water related goals that um we're going to touch on as well in regards to water supply, resiliency, both planning and projects. So, these are the kind of the four areas we're going to cover is I want to give a little bit of an update about the hundred-year campaign for our water system. Um, also talk I think water is on everybody's mind because of drought. And so, I wanted to talk about how we prepare for the season ahead and then also talk about uh the really important topic of planning for our water future. And then Dan's going to do a bit of a dive into water conservation. And I think everybody got a copy of the water conservation annual report. Great. So, just on the hundred years of water update, I know I came to council earlier when we were kicking it off, but just a reminder that 100 years ago, the city of Ben started serving our wonderful water to the citizens of Bend. And really, it's kind of primarily the same system basis that we have now. It's the same wonderful water that we have now. And it's an opportunity to celebrate and

provide education. And there's a lot of opportunities. Folks can go to the um bendorggon.gov/scelebratewater website and find out all kinds of information about activities, educational opportunities. There's cool videos that we're posting. Um and also activities folks can do to help steward our water resources. I want to particularly note that this being Earth Day and then Saturday is the um Earth Day Fair um and it's at a different location this year. It's at Alpenlow Park. So, I hope everybody will show up to that. There's also going to be an open house for the new city public works facility on May 14th. artists will be there who did really cool artwork for that building. But also, you'll have a chance to check out our um water conservation um demonstration garden if you come out and do that on May 14th. And now I wanted to show we've been doing a couple of videos and so u I'm going to get some help here and just show this new video that's going to be demonstration garden if you come out and do that on May 14th. And now I wanted to show so we've been doing a couple of videos and so help here and just show this new video that's going to be demonstration garden as you come out and do that on May 14th.

I don't like hearing my Now I wanted to show So we've been doing a couple of videos. We knew this was going to be so potentially tricky. Yeah. Let's see. and try again. Yeah, this reminds me of the pandemic teaching classes that first teaching classes. Okay, we're gonna play a video. Yes. Y talk amongst yourself. Actually, you want to come back to it and just let me pull up the presentation again. Okay.

I think it's absolutely the best water in the country. I think it's amazing as well. Yeah, we have we have great water here in B. If you've had the opportunity to travel outside of central Oregon and then come back, it's one of the the many things that we always say when we get home, geez, we really miss the water.

It's obvious to me like it's one of the most important things that we have and that we need to value and cherish and plan for definitely in the future. The water here in Bend is a is a really nice water for brewing. It's kind of a cheat code for the brewers around town. Uh makes really great IPAs, dark loggers, dark IPAs, stouts, porters, everything really. So, it's it's good water. You know, as a hotel, we use a lot of water. And we are, you know, when guests check in and they ask about the water, we always tell them that we have excellent water. We're in the top 10% in the nation here thanks to our fresh mountain snowfed aquifers.

Yeah, water's very important to what we do here within the hospital system and taking care of patients. Uh part of what we do in infection prevention is make sure that we're constantly monitoring the water quality for the hospital system along within our surgical areas and our pharmaceutical areas. It's very important that that's clean and safe for our patients. Well, I I think the quality of the water, you know, coming from Prowl Springs, the the surface water that uh that we have in central Oregon, and then quite frankly, the energy the city of Bend has put in it, you know, to maintain the water source that we have is quite incredible. And it doesn't just happen. There's a tremendous amount of work to go from where it comes in to the intake to where it comes out of our faucets at the end. So, I don't take that for granted. you know, only one in four people throughout the world have access to clean and safe water. Um, so I always appreciate the fact that we do have that. And not only do we have clean and safe water, but it's great. It tastes great.

Hey, I'm glad that was able to show. I just thought that would be I thought everybody would enjoyed that. Um, okay. Well, Dan will share the screen again and we'll get back to the slides and maybe the not quite as much fun stuff. Um, so we'll talk about um preparing for the short term. So, I think um everybody's familiar that the the governor approved a drought declaration for Dashuites County. Um, quickly here, you'll see Nope. We'll play the

um I don't know if folks uh regularly see things like this. This is a map of snow water equivalent which is basically red bad. Um this this year is looking like maybe 1977 just one of one of the worst years on on record. So I thought that's in everybody's minds. Let's let's talk about that. Let's talk about how we prepare for that and how that relates to our drinking water. So on the next slide, these are some things that um I wanted to mention. So implications of drought conditions. I do want folks to know there's there's not necessarily a direct relationship between a drought declaration and water availability. I don't expect that despite this bad water year that it will impact our ability to provide water to our customers. But I think it highlights the importance of us having a dual water system of having both surface water and groundwater. We're not sure if we're going to see impacts to the springs and surface water. So, it's great that we have both sources available. Um, and I think also, and Dan will get into this as well, but we're already seeing demand pickup um more than usual this time of year in terms of people using more water for because folks are already starting to irrigate because it's been so dry. And so it's going to be more of a challenge this year to meet conservation goals and and Dan will talk about um some of the focused messaging. Um let's go to the next slide. So some of the things we do every year including this year is we work with partners to be prepared for our water scenario for the summer season when we have by far the highest demand. For instance, single family residential water demand in the summer typically goes up about five times over uh wintertime demands. Um our surface water rates are in the teal creek system on Bridge Creek and we work

very closely with the Tamilo irrigation district because we're the two folks pulling water out of that. Plus there's we have water rights plus there's instream water rights and we meet regularly and we coordinate to ensure we're withdrawing only the legal amounts um and to maintain the instream flows. So we keep a really close eye on that. um on um fire is also a big topic right now and it's council goal and I wanted you to know that we are cooperating regularly between water services and the fire department about joint messaging for water wise and firewise and that people can be both in their yards. They can have plantings and materials that are both low water use and are firewise. Um, so that's the you'll see some of that messaging come out. We also work very closely with the Forest Service because our municipal wershed is located on Forest Service lands. We meet with them at least three times annually. We just um last week had our annual spring meeting with them and we talk about a number of things in terms of summertime watershed management. One of those is fire management. So, we were assured by the Forest Service that they are fully staffed for fire this year. That's not an issue. They um same protocols they always have, which is a highest priority for the wershed. So, they're looking out for any type of lightning strikes or anything like that in the wershed. They're regularly flying it. If they see anything, they're sending a crew in to put it out. Um so, we're really lucky with that and you know, so far so good. But this year could be interesting in that regard. Um and uh I I'll get to this on another slide, but they they help us with collecting data about the health of Tamillo Creek as well. Um Avon and Roaches, I think you're familiar

that we city of Bend provides water to about 75% of the citizens of Bend and the others provided by private water organizations particularly um Avon and Rotes. uh we're going to be meeting with them week after next to coordinate on seasonal messaging because we can only use our water conservation dollars inside our water boundary, but we can coordinate with our partners to um try to have some consistency in that regard. And also just to note that um ROS reached out to to Dan and he's going to be providing some training to them this year on doing irrigation system audits. So we're really happy to have that occurring across more of the city. So, let's move on to I think um there's sometimes confusion between some different concepts which are drought, curtailment, and conservation. And I wanted to make sure you're understanding the difference um between all of those. Water curtailment is something we're required to have a plan for. It's kind of an emergency management plan and we have that in our water management and conservation plan. Um, it's not the same as drought. And drought does not typically trigger curtailment. It would have to be a pretty extensive ongoing drought to trigger curtailment, which is the request or the requirement that people use less water, particularly outdoor water. But we have a web page that folks can go to. You can go to city of umbend.org/cretailment org/cretailment. Um um and you'll see a diagram like this of there's different stages of curtailment. What that really means is it's how bad is a situation. So curtailment would be triggered as a typically as an emergency and it would be quite often like triggered by some type of event. Um could be maybe we have to turn off

surface water because there's been um a large event in the wershed and we're seeing too much turidity to be able to use our water filtration facility or maybe it had a lightning strike and we have equipment problems and things like that or maybe we have issues with a couple of wells. The level of curtailment stage 1 through three is determined um primarily from our water operations manager and it's based on what they're seeing. what how bad is this event? How long will it take to correct the event? And how much are you seeing declines in water storage in our reservoirs? So, if we're seeing declines and we're not able to fill it back up each day and then we're looking at that going on for numerous days, that's when we would be asking um the city manager to declare curtailment and which which level of curtailment. And the stages are basically about first asking people to um voluntarily uh use less water up to stage three where it's required to use less water. But I and we we practice this pretty much every year. Um some type of desktop scenario. So curtailment and conservation again two different things. Again curtailment is meant to be event-based. Conservation is that long-term effort where we're trying to get consistent and long-term benefits from people's changing um equipment, changing their actions. Uh I just have on the right hand side of this slide, these frequently asked questions are from that same website about curtailment that folks can go and and click and get more information about how how would I be informed if there's curtailment? Um do droughts trigger it? Typically, no. Um does it happen very often? Thankfully, no. Um, and how can I be ready to use less water water conservation.

So, that's kind of short term and being prepared for for this year. And and Dan will mention a bit more with the water conservation update, but let's talk just a little bit about our water future as well. So, um, this slide relates to a couple of council goals about continuing to participate in the Dashuit space and water collaborative. This is a basin level collaborative about water management because the cities are a small piece in the puzzle of water management in the basin. We use about um 2% of all of the allocated water. Um but it's really important that we conserve properly so we can have enough water for the future particularly for cities. So the collaborative itself, this is been an ongoing long process that we're continuing to participate in. It's taking longer than I would hope, but there's a lot of really tricky topics to talk about with 40 plus players around the table who all have their own unique interests in regards to water. the key topics to keep in mind that we are hopeful will have an outcome from this and this will help identify these so that these actions can be legislated and funded and move forward. Uh one of them that's being talked about a lot and you'll hear more about is aquafer recharge. It's a really important concept for us to be on board for and could really help all the cities in the basin. Um we are seeing declines in groundwater levels and those can be attributed to climate droughts also can be um attributed to piping of canals that have been leaky for over a hundred years um as well as water uses from from that aquifer. recharges the idea of there will be especially in the future in the winter I'll call it excess water in the

dissutes below the city of Bend and that's because of habitat conservation plan and re releasing water in the winter from reservoirs for frog habitat upstream of bend that will be producing enough water downstream of bend it could get to the point of flooding tumbllo and some of that water could be used in existing irrigation infrastructure to put that back into the ground. And while it may not solve all the problems of groundwater decline, it could certainly buffer it and slow it down and help us all out. And it could be far in excess of what all the cities pull out of the ground. So, I wanted you to be familiar with that because you'll be hearing more about it. Um, the other things are updating groundwater science so we understand better how the aquifer works. Um, and we need pathways for to be able to as needed acquire more water rights in the future for growth and get mitigation credits that allow us to use our our water. Uh, this also relates to conversations we're having ongoing with the tribes. Um I'm hopeful that there will be a council to council discussion with the tribes maybe in June, but we have staff level discussions going on monthly about water. And one thing we are collaborating on now is a legislative proposal for 2027 that um we and the tribes would agree on the language and would propose an extension of that mitigation program that allows us to utilize groundwater. um it's going to sunset in 2029. We need an extension on that and then to work towards what is the future of of groundwater mitigation in the basin. And then finally, um this isn't a council goal, but we um of course work within the central Oregon city's organization and have water discussions regularly. And one of the topics that was just talked about on

Monday at the Cocoa Water meeting was about hosting a summer 2026, possibly June workshop for central and eastern Oregon legislators to um bring them up to speed on Dut and water topics, particularly the item for the mitigation program extension, but also to introduce ideas like aquifer recharge. this. You've seen this before, but I just wanted to talk just as a last thing about water supply resiliency. And this is just a reminder that we have that two source water system. We have surface water from the source springs that are on the the left side of the diagram that um travel down Bridge Creek to the intake facility near Tmalo Falls, go into a pipe under Skyliner out to the outback facility uh where we provide filtration and that's our key distribution point for water in the city. And then we also have wells distributed throughout the city including at the outback site. I want to point this out because I want to talk particularly about the outback site um and its importance. So this is really the lynch pin of the water system. This is where not only are we filtering the surface water, we also um have wells for groundwater here. this location um is is at a it's where it is because of its elevation and it's really important to the city in terms of providing gravity fed water to to our citizens. Um I wanted to talk about just a couple of things. Our our water master plan from a couple of years ago identified some some key priorities. One was purching it purchasing additional land from the forest service adjacent to this. That's 48 acres because the area that we own, which is shown on the the photo, is completely built out. And we've identified needs for the long term, both short-term and then up to 50

to 100 years from now. the needs to eventually build new reservoirs um build new uh wells and but in particular build very soon a pre-treatment facility for resiliency and also hopefully in conduit hydropower which could um use the energy of that thousand foot of elevation drop uh to power the entire water facilities plus have a lot of extra and first step in that is purchasing that land. And just so you know, um the townite act is a very long process. It has to go through the um with an environmental assessment. That environmental assessment is in its final stage. People who commented on it in a draft stage had standing to make comments on the final. That comment period just closed. The three parties that made comments on it did comment again uh bringing up some issues. Uh the Forest Service is looking at that information right now. They've uh are in a 45 to 75 day period of time to evaluate those comments and decide whether or not they're relevant to purchase of this land or whether or not any other changes would be suggested. So, we'll know at the end of that where we sit and I'm hopeful we can purchase the property by the end of the calendar year. Um, that's really important. Also, we're um I wanted to give you a heads up that on May 20th, you're going to see two items that are relevant to this. One is a facilities plan for this 48 acres. Um, and the other is uh the starting into what would be a design process for those high priority items of pre-treatment and in conduit hydro. It would be um approving a contract for an owner's representative for that very complex project. So, just wanted to give

you a heads up on that. And then a final item before I dump this over to to Dan is um I mentioned that the Forest Service, we work with them about monitoring the health of Tumblow Creek and this is really important to us, the ecological health of Tumblow Creek. So, as required under our special use permit, um uh but actually we do more than what's required in the special use permit, but we have um gauging stations on the stream for water flow and temperature that we pay the US Geological Survey and Oregon Water Resources Department for. Um we pay the Forest Service to do fish monitoring in the stream and the Forest Service compiles all this data for us. I attached to this a rather lengthy quote, but I thought it was really important. This is from We post all this information. If anybody's interested in all kinds of data about um the watershed and the stream, we post it on um you can just go to citybend website and type in municipal wershed and get to this. The 2025 report. What it was telling us was that um 10 years ago we completed a project that put in a new pipeline, a new intake facility, the filtration facility. When we did that, we had better technology and we stopped having an overflow from outback to Tunnel Creek. We now have a closed water system. We now can only take the amount of water that's demanded by the public. We don't we can't push excess into the system. It's physically impossible. And because we're doing that now, because we're doing a better job of just pulling in water at the intake that we need for people's demands, there's more water that's being left in Tamilo Creek. Um, and that's particularly noticeable in the stretch that we have really control over, which is from Tamilo Falls down to Chevlin Park. So, this is just really important information and um, I wanted you to know that. So,

just to reiterate that point, the idea that if there's a concern about um having an incentive to somehow use more water in order to generate more electricity since we're looking at the feasibility of hydro power. What you're saying is that the city doesn't have the capability to do that,

right? It it is physically a different system than it was 10 years ago. There is no overflow. If we were trying to somehow push more water through the system, I don't know, it would come out of people's toilets. So, yeah. the this is because the system's been improved overall. It's not because in any one in the year prior to this we just happened to take less water. So this is more of a sustained result like this is likely to be a sustained result. Okay.

Yes. And particularly in the shoulder seasons in in in the height of summer demand we're pulling that capped amount of 18.2 two cubic feet per second. But in the shoulder seasons, we're seeing real benefit in terms of more water in the stream. Lord, it's a 60/40 split, right? Surface to Yes. Yeah. The surface water is our primary source and it's typically around 60%. Right. Well, good evening counselors and mayor. Um, are we doing okay on time? You got 10 minutes left for

10 minutes for All right. Well, just wave me down if I need to speed up, but uh I'll try to just hit the high level points. Um hopefully if you had time in your schedules, you were able to skim through the report at least. Um we're open to feedback or questions as this becomes more robust as our program grows. Um happy to uh take any of that and incorporate that into what we're reporting on uh as we develop our KPIs. But I wanted to hit a couple highle pieces of just uh some successes in 2025 which was a pretty productive year for us um with reduced uh maximum day demand overall uh for the calendar year. Um uh some substantial savings with a 12% voluntary reduction ask we had with some of our partners. Um so that was an aggregate savings across all three of our largest customers. Uh we continue to see increased participation in our incentive programs uh turf replacement uh device rebates and we're transitioning into the multif family commercial realm a little bit with those programs uh with a couple um notable projects that happened with the housing works apartment complex and an assisted uh living facility um with almost 2 million gallons saved the first year um just looking at indoor uh device replacements. So, we're happy about that. Um, but before I get into 2026, I wanted to just touch on and acknowledge some of the current council goals. Um, so with the redu reduction in total water production this year, um, and still continuing to see service area population growth, uh, we did we were able to exceed uh the council goal of a, um, reduction in GPCD to 165. uh we hit 161 this year uh fully acknowledging that that could change depending on what happens this season. So we are keeping an eye on that.

Uh the second being um feasibility of gray water. So we held a um kind of a exploratory meeting with stakeholders, COB staff to look at the feasibility and u the conservation potential of graywater in new and existing development as well as um by customer type. Um, so, uh, looked at all, we had City of Bend building staff, uh, we had some environmental engineers, landscape architects, some OSU students, um, storm water and conservation staff, and really went through the different three types of graywater, what their limitations are, and what their potential is, uh, for implementation. Um so a couple of things we identified were um probably more conservation potential in the multif family commercial realm. Uh some concerns with the seasonality and the maintenance upkeep on retrofits in the single family realm. Um but that's just an initial conversation and um I'll touch on what we might be able to do in some of our upcoming analysis in our update to the WMCP this year. Um so again this is just showing our um 12-year trend of maximum day demand. This is a key performance metric for us in our program and for the utility uh really driving infrastructure investments. Uh so you can see the drop in peak day demand. Um so we have an idea of you know the reasons for that. Uh but we want to look into what are the other external factors that may be driving those consumption patterns. uh outside of conservation or outside of development or things like that. So this is just a graph of annual total precipitation in Bend over the last 25 years. Um and with that peak day number uh we are looking at it on a more granular basis. um looking at consumption and daily precipitation, max

day temperatures, uh evapo transpiration to try to figure out if we can uh find a correlation in there and kind of model those um uh consumption patterns. But one thing to notice here is you see variability in the amount of precipitation we receive in the high desert across that whole time period. um and you see a correlated variability in the peak day or consumption patterns uh in those early years. Uh but if you look from 2015 on, you see that consumption pattern kind of level out and stabilize and even drop some years uh despite the continued variability in precipitation. So in a long-term look, the things that happened around that time period were a rate modernization going to volutric based rates. Uh this is really when we started a customer or customerf facing outreach conservation message and program. Um and there were some other uh key pieces along the way in um you know densification and things like that that probably help stabilize that over time. Uh but this is something that we want to understand a little bit better so we can forecast that into our projections going forward. Um and so now we get down to the reality of of where we're at today and looking forward to um what could be a tough season. Um so we're utilizing essentially all the tools we have in our in our um at our at our fingertips, right? In combination a holistic approach. Uh really starting with the awareness campaign, right? So we know that the drought is going to affect customers response and behavior when it comes to water consumption. Um but in order to mitigate that getting out of control because we are already seeing April's uh demands up by 20% over last year at the same time. Um so in order to temper that and not have an overreaction,

we're going to follow up with our uh B watermart campaign. So that's an internally created campaign that we launched last year. Um and really that's going to highlight reiteration of our goals uh both council goals and our existing department goal for that 7.9 billion gallon reduction over 20 years. U it's going to have action items and available resources uh including and starting with education. So, we'll highlight on a upcoming slide um the educational outreach and events that we're doing uh this summer to um help folks. The assistance programs, these are a lot of our evergreen programs. So, these aren't the incentives uh but these are our staples uh that are still well participated in and showing um uh substantial water savings. So, the technical assistance piece uh will be in place for those that need additional help. And then for those folks that, you know, still can't get it together, we do have an enforcement uh plan for this year and what that looks like with some proactive messaging and the incentives of course to help balance the regulatory component of that. Uh so some of the tools I wanted to highlight these are new tools that we developed with our data team uh that are helping us f focus on our efforts where they need to be this year. Uh we created two dashboards, a consumption dashboard um and a rebate distribution dashboard. So this consumption dashboard gives us an aggregate look at water demands on a 7-day and 30-day rolling scale uh for the whole city and then we can narrow that down by pressure zone or um a system barrier within the city. So we can see where peak demands are happening and what reservoirs are being affected and then we can dive down even further to per customer. So we can target conservation efforts to a certain area of town where we're having an issue or individual customers.

And the second dashboard is something that we wanted to create to track who is participating in our rebate programs. Uh what is the distribution across the city? Um who are the customers participating? Are we servicing our whole community? um or are there barriers to participation that we need to uh adapt our programs to to remedy? Um so we included census data to essentially look at customer characteristics and figure out who's participating and who's not. Uh the good news is we have a pretty even distribution across the city. Um but the two highest tracks uh with the most participation were track 17 and 18 uh where medium income is about 50 to 70,000 and homeownership is only about 50% in those areas. So we do feel like as of right now we have a pretty good distribution but we hope to look at this further and inform um our efforts if we need changes like I said to messaging or to streamlining application processes. um to serve everyone. Uh councelor Riley, I apologize for this graph. This is me being overzealous, but the important piece here is what I wanted to show is this is um our projected demand. So, in 2020, we did the conservation analysis of these 16 new measures and how that would affect our projected demands over that 20-year period. So that top line with the the green squares or the teal squares was that projected um demand uh between 2020 and 2040 if we implemented that entire program C. So all the program measures that we analyzed. Um the smaller section you see there with the the darker green that's our actual demands based off of the measures that we implemented plus our existing conservation measures. So I just wanted to highlight that we are

trending uh below what was projected and we are at that midway point which is good

which is a good thing right so we're overperforming um with the measures the 11 measures that we did roll out um that said we are at a midway point we're going to have to give a progress report to the state this coming fall uh in October so that'll be submitted which is essentially an update and um to our WMCP our larger WMCP on how we're doing uh a reanalysis of the projections using our actual savings and participation numbers. So we can really reset that trajectory and get a finer look at how we are performing uh versus the trends that we use to inform that initial projection and Dan one or two minutes. You got it. All right. I think

thanks for that.

Sure. No problem. Um so looking forward to sharing that hopefully soon with you all. Um so like I said that five-year progress report we are going to model some additional measures. So um gray one gray water being one um um assistance for repair of irrigation and leaks uh for lowincome folks is one we'd like to model um because we see a lot of maintenance issues as kind of being the root cause for some of this uh higher water use in our customers. Um, and then thirdly, I just wanted to let you know that this year we are working very closely with the Firewise team to come up with a coordinated message for our customers to kind of meet uh the needs of how do we implement these practices and uh we'll see a mythbusters um uh suite of outreach coming out just kind of dispelling some of the myths between choosing one or the other or um you know rooftop sprinklers being able to you know suppress wildfire around your home, things like that that we're seeing in the community.

One question. Sure. We don't have time really, but a lot of people were really interested and I think one of our council goals or the work plan funding or something like that was to like expand the incentives that we're offering. So like more of the um turf replacement and more so like what can people expect along those lines? I was actually kind of surprised because I read the report. Yeah. um of the uh like anticipated uptake of um some programs were much lower but then other programs was way way way higher and so I was just curious like which programs folks can expect to see and what rebates um and incentives they can expect to see this year.

Absolutely. So uh I don't think turf replacement is going anywhere because that's just very uh popular program with uh our community. Um what we will be doing in that reanalysis is looking at where we're seeing those participation uh levels. um outpace others and maybe replacing some of those non um or underperforming programs with a new incentive. Um so yeah, we'll we'll be looking at that and then you know the lifetime effectiveness of those programs and what it's costing us to run them. More to come. Yeah. Thanks.

Thank you. And then these are just if you haven't uh been to any of these, I encourage you to uh to meet our ourselves and the team and the rest of City of Ben staff out there. Uh we've got a a good calendar full of events. Uh starting with Earth Day this weekend, Alpenlow. Yay. And uh are culminating with our water wise field day. That's our large in-person education day at Holland Head Park on Saturday, June 13th. And I apologize to council. We do have maybe one or two questions and if we could if you do have questions though, email is totally fine and we can follow up with you on additional data. Just quickly, what would 17 gallons a day per person reduction that that gets you to 2040? Right.

Correct. What would that look like for a person's life? What would they notice? Uh well, so we're trying to make it easy action items, right? So, uh a 2-minute reduction on one irrigation station is going to get you about 20 gallons. uh depending on where people are at in their lives, in their daily use, whether they're go willing to replace something or just make a change in behavior, we're trying to feed them those um uh options. That'd be helpful. Thank you. Absolutely. But teen shower time because that is the biggest adoption that we need in our house. Yeah. The water valve. Turn it on. You are you still on the radio show? You do like a radio show on like water wise tips.

Yeah. uh every every Thursday. Every Thursday. So if you want to, you know, stay plugged in. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Thank you very much. I learned a lot and you guys have made some progress. All right. Uh last we have our public assembly venue and target investment area. We're going to hear from a few. Jeff, have you ever considered doing like tourism ad like come to Bend and drink the water? It's the water. tap dancing. Yes,

I had my best cup of coffee in a long time this morning and now I know why.

Hello, Mayor Proan and councelor Katie Brooks, economic development officer, and I'm here with um John Katz from CSL International. They're the consulting firm that's going to be presenting today. and Jeff Knap who is CEO of Visit Bend and we wanted to give you a briefing on where Visit Ben's study of a public assembly what do you call it public assembly event venue is um where we are with that process and I wanted to share with you briefly next slide there we go what the agenda is we'd like to share the study highlights with you this evening and just go over the high points the uh full report is available to everybody. It's in council packet. And I just want to cut to the chase and say the conclusion of the study and why we're here tonight presenting this is that these initial findings show positive conditions that take us to step two. And we'll talk about what step two looks like that visit Ben will be conducting next. Um we'll have time for council questions and input and again we'll talk about next steps. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to John.

Well, you just gave the punch line, so I think I'm done. We'll jump to Q&A.

Uh, this has been a very research intensive process. Um, we started several months ago doing stakeholder interviews and many of you were involved in that. um outreach to not just the people in Ben but event planners and other stakeholders throughout the region trying to really understand what is it that we can do from a market perspective with respect to an event venue started as a conference center convention center we learned really quickly that we can't build any specific venue type if that makes sense we can't build a convention center we can't build standalone arena we can't build a standalone civic center we've got to be this multi-purpose purpose type venue. And a lot of that research uh was generated by talking to meeting planners uh event coordinators within the the locally, regionally, even nationally to understand um what is the market that has an interest in coming to Bend. And once we understand that, what is the kind of venue that makes sense? So if we put together all of this stakeholder outreach um locally, regionally, nationally, we begin to form opinions as to what's driving the potential for this and what might be driving us away from the potential for something like this from a a supporting factor. We are a nationally, even internationally known destination for outdoors. Uh that that's established. It drives the economy. It drives why people want to live here. Uh we have a vibrant downtown and not just a vibrant downtown just I've walked around it many many times and you're enveloped in unique local right this is not generic this is very unique u and we have the opportunity not just to experience downtown but to get on the river walk over to the old mill district you've got Hayden homes uh you have a vibrant organic arts community uh in town uh seeking for places and spaces to perform surely but it is very vibrant and unique um and that drives is the brand of the

destination. And those three factors really lean in heavily into what the meeting planner, meeting attendee, concert patron, what it is they're looking for when they go to an event. Unique, authentic, local. So, we are set up from that perspective, I think, to be very effective. We're also the hub of economic activity in central Oregon. Um, Oregon. Um, I didn't get that. appreciate that.

Um, we've seen population growth and we expect population growth and the idea is to do it in a sustainable way, building housing, building infrastructure over time. Uh, that allows us to again grow sustainably and bring in businesses that are that are appropriate for the Bend community. That population growth is going to drive demand for more event space. On the other side, we have challenges with winter accessibility coming over the pass. We all know that um we've talked to event planners and and they're very concerned about if I do an event two years from now, am I going to be able to get all of my attendees over the past? So, we have to be uh respective of that. We have a great airport in Redmond. We can reach 12 cities roughly direct flight. On the other hand, it's west coast cities. They tend to be smaller airplanes. So, it creates a challenge for us in bringing larger events to the community. We have a strong existing ecosystem of venues, Riverhouse, Hayden Homes, Tower Theater. We need to be very sure that we're not simply cannibalizing business. Uh so we need to be sensitive to that and as we develop what I'll call the the market demand projections and the resulting building program, we're really taking that into consideration. We have competition up and down the I5 corridor from Seattle to Eugene. There are a lot of venues. At the same time, when I look east, there's not a lot of population. So, all of these factors, I'll call them headwinds, drive into what we have to be respectful of as we develop market demand programs, uh, and building programs. Okay, that out lot of data here. Um, this is essentially a look at markets throughout the country. We've got 20 of them that have population bases not dissimilar from Bend. And the simple question we ask is, do you have one of these

dedicated facilities? We talked about a convention center, an arena, etc. And you can see 45% have a dedicated convention center. Not all of them, but almost half. Uh 80% have a dedicated arena. Usually that's tied to a college or university program. Uh you see 75 have a dedicated uh performing arts center, usually tied to a historic renovation of an old theater. So most of these markets have say 45% of them have at least two or three of these venues. You'll notice there are two that have none. Bend is one of the two that has really no venues in Bend uh that are purpose-built. This is not uh this is not a finding that says therefore build it. I want to be really clear about that. This is a finding that says we have a gap in the inventory raising the question is there enough demand to fill that gap? Just because there's a gap doesn't mean we go spend a lot of money to fill it. So we begin the process of saying something something could make sense here. Let's take a look at that. Uh industry trends. Another thing that we focus on um we're sitting here in 2026 and we all know this is not going to open if we do this for quite a few years. Where does it go? How we pay for it? How big is it? Etc. etc. So we look at trends in the industry that are technologydriven. You can see on the bottom right immersive event experiences. You can see on the upper left, virtual reality, hybrid events, walkable district, outdoor spaces. All of these things need to be monitored as we go through the planning process to make sure we're opening a venue that respects trends 5 years, six years, seven years from now and not something that's wonderfully suited for 2026. I mentioned uh in the in the previous slide where we don't have any of those four venues. Well, I also know that we can't build all four completely unaffordable. So we have to be multi-purpose as I said at the outset. So what does multi-purpose mean? So we

could be a convention conference center. There are events in the state market. U on the other hand the state association market is pretty defined and most of the venues in the state can accommodate them. So we're not looking for a tremendous amount of lift by virtue of building a new venue. Uh on the other hand there's the regional market. There's events like the Go West Summit, which is um Jeff's tourism event that's been in Anchorage, Alaska. It's been in Tahoe. It's been in Palm Springs. Those are the kind of events that we could compete for. On a national basis, as I said, we're not going to get the big national events. On the other hand, we can get smaller targeted industry national events that might be focused on conservation, sustainability, outdoors, smaller conferences that are that are national and in some cases international in nature. I know there's been discussion of a performing arts center. We're not trying to recreate that, but a venue may do some community events uh that have a stage or a performance component to it. Entertainment concert venue. We've got Hayden Holmes at 8,000. We got Tower Theater at 465 in terms of capacity. Not a lot in the middle. So, we're looking at this 1 to 3,000 seat concert venue that could be very successful in the market. Again, we have to respect uh challenges getting here over the past, etc., etc., But, you know, do we want to lean into some of that? The concert, comedy, entertainment sector. Youth and amateur sports. That's a big one for Lake Tahoe, for example. They do a lot of that amateur sports activity. And then community gathering space. Talking with you folks in the city, talking with school board, um, other entities, they're all looking for more community gathering space. And when I look at the event list, that'll be a big part of what we do here. not again to move them around from other venues, but those that are outgrowing the existing venues in addition consumer shows for example that are um you know the the home and garden show those kinds of things as the population grows those events need more space. So when I look at all of those factors

and I look at those opportunities for uh potential venue use what do we build? We think it should be built around a flat floor, large 20 30,000 squat square foot flat floor space with retractable seating. This wouldn't necessarily be a sports arena. It would be in a multi-purpose venue that has retractable seating, uh, breakout meeting and community use space, uh, fixed stage cap capabilities. A lot of the local promoters talk to us about put in a fixed stage, nothing substantial, put in a a green room that'll allow us to bring in an event without huge production costs. Putting up a stage is expensive. So now we're kind of leaning into all of these community uses by investing in assets in the building locally inspired uh design elements. Nobody wants to come to, you know, a hotel balloon. They want what is unique to Bend. And then lastly, and very importantly, if we're looking to bring in out of town visitors, we need lodging. Uh we're probably in a situation where that'll have to come with a new hotel attached to the building. Okay. So, uh, economic impact, kind of the the why do we do this, the bang for the buck, so to speak. Um, we've run an economic impact analysis that runs through four years. We believe year four is stabilized. We're looking at 17,000 plus room nights, uh, 30,000 new non-local visitor days. The direct spending, that's in hotels, restaurants, retail, entertainment of about 11.7 million. That's respent through the economy, multiplier effects. Many of you are familiar with that. That leads us to about 19.8 8 million in in um total output, total economic output generated by the venue. Of that 8 million is in in um earnings, 247 full and part-time jobs. And just looking at the hotel tax, around $323,000 of incremental hotel tax. That doesn't include some of the non-quantifiable impacts. Wherever this building goes, will spur economic development around it. Development that wouldn't otherwise take place. The people we talk about coming here,

they are your future visitors, they're your future residents, they're your future business owners. We're exposing ourselves to these these potential markets. Uh quality of life for residents. Uh we talked to a lot of people that said once we get out of summer, there's nothing for us to do. I don't snowshoes. I don't ski. This is the kind of venue that extends a 12 month period of entertainment and activity for residents. And lastly, small businesses. They're the ones that thrive. As we talked about, the local unique businesses thrive when you bring that many people to town in a sustainable manner. So, that's a wrapup. Obviously, this is a summary of 60 to 80 pages of research. So, if you've got questions, please please jump in. Questions, Mike?

How many what's the the projected like net new visitors that might show up because these numbers don't aren't quite that? Yeah, that's a good question. Sort of like multipliers of that.

It's it's I would say the large majority of them. What What'll happen? And you know, I've talked to my my new friends at the Riverhouse and there's concern that um that there'll be events moving from there to the new venue and they're not wrong. I mean, that will happen. The question is, will they fill those gaps with new events? They're not going to sit on their hands. So, there's going to be some shifting. We can't we can't get away from that. Um at the same time, we know there's population growth that's going to create demand for more and larger events. So, we have to kind of balance it. And the share of this that would be truly net new hard to say specifically. I would say that the pretty sub substantial majority of it would be new to the community. So that's in the 15 to 20,000 range. Some something like that. I mean non-local local days.

Yeah. I guess I'm just thinking visitors, you know, visual visitors.

Well, the the the we call it net new non-local visitor days. We've really worked hard to to peel off anybody. You guys go to an event. Sorry, you don't count. you're not net you're not net new non-local visitors. So we've really worked hard to just focus on those events that are bringing in out of town attendees and then trying to figure out for example the riverhouse uh unitarian facilities doing events. The high desert museum is looking to do some event space midtown volcanic I mean all of these venues exist. So doing the the analysis to find out exactly how many are going to be net new. I can tell you right now it's it's the the majority of those 118,000 attendees um and and the share of those that are net new would be would be new to the market.

Okay. Yeah. So that that helps answer the question about you know I think you you described it as cannibalizing the local economy and definitely big concerns about that. if you could elaborate a little bit. I mean, it sounds like the the the opportunity here is not necessarily to compete, but to add something that doesn't exist and would be sufficiently unique that we're not, you know, this isn't going to put the Tower Theater out of business or something like that. Um, is that accurate?

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, talking to the Tower Theater, they're uh they see the gap. Yeah, we're we're not going to build something that competes with them at 475 seats. U but uh we don't have the vision board here, but the Mission Ballroom in in Denver, for example, flat floor space, does all kinds of events, very multi-purpose. A version of that suitable for Bend is something that's high on their list is something that could be very viable. Uh Hayden Homes, they're, you know, they're not worried about anything. They've got large capacity, so

they're going to continue to do the fantastic business they do. Uh, so on the entertainment side, I think there's there's a pretty easy way to thread that needle. It's on the conference side, the convention side. That's where I want to be really careful that we're not building something that's simply a replica of what exists today. The other thing I would say is when I when I look at the Riverhouse or other hotels, um, their their business model is a function of generating revenue from two or three different areas. One of them is the food and beverage, some of the rental from the event itself. Just as importantly, it's the room's revenue. And if the rooms revenue are high enough, they can discount rent to a very low rate and still make a great return. Um, this venue wouldn't have that luxury. There is no hotel that you own that's going to be attached to it. So, you have a rate structure that has to be protected so these guys don't come back to you every year and say, "We've got a huge deficit." The other thing that I see happening is a rate structure that that is also designed not to go below a certain amount. There will be pressure on all of you to say, I need I want to do a community event in there and I don't have any money to pay rent. Got to be careful about that. At the same time, we don't want we don't want to discount rent for a convention. We don't want to go buy a convention that could fit at the riverhouse and get in a price war. We need to be the higher price venue. And when you when you think about the product that we're talking about developing, it is dramatically different than what exists at the Riverhouse. So what you're offering is that meeting planner that can fit in either a choice and they'll pick what what is ever suitable for them to the extent a piece of business doesn't go to the riverhouse again their job is to go and and backfill that with some other events that can generate revenue for their operation or roommates.

Yes, Steve. Um John, the um venue size was I guess for my for my money when I read it a little smaller than what I expected. Um I I feel like the the Bend High Auditorium when it comes back is going to be in the 1400 seat range or something like that. What what kind of market conditions or what added into the market would bump up the the seating that you would think you know something something in the four five grand range something like that.

Yeah. So, uh, the one to 3000 is in a configuration, um, if you guys have been to nightclubs that the Filillmore theaters, for example, they're flat floor event venues with the stage and the, you know, the bars along the side. We're looking at a capacity of about 3,000 for that. Uh, that is not the high school uh, business model, right? We're not in that. Uh then there's the more the fixed seating um venue that could be used for you know other types of concerts, comedy,

um some performing arts, although we're not building a perform performing arts center and the capacity for that I would almost give a TBD. Um the next stage if you decide to go forward is to bring on the architects and they're going to start helping us understand how big the flat floor space has to be given a certain seating capacity. The bigger the flat floor, the bigger the seating capacity. Um, I don't know how big it's going to get. I don't know if it's going to get, you know, over 3,000. I think that might be, you know, with the flat floor, I think that might be a bit of a stretch for us, but that's that's kind of a to be determined based on the architectural findings.

Can I just maybe a related follow-up question? Is the size of this thing like what kind of land space are we talking about? I mean I've heard some numbers throw around but um because and I'm thinking about in context not only the actual facility itself but my sense of this to be successful based on reading the report was hotels immediately adjacent so sort of thinking about that included even if it's maybe a separate entity that does that but what are we talking two about four acres 10 acres 7 acres well you you mentioned the two two of the three big land users the third one is parking

and parking has to be addressed and structured parking is now 50,000 in the space. We may start with some surface parking, but the building alone is probably, you know, 2 acres with loading, drop off, landscaping around it, maybe a little less than that. The hotel is probably 3/4 of an acre. So, you're really compressing this down to 2 and a half acres for the built space. Um, you want to allow for parking and you do want to allow for future expansion. So how big that is is hard to say, but is that something that get determined in the next phases? Oh, absolutely. Y

no, I just can you speak a little bit more about the hotel and the need for it? Is it I would just like to understand that a little bit better.

Right. So um I mentioned the Go West Summit. It's it is a major tourism event. We love that because it brings tourism professionals to the market, exposes Ben to them. It's it's a worthwhile event. They draw regionally. um they're looking at markets um that have a hotel package that can assemble a room block. Okay. So, say I need 700 rooms in a room block, say 500 rooms, something like that. The the Jeff will work with a meeting planner to say, "Okay, I can use these in your case probably eight or nine hotels, six or seven hotels to get that that room block." Not only that, if I don't build the building with a hotel, I'll be able to say to the meeting planner, and your nearest hotel is a shuttle ride away.

All works. It It's physically doable. The problem is it's not appealing to booking. Well, it's not appealing. The problem is your your your competitor in Eugene is going to say, "Why why in God's green earth would you do that?"

We can offer you the same facility package in a much improved hotel situation. You want as many convention quality rooms as close and walkable to the center with a headquarter hotel that represents a marketable product. Um, how big that hotel should be, I don't really know at this point. We're kind of triangulating around a few numbers. Uh, how it's paid for? I think there's some discussion to be had there. Is the market strong enough for a headquarter hotel? I would say some of your strong convention hotels in the market are running, you know, 73 74% occupancy at a rate of 160 170, some higher. Um, is that enough to entice a developer to come and build a 220 room headquarter hotel? Hard to say. Um, I will say, and this is just a single data point, I tried to book a room at a hotel downtown that'll remain nameless. Uh, and I ended up turning down a rate that started with a five. So, the rates in downtown Ben for the higherend hotels are midweek. I don't know what's going on, but they're they're very high. So, thanks. Shout out to McMinammans for hosting me.

They beat that rate. They beat the rate. I've enjoyed every minute. Um, oh, can I just Sorry. Actually, I was going to ask you a question. Oh, yes. I'd love to. Um it kind of tying off of that because you know one of the things that I know I've heard you talk a lot about is when the sun's not shining and the snow is not fall. Yeah. And how do we still get people to come here um and spend money here and so I was hoping you could talk about the what what having another conference uh center could actually do for our for our tourism

revenue. Completely that's what I was going to jump into. So, you know, the whole why why we're doing this is not, you know, strictly to serve hotels, but you know, as economic development partners with the city, we understand the constraints of growing revenue. And the resource that we have is tourism as an engine. So, we're always looking for more resources to spend on things. Could we consider building an engine or building that engine to check as many boxes as possible? One thing that we know for sure is that nothing is stable anymore. changes. I mean, you're listen our water tables at 8%. That if we have a fire season in July and August, uh that impacts the rest of the year for small businesses if we can't host those folks. So, there's a resiliency uh that we need to be thinking about as a community, whether we meet that in the private sector or the public sector together uh to diversify beyond strictly leisure as well, getting into business, travel, maybe in sports, all of these types of things. So more infrastructure that we have to serve indoor to address whether it's you, you know, changing weather and and increasing need in the community, um, we need to be thinking about. So for us, bringing that data data forward at a time when there's a lot of really important decisions about our future going forward just seems like a really, you know, timely way to do that. you know, looking at the coulds versus shoulds, we're in no way saying this is exactly what we need to do, but what does the community need? We listen like you do to a lot of people that have a lot of ideas and and wants uh and needs. And I think that's our intention is to show up and see if there's a way that we can come with data to help dream big and check a bunch of boxes

segue. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Maybe we should let mayor go first. Yeah. So, the mayor had a question. You go ahead, mayor.

Is that okay? Yeah. I mean, that's I I'm going to have to log off here. So, I just wanted to make sure that um I said that I I'm supportive of moving into next steps and exploring this further. I think we're not putting ourselves on the hook to build anything as has been discussed, but this this is a community there's community interest here and there's also a lot of um economic development potential. Um I think continuing to move forward without saying we're not committing any public dollars to this, right? We're just looking at what this might be and what the model might be. And if we are going to get into committing public dollars, there's going to be future conversations about that, right? But um I think it's a good opportunity to learn more and see where we end up. So

great. All right. So next step because it's six o'clock. Um what we're asking tonight is um just for the input from council. So visit Bend is still leading this next step. This is uh where we find out more. We start to talk to stakeholders. We look at the architectural design. we hone the numbers and really get into the feasibility of of whether or not this this is going to work here. Our role at the city is just one of our council goals is aligning with partners in economic development. This is one of those times we're not leading it, but we're by his by by your side.

We're by their side um and and giving input. There's going to be some staff dedicated time to this and uh we want to make sure that we're looking at site selection as well thinking about that with our economic development hats on urban renewal all the things and making sure that we are in alignment so that the next time and giving regular updates um and in addition to that you know we're doing a highest and best use study for city-owned properties in the URA downtown 15th Street this is one piece of really good information to put into that bigger puzzle of what do we do with our our land, what are we trying to accomplish for uh economic and community goals, revenue streams for us, where does a city hall fit, all of this is interrelated

and that's one of the reasons why we really need to be tight on following this and the next step.

So, I have a couple questions about the next steps. Um, I mean, I think you're probably going to answer a lot of the practical logistical things about what might it cost, where will we build it, who pays for it, who operates, like some of that stuff, at least preliminarily, a lot more than information than we have now. Um, and what's the time, what's the timeline look like? And even the sequencing of events like if you know, if we need hotels, like what what's that look like? What happens first, second, third, when might this thing be open? I think um it it is really important to me and I stressed this in the interviews that I had um is that we really talk about this in relationship to the other community efforts that are going on and I do think to the performing arts center. I think that is important because we're not going to I don't know if the community can do that and do this thing right when we're talking modeled after the Tahoe Blue Center. That's $110 million I think is the number that was in your report. And I think it's probably going to be more expensive than that in Bend and especially if we do um kind of do some of that stuff to act to attract uh the axe and the various rigging and all the sort of stuff that was talked about in the report. Um so it just seems important to me that we look closely at what's happening. I've even heard rumors about this the Dishes County Expo Center talking about doing some of this kind of stuff. So like what how does this fit in the context of all this and then what are the financial models? um what's the full range of options we can see from fully kind of quote public to something completely private and somewhere in between um and how does philanthropy potentially fit in that if it's going to meet the need of a performing arts center and then I um you know uh I I am concerned about losing focus on from an economic development devel development perspective frankly in particular about the kinds of jobs that we might generate with this. They strike me as mostly service jobs. I understand that there's about 13 full-time positions we might have at the end of

the four-year stabiliz at the end of that first four years, but most of them are are part-time and or temporary is what I took away from the report. And and I want to know like what are the trade-offs here in in the community if we're putting a lot of public money into this or even if it's just a lot of public time and effort through our staff, which is going to start here shortly. um that we look at the opportunity costs. What are we trading off? Are we going to have to give something up and not be successful in some other part of our economic development plan and what kind of jobs is this producing for the community? Are they the kinds of jobs we need for people to be able to afford to live here for my kids to come home? And that part honestly really worries me when we start to talk about the potential public resources that we could be asked to contribute to this. So that is something I I expect the consultants to do, but I think frankly the economic development team to be doing at the city. Um you know we have a lot of priorities in the community and a lot of things we got want to get done. Many of which the price tags are pretty big. Some approaching the scale and we don't have a lot of extra money at the moment and the tax system you know blah blah blah. So um I I think there's a lot of trade-off discussion here and I want to make sure that we're starting to dig into that.

Yeah. Um, I'm supportive of moving to the next stage. I think there is real potential and there is real need for some of this, but I want to do it in a cleareyed way that isn't just sort of seeing revenue and dollar signs and we got to go. I agree. We like I for me for us is about balance. So we I those answers working collaboratively and understanding the trade-offs or if there are trade-offs I wouldn't we would not recommend moving forward something that would be potentially threatening that. And I do think that we have a lot of really strong economic development needs. So we should be really strategic. Um I would move that forward.

I would add that um from that economic development standpoint, you know, is this a higher priority than that? That's certainly a question for

the local team in terms of some of the other issues you raised, the employment impacts. I think there's a little bit of work we can do to talk about the kind of jobs that this generates. you know, from a chef to a general manager to the, you know, the head um technician at the convention center. Uh and then the spin-off jobs that that tend to be more so understanding that a little better, I think is is valuable. And then one of the conversations I think we'd like to have is with economic development, business relocation specialists to talk about what is it that moves a company to want to come here versus someplace else. where do we fit in with this type of venue versus something else? And we found uh from our conversations, a lot of these relocation specialists say that kind of entertainment in a downtown area is very important to bringing in that next generation of workforce. So, it looks like we've got a little bit of work to do to kind of flesh that out as we come up with the building programs that might make sense, cost it, and and get that footprint.

That's interesting. you're saying almost the attraction of that kind of thing could that sounds and the trickle down to small businesses that are already existing and new ones too. Yeah. And and and if there are concrete case studies that really illustrate that in a community or two. I know I personally would like to see more of that. Yeah. Rather than just the broad statements about how it does that like really illustrate how it's worked in other places.

Yeah. No, that's a great idea. And you know, we're working in Asheville, Greenville, and the Carolinas and um you know, there's similarities between Bend and Asheville, very outdoor oriented destinations and arts focus. And we were looking at event venues there and and they are playing that kind of role. So, we can certainly develop and further develop some case studies uh to help flesh that out. All right, it is 607 unless there's any other uh feedback from anybody else who hasn't given feedback. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.