City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I will call this council work session to order. It's 4.02. The mayor is currently at a conference and will not be here this evening. We can start with roll calls. Start with you, Council Platt.

Steve Platt, he, him.

Megan Norris, she, her. Megan Perkins, she, her.

Mike Riley, he, him. Mario Mendez, he, him.

Gina Franzosa, she, her. And the first item tonight is our quarterly council goal update.

starting i'm going to kick it off um and just i know it's downpouring lightning thunder so we're all a little bit on guard right now as we are experiencing some major weather um so just excuse us if we have to step out of the room there has been some fires that have started as a result of this lightning so i was only to be really vigilant right now as we're moving through this so just wanted to state that up front The purpose for tonight is to provide a concise progress report on all six school areas, a handful of highlights from the past quarter, as well as a preview of some council touch points that are headed your way over the next quarter. we're going to keep the goal by goal recap at a pretty high level and then move into a deeper look at the council goal dashboard that jesse will help us move through as well as a more focused update on housing and permit activity and process improvement updates that we'll dive much deeper into with russ grace and melissa kimania and team and then finally we'll conclude with some final touches of our new proposed council schedule that will begin in september along with some changes to the format. You'll see some handouts in front of you that will walk through timing and posting, things like that, as well as some considerations for the actual action items and slowing down a few items just in concert with just workload volumes right now. So, just for everybody, everybody's benefit, we have a much more detailed progress report that is updated online. Folks can check out dive into our. Approximately 50 or so action items. We're not we don't have time to go through all of that. Just hitting the high points here. This is our scorecard. It rolls up every action across the 6 full areas. So, as you can see, 77% are on schedule 14% complete and 9% are off schedule. We're going to talk specifically about the housing off schedule, which is. Really related to that high level goal, and we want to dive a lot deeper into that in that next section. So I want to save our time for that. Bottom line, the portfolio is fairly healthy and moving forward. Many of the accomplishments that we're going to highlight might seem obvious from the past quarter, but I think it's really important to take a moment and just talk about the significance of the work that you all have done as council, some really big policy lifts over the past quarter. As we'll talk about, we are seeing the emerging trends of a slowing pipeline of housing permits, which is causing concern that we're going to go into more detail here in a bit. All right, just what's ahead over the next quarter. You're going to see some goals return to you around our accessible and effective government. That's tonight with the pro-housing permit times. More work on the pro-housing group that's going to happen in September with our affordable housing advisory committee. And we'll talk about that here in a moment, the climate resiliency goal area. Wildfire resiliency defensible space is in October. And our urban tree canopy plan, which is another great activity that involves a lot of volunteers. We've been sharing about that. That'll be shared with you in November. We will be talking about aspects of the tree code in September as well, along with in concert with the employment readiness program, which. We'll be discussing pieces of those with our developer roundtable that was set for August 30th alongside the neighborhood commercial and then just other touch points between our development community and city council policymakers about how we can make sure that we're in sync. And then economic prosperity comes back to you on September 2nd goal areas related to our assistance programs and revenue policy. And then moving forward on the with housing, we will see a pro housing. I'm sorry at the home committee recommendations coming to you on August 12th. We have two growth plan workshops. It's actually September 13th and the 23rd, two kind of half day retreats. Those should be on your calendar. The next quarterly goal update will be traffic and safety. So we'll involve a law enforcement component to it. You'll be receiving a deeper dive into the activity around automated traffic enforcement and enforcement in general, alongside crash data and some of the efforts that I think are top of mind with council goals. And transportation infrastructure, the CIP update that's coming before you on September 9th, it's multi-pronged. So it's a part two from the conversation we had in May where we're looking at the use of the geo bond and framing questions that we can then propose to the new Transportation Mobility Advisory Committee around use of ODOT. Funds that are in the geo bond alongside other kind of big projects over the next couple of years, how we might prioritize that work and what questions we want to get input on. I also want to use that opportunity to talk about Greenwood and the data that we're seeing. And now we have another year with Greenwood and then also revisit the only 8th intersection that was brought up to roundabout versus signal and additional data that we'll have to share with council then. Um, kind of moving forward with the now the highlights with the goal areas. Starting off with accessible and effective government. Um, we had a reference to our 1 city initiative in the council goals. It's really a work internal process. Um, it's, it's, this is refreshing our mission vision values and really setting our shared organizational priorities. Why we've been doing this now is it's. really in concert with our evolving community needs our resource constraints and really just changing and how we work so we have an opportunity to operate as one city that guides our work together strengthening our cross-departmental culture and aligning priorities across departments that's really the kind of the theme behind this revised mission vision and values we've just released this internally the last couple of weeks just to kind of anchor our values here, accountability, owning our actions and following through, collaboration, building a shared understanding across teams and community, stewardship, using our resources responsibly and balancing today's needs with future impact, and inclusion, designing services so everyone can participate and benefit. So next up on this work is we're building our strategic plan. A lot of what we are doing, the actions, We're already in progress, we're just pulling it all together under this 1 city framework and we'll be crosswalking kind of that work already underway and I'll be sharing updates with you as that takes more shape. Moving on to the next school area, climate resiliency, 2 adoptions to note again, just want to underscore the significance of these policy options was the climate pollution fee as well as the home parking state building codes, which are now both. Well, that are 327 is now in effect. We had a delayed implementation with the pollution in concert with the state building code changes that are happening next April. As I mentioned, our citywide tree inventory is underway. We've launched a new dashboard with key data insights. I've shared that with you in the council for the city manager memo. One change to this project is that it's now a two-year initiative rather than one just due to the larger volume of trees. It's a good problem to have. And then we just recently held that joint meeting with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs where the Deschutes, water in the Deschutes Basin was a key topic. The Bloomberg Wildfire Resiliency Project is complete. We're advancing those project ideas that included prototype programs that directly help residents make their property more fire resilient. So instead of just assessing properties, going to that next level and exploring ideas where you can provide direct assistance, particularly for those community members who are more vulnerable. Under economic prosperity, we've completed the highest and best used financial analysis of city on property that you reviewed and directed staff to narrow newer renovated facility options. to the first and then the first street first in franklin as well as the former public works campus and on july 15th you adopted the extended enterprise zone resolution which gave us authority under house bill 4084 to allow agreements up to up to 10 years of property tax abatements the first applicant is going to be in front of you at the next council meeting Urban renewal momentum is strong. There's 515 multifamily units under construction, 70 new jobs created with projects including Britta Ridge, Emblem Parkway, and NOCO or Cooley. However, I wanted to note with this item, there's been a recent ruling from the Bureau of Labor and Industries that is concerning on the applicability of prevailing wage requirements on the use of tax increment financing. So we're digesting that information. So more to come in the next couple of months about those programs and the impact that that ruling has on those programs. And then the small business assistance grant program that was approved last month, applications will open on August 5th. As I mentioned, the Home Committee just finalized their recommendations. They had their last meeting on July 9th. They unanimously approved those recommendations that you'll see on August 12th in the work session. uh the 2026 point in time count showed a 16 reduction of people experiencing homelessness we're going to talk a little bit about that tonight which is great news and some good momentum however uh you know continuing concerns about the sustainable funding uh for our shelter system um and it's going to take all of us coming together state local levels to address this particularly coming up as part of the 27 29 finding the budget development And then just this continued concern, we'll go into more detail tonight about national trends and the funding gaps that are making it harder for developers and providers to hit our production targets across the housing spectrum. So we'll go much deeper into that here in a bit. Moving on to public safety, our Bend Fire and Rescue earned the American Heart Association Gold Award for 2026, which is the recognition of exceptional cardiovascular emergency care, where we've transitioned away from that just survivability rate to a more comprehensive performance metric. We also just transitioned to our D shift last week that took place on the 16th. A lot of work and effort. Big thanks to the team for all the behind the scenes work to make that happen. Part of that objective is to reduce some of our overtime costs as well as the burnout for our employees. And then we've begun the city rural district service and governance alignment project, multifaceted, leading to the renewal of the levy, but also looking at some of our underlying agreements and how we fund our fire department. And then on police, our staffing remains a challenge. We are authorized for 120.5 full-time equivalent, or FTE. Currently, we have 96.5 deployed and seven folks in training, so we're still catching up to that full staffing level. Our automated traffic enforcement for June recorded 1,097 total citations. Of those, 330 were speed and 767 were red light. Although the data is still, we have to review that data with an officer, so just a little caveat with the finality of those numbers.

Again, more information. Is it okay to ask questions as we go along here?

Yes. Actually, I was going to do one more slide and then kind of pause and then I can kind of go back if that's okay. then just last well second to last transportation infrastructure uh the ben bikeway had its reveal ride with new signage traffic diverters pilots the quick build curb extensions in place asphalt art lighting upgrades new neighborhood greenways and bike activated flashing beacons with more intersection and shared use path work later this year On the construction side, Butler Wells is running early. You should have that finished before school. Franklin and 15th and Franklin Avenue as well as 15th and Ferguson are on track. Wilson railroad crossing is finished. um and then the nef corridor multi-use path is also starting uh the nap the outback expansion on the water side has cleared nipa as part of the multi-year town site act process so we can move forward with purchasing the property uh purchase and sale agreement will come to you uh shortly and then i did hit the accept button on the 32 million for the federal grant for reed market bridge So that's kind of the recap of the activity. Before I turn it over to Jesse to talk through the dashboard, happy to answer any questions about any of these items.

So back on the public safety one, the staffing challenges for the police department, is that related to the idea of moving people through the academy step? Is it the same?

It takes it takes time. So, you know, and I think we've just seen a slow down of we had a lot of lateral folks. We've had folks. We've been really aggressive at hiring folks. We've had some folks that just haven't passed. Are pretty rigorous background process and or the training process. And so we have talked to the chief. We're looking at some really creative ways of potentially, like, using our, that's our community service officer as a better entry point to, like, as a training program to lead towards. Police officer just thinking, you know, just differently about how we're onboarding folks. But, yeah, it's a concern of the staffing levels where they're at. But we're trying really hard to restore them.

So it's all just slowing down recruiting and assigning people that have met the qualifications. Correct.

Eric, am I remembering correctly that we didn't have a full FTE for those folks at the beginning of the biennium because we expected some time phase for the hiring? Am I remembering that from our budget cycle? Um, yeah, I feel like chief repeat your question a little bit for me. Reframe that as I, as I recall, not all of those 120 FTE were hitting the budget on day one of the 25. 27 budget because there's going to be a delay.

Yeah I see what you're saying. So we're authorized for 120.5 sworn members. Not all of those hit that budget on say July 1st right because if we're down of course those salary savings are there and then the idea of hiring through that so it could be a number of months even if we're a full staff and someone leaves then that takes a while so that could be savings but we're talking that we're at a level that is is very low so all that is personnel savings now what we do end up doing is a lot of that comes back into budget at at the year we take one to two million dollars out pretty quickly right away from personnel savings it goes back into back in the budget and then that gets as we go through the year we see where the budget's at um what our danger is is if we take the positions away for budget um the rehiring process takes much much longer so we're trying to just stay above water and it's um it's even changed a bit from from the numbers that were from the update um just because of retirements and and those challenges so it's not necessarily i think um comes right what you're speaking of is the previous delays we had was with the police academy that's no longer there they've really revamped their entire process had additional funding from from the budget they now do 60 person academies instead of 30 so it's there they can handle us it's just getting people in the door thank you thank you other questions before i turn over to jesse is there um an output from the bloomberg report that you can share with us is that on the website or anywhere

Well, do we have anything formal yet? I'm happy to put something in the council memo on it.

Good afternoon, Council. So I'm going to touch on two items today on the dashboard. There we go. So I think this first item I want to highlight is our DeChiefs County alerts. Obviously very timely with everything going on right now. If you remember in the beginning of this biennium, we wanted a 10% increase in signups. To date now, we have 12.7%. So at the start on 7-1-20-25, we had... 28,196 and we are at 31,768 and that is signups within the city event, not total county. There are many, many more in terms of the Deschutes County total, but we've met that goal and hopefully we see it keep rising over the next several weeks. And then we're going to jump over to transportation infrastructure. We have a new item to show today, two new metrics. If you remember, there was a desire to do a bike shed, walk shed score. In this case, the original goal was in terms of percentage of population. That was a little hard, so we have percentage of households for our bike shed, walk shed. Right top metric there is our housing units within 10 minutes of a key destination. We're at 76% of households. And Kate, if you want to scroll down. And then from a bike shed, it's a number of units within 15 minutes. Like, ride to a key destination. Key destination are schools. Higher ed parks, civic destinations, such as city hall library, right? And things like that mixed commercial, the grocery stores. convenience stores and supermarkets really are those key destinations um when you're looking at holistically uh the the bike shed you know at 98 basically means 15 minutes there are generally multiple key destinations within that 15 minutes uh for those specific units however when you look at on that uh walk shed side typically you're really only at one to two and it falls off pretty pretty quickly in terms of number of key destinations within Most units, so there are a lot of units that might have just 1 and there are units in terms of a walk shed. In certain parts of the city that do not have a key destination within 10 minutes, regardless if they have the infrastructure there. As well, and to do this, meaning, we're only using the presence of having that infrastructure. So, for instance, there has to be a sidewalk. You have 10 minutes, like, if you walk down the sidewalk. If there's a gap, and you have to cross the street and go around and then come back, it's still at a. Crosswalk and that you have crosswalks there. That's how we say you have a network. So it doesn't necessarily get to the condition. Of that sidewalk that might be there, so it has to be by lanes. And there has to be sidewalks to get to where you're going. So questions on this. commercial destination we have that we actually have a broken down we have so this is a composite score for each one of these we have each one of these metrics looking at each one of those key destinations so for instance different types like I'll just pick on schools for instance you have elementary you've got middle school you've got high school we have each one of these scores at each one of those levels that I could share with you does that go into the press info does that Uh, it'll talk about the key that's just around the key destinations at this point. So, uh, the next step is to start looking at this and we're identifying where those gaps are. So, for instance, let's say we have a gap in our sidewalk. Uh, what we're doing, and there are gaps in the sidewalks around which 1 of those gaps that actually, if we were to fix it, what is the cost of that? And how many units would it necessarily open up? Uh, for stuff oftentimes there are gaps that again, somebody can route around, but then there are other gaps that actually. cut off units to a key destination.

Thanks for that, Jesse. And you mentioned that the quality of the connections isn't necessarily reflected in the score, because these are some pretty impressive numbers. So for example, if there was a crossing at a busy street, but there's no marked crosswalk or something like that, That still gets counted here, even though we might actually identify that as a barrier to getting kids to school or something like that.

Correct. In this case, in terms of a street walk shed or bike shed, it does not get to what might feel comfortable at walking. It is really the presence of having an actual crosswalk, like an ADA crosswalk there. It doesn't mean it's lit. It doesn't mean that it's protected. It's just that is a crosswalk. That's what it's there for. there is the assumption that traffic and others will stop for you and that it is usable.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, I do think we might be, I don't want to speak for everybody up here, but we might be interested in a particular shred on the commercial, community commercial, because that's been such a high interest rate for our community to just have that.

Yeah, and so to go into that just really quick a little bit. Thank you.

like grocery stores.

Yeah, so grocery stores are pretty easy for a lot of stuff because that is an actual store. We know where they're at when you do it. When we're doing like mixed commercial and stuff, what we had to do is actually do density. So we took basically our IT rates for the type of stores in a specific area and said, OK, at a certain threshold, that's where we have enough density. That's where we started looking at stuff. So there are smaller areas where it might be like Bruno's Market or something, if you think about that, where it's just like a onesie thing in the middle of an area. it's not a key destination per se. It's close, it's great for those, but it's not enough density where we would think about, hey, we need to build infrastructure to it, or think about how would we plug that gap. So we're looking at density with mixed commercial. Again, we can share that with you and how we did the math for all that.

Thank you.

Can I make a really quick comment? Going back to the fire safety stuff, I just would... to get signed up for Deschutes Alerts. Everybody in here's already signed up? Okay, there's a few, great.

Okay, so Deschutes, if you... Can I confess?

Yeah, I know. DeschutesAlerts.org, if you enter that into your browser, it will take you to the page where you can sign up and enter your cell phone number and be able to get alerts. It's really important people stay involved and understand what's going on in the community. So for those who aren't, I'd encourage you to get signed up today.

I actually want to go back to the bike shed, walk shed model thing in the 15-minute city. I know I've seen, I'm like just sitting here racking my brain. Did we hear a presentation on this? I don't think we have. I think it's been like mentioned in like a council, like a city manager update or something like that. But I'm interested to know exactly what this is.

Yeah, and I think what we want to do, because we just got a scratching of the surface of the data. And as I said, we want to have the focus on our October update and be actually traffic safety. This is just one element when we talk about where you have access to those amenities. But then it's also what kind of safety data are we seeing? What's the condition? There's a much deeper dive in terms of our performance metrics that we want to take with council. So I think more to come there. This is just more standard kind of practice of industry, the 10-minute city or the 15-minute city. I was just asking if there's any more context.

Yeah, it does take topology into account as well. So for instance, if you do live on the top of review and you're going to ride down and it's easy to get down, but it's going to take longer than 15 minutes to get up. It starts factoring and there is a standard methodology that we do. For a lot of that stuff, and it does, we can get into a lot of the math and share that if you would like.

So it's like a software or something that you're using?

Well, we use our geospatial information system basically in a lot of math to do it. And we use all of our infrastructure stuff that we get as part of our as-builds from the private development side as well as... our CIP work and transportation mobilities work. You take that, you layer in our business license and a variety of other things, ITU codes, you start doing all this math to figure out where everything is. To find out where we have those gaps is, and you have to create a routable network for the whole thing.

Jesse, do we look at transit at all? Like how close we are to like transit stops or...

We did not take so we have the intent, I think, in a secondary within our transportation policy group, where we talk about a lot of these things. We kind of go over that to make sure it's correct. Part of that is, we have talked about, like, how do we look at this from a transit perspective as well? I know when we're thinking about initiatives, such as and a variety of other things where we have to have transit and we have to think about that. That we will do that. It's more or less at this point, like, what are we looking at? Just the big part was key destinations, walking and biking, which we do have a lot of control over those. So how do we look at that?

All right. going to move on to our housing and permitting update um so as you all know housing is one of your top priorities so we're closing tonight with a focused deep dive uh here uh russ grayson uh jesse thomas and melissa kamani will take you through where the market is and our permitting pipeline stands as well as review reviewing our permit timelines In recent focus areas, we'll share findings from independent studies and then lay out some next steps. Really, the through line is how we're using data to answer the questions that matter. Are we producing enough housing? Are we delivering timely service? Are resources aligned with demand? And are our policies working? So I'm going to turn it over to Russ to take it from here.

All right. Good. Good afternoon still. I think Russ Grayson, Chief Operations Officer for the City. So Eric kind of gave a preview of what we're talking about. And as we go through this, we're starting to group these critical items into three main focus areas. One is around our process. How do you get through the process to the City? The other is the complexity of, of the process. When we talk about like the infrastructure requirements for development and all the code changes that are occurring, both at the state and local level, um, that adds to confusion and frustration with developers. So we want to make sure that we're, we're looking at that process. And then a key focus again, coming even off that development infrastructure conversations around funding. So we're going to try to weave in, as Eric said, what are, what are we seeing in the market? What are the data showing and permitting trends are permitting timelines. what we're doing in our continuous improvement efforts within the department and we have some studies that are being released both at the state level and one initiated by the city and then where we're focused not only looking back but also looking forward with next steps. So a lot of data is coming and information. If you have questions, let us know and we can answer them as we go through. So first I'm going to turn it over to Jesse and he will start talking about kind of the macro trends that we're seeing on the permitting side.

So we wanted to kick it off just talking about at a high level what we are seeing currently with the market and what's happening and thinking about it from application trends. So the top chart when we're looking at this is the number of single family applications this this does include um single family um we've got town homes duplexes we've got 80 years of variety like all of our kind of residential um homes in here not multi-family per se so if you look at the top chart right it's pretty variable up and down it's like 24 months worth of data what we do is we take that data and can you can you mute that thanks

I just saw it.

So then what we do is we take what we do all the time to get rid of a lot of that seasonality, that up and down that we have within the data is we do a 12-month rolling total. So the bottom chart is that 12-month rolling total. And what that means is when you look at June, it says 634 applications. That's 634 applications from June of this year all the way back to July of last year. So every one of those numbers is a full 12 months of data and helps us smooth and the important part of looking at this is that tail end of that bottom chart where it's pretty flat with that right and we were we're at 750 as a high but we were kind of a few years or about a year ago in that kind of 700 range and down that it's stabilized there and what we're not really expecting it to go up too much with especially with rates and what it is the development costs right now i We think we're going to stay kind of steady. What that does mean is it will have an impact on how we look at and think about our housing council goals, which we're going to touch on just a couple slides.

And this kind of parallels what we're hearing from the market as well. I'm sure you're hearing as well. It's not falling off a cliff, but it is slowing down out in the market. So it is matching what we're hearing. This next is just a quick recap of the development activity in terms of just we still have a lot of permits in review, a lot of permits under construction, and the associated units under construction. So sometimes remember, one permit could be several 100 units of housing. And, and also, so we can see we still have a large volume going through CDD, which kind of alludes to what Jesse was saying. And also just how much money that is putting into the market in terms of valuation and construction dollars. Anything else?

Yeah. So the two key numbers for us right now are the units in review. So 645 units. And that's again, that's all residents. So that'll include multifamily in this case. And then we've got the units under construction. The units under construction is fairly high. It's really good. But it consists of a lot of multifamily projects that we have already accounted for in terms of permits over the last several years. They're just now like getting under construction and will hopefully make it

and be available to the market but they don't really count towards our council goal numbers at this point or our own numbers so now i'm going to turn it over to melissa she's going to go over how we're comparing to council goals and the data that we're using for council goals just to remind where that information came from and where we're at good evening council um

Melissa come on your affordable housing coordinator so on this slide you can see your Council goals for the biennium for housing are based on the Oregon housing needs analysis figures and what we call owner and we have. broken this down by the 3942 is all permits 1818 is the goal for affordable housing and then 826 is for middle housing. We also have this red dotted line here that shows really what the average is over a biennium for the city. So you can see essentially where we usually are and the lighter blue bars are where we actually are. The owner numbers are ambitious and really the number of permits that are showing here were projects that started years ago, as you know. So to meet those ambitious goals, we would have had to have a large infusion of funds years ago to be able to hit these goals. What we're seeing in the pipeline, I can only speak to what I see that we have funded as a city with our city funds or federal funds, and there aren't very many that are funded that aren't yet shown here. So really, I have the unfortunate task to tell you that we will not meet these goals definitely for the middle housing, most likely for affordable housing. The overall goal, we will likely meet that, but not with affordable or middle housing.

Sorry, go ahead.

I'm going to go ahead. I just want to add to that average number right there. That's our average over the last three biennium. But again, that includes two of those biennium had some pretty significant multifamily numbers within that. The median is actually lower. Even hitting that roughly 2,800 units normally is really difficult for us.

Melissa, can you talk about how has the communication been with the state? We should be technically halfway there, right? We have another year in the biennium. We are even close. Is the communication going from the City of Bend to the state that, look, these are units that have been permitted years ago? Basically everything you're saying, how do we, oh, and here comes Rachel. To answer all these questions.

technically these aren't necessarily a requirement of the state until we finish our growth management plan steps and so when we hit that commitment then we need to hit these targets okay and that's part of that conversation of the growth plan development um we're just recognizing that if we're not hitting these targets today, the need is going to continue to grow. And you will see that in the 2026 methodology report that the need keeps expanding.

So I think it goes to some of the conversations we're having with council around just general funding from both the state and local level of what levers we control. And also the requirements, when you start thinking about middle housing, that goes right into that development infrastructure requirement conversation. It's a mixture of what are we requiring them to build, where are they building, and the money involved in doing it, especially like in the affordable housing world, and then supporting infrastructure for infill development.

To look at this another way, we've had our five-year goals that we've been briefed prior, and it talked about how above 80% AMI, we have incentivized an appropriate number of housing units, which would make me think that the middle housing would be higher in terms of what we, I realize they're not being built yet, but am I as tense with those incentivized units or am I feeling a little better? Can you tell me how I should feel about that?

I can give an example. Last summer, our division put out $5.7 million in July where we stacked pro-housing funding, CDBG funds, and affordable housing funds for the community. Those were land acquisition projects that will not have permits approved likely until 2027 or 2028. So while the funding went out the door and maybe were counted in those numbers to show what we have done, They're not reported here because their permits haven't been approved yet.

I think, Steve, you're talking about the psych-specific TIF as a part of that, too.

Right, which is part of this number, which over 80% AMI, we had incentivized. I realize those numbers are changing. with our TIF, but they relate to this, do they not?

They do, and when you look at some of the macro numbers, especially around multifamily housing, what we're seeing is a large amount of construction. Some of that was the policy levers that council initiated to be able to put more housing on the ground. We're not seeing that next wave of multifamily coming in for a large reason. So we'd always love to see an even flow of construction because what we just experienced was we had a large supply or at large demand and the supply was late getting there. And, you know, in theory, if we stop now, as Melissa was just alluding to, it takes two to three years to get a project from I want to do something to out of the ground. And so we could have this slug effect occurring in that multifamily market.

I get it. I'm comparing the five-year picture, you know, which is five years from now that we're predicting on. and our much narrower biennium goals. And I'm saying, I think there's a little bit of a difference.

Actually, the next slide kind of talks about it. Can we just, and then we can go back to maybe because this helps tell some of the.

Yeah, so this graph on the right is, and so staff has to, we're required to look at housing units and production a lot of different ways. So what we're looking at here is, this is what our 2016 housing needs analysis out of that urban growth boundary expansion process was. And it shows from that, in theory, we're doing pretty well, right? Right. but we're still obviously have a housing crisis and times have changed and the dynamics have changed. So now we're trying to adapt to this new number and what we need to do, which is much more aggressive than what we were assuming back here. But we do, it depends which set of data you're working at. We are achieving the goals that we set out in that UGB expansion, but now we're dealing with another set of factors going forward in our new comprehensive plan, urban growth boundary update.

And I'm much more concerned about the new need rather than the 10-year-old need.

Yeah, so let me go into that, too, because I can tell you that's how we can have these conversations, is this is how we're using the data. I would say we're pretty advanced in comparison to a lot of other jurisdictions in the amount of data that we have and the amount of data that we publish. I know Jesse gets a lot of inquiries from other cities about what are we doing and how we're doing it. We use that for a lot of different things. One is just to look at the macro data. How are we doing? Are we hitting the trends and the production targets that we have and what's our pipeline so we can have these conversations? We also look at it to, and we'll get into this here in the next section, of how we're delivering our timely service. So we have a lot of data around our permit status and tracking and everything. And it helps us identify bottlenecks in the system. And our staff manages now the data on a weekly basis to see, like, if we have a lot of residential permits sitting in the queue and our commercial is doing fine, we're going to take plans examiners off of commercial and put them on the residential to try to even flow that out. I know that we have a whole another level of internal reporting that Jesse works with the team on to look at how's the engine running and what are the factors and we'll get into that here. The other thing we look at is exactly how the policies are working. I always go back to this ADU graph that we use where we were getting no production in ADUs, made a slight policy change, got a little bump, did another policy change, a little bump, and then we did a big one like simplifying the process and removing sidewalks and all of a sudden ADUs jumped. We want to continue to do that across all the different forms of things. I'm not saying it jumped to levels we want, but it was a definite uptick in the production of ADUs. I think middle housing now, we want to start to build those similar databases and we can use the data we have to do that and say, hey, if we make this policy change that we're talking about, what happens over the course of a year? See what happens.

I just want to clarify that slide, though, if you go back, just one, because Steve's questions were making me wonder. So middle housing, are you talking about like cottage clusters, duplexes, tri-fly, that sort of thing? So multifamily would be in the total housing?

No.

Okay. Oh, multifamily would be in affordable housing?

It's income-based.

Yeah, the Oregon housing needs analysis is based on AMI ranges. So middle housing is the AMI range between 80% AMI and 120% AMI, or 81% and 120% AMI. Those 63 units that you see up there are the site-specific funded units that have been permitted.

That have been permitted. But there's a number of others that have not. Correct. That were approved but not yet permitted. Yeah. And there's a whole .

I just wanted to demonstrate that your incentives are actually creating

uh middle income housing units but i think to your to your point that that middle housing like our target where we need to be focused on because in terms of just the ami range it is these other products it's the it's the smaller clusters and different type of development so we can do in the infill to try it's like how do we match those those incentives and requirements up to achieve housing at that price point so are we capturing so

So, like, the naturally occurring.

Yeah, so this is middle income housing right here on this slide. And then we have middle housing, which also occur at the same time that are in the total number housing, but they're not necessarily income.

This is just income. This is middle income not being captured here, but it's like, if it's not deed restricted at that level, because this is out of the state content. This is coming from the state, so this is a metric we have to look at. We're still counting it, but the state isn't counting.

Not on this slide, at least. Just a comment. If we're struggling with this, I'm just worried that our community is also going to be struggling with understanding this.

And this is sort of a broader function of, right, we have our local efforts that we have control over, and then we also are dealing with the state. And the state does not sort of count the data in that way. They count it based on the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis is based on the income, not on the housing.

On deed restricted. Because, I mean, there is, like, naturally occurring affordable housing, but that is a factor, but it's just not reflected here. So, I think it might be good to get that data next set of council goals.

And, like, how do I agree? We've got data points coming in and reporting from a variety of different directions. And it is confusing. In fact, just preparing for this presentation, there was a lot of staff conversations to make sure we were presenting the numbers in the right way.

i mean i do think in future presentations it helps to label it middle income housing or put the ami range in the bottom just to be all clear but because there's the middle of housing type yes yeah it confused me for quite some time same thing with like capital a yeah so i think our thing is maybe this is partly to count counselor platt's question of Are we doing three- and five-year projections? Like, you know, where we're looking out and saying, well, if, for example, the site-specific stuff was all to go through, then we expect, you know, roughly within three years, 80% would those be at least permitted. Do we have those kinds of projections?

We had discussed presenting projections to you this evening, but Russ will talk a little bit later and Jesse about... why the projections are not predictable at this time.

There's some knowns, like just on normal single family, it's That's totally market-driven, right? And so we can project what we know is in the queue, what's being in review, and land use, and affordable housing trends. But to try to aggregate that into one number, it gets very confusing of what's good data and what is we're just kind of looking in years past.

But at some point, it also gives us some sense of, well, this is what we've been working on and the things that we're trying to do. And if they were to come to fruition, here's where we would be, knowing that they are subject to all of uncertainty.

For me, when I look at this graph and knowing where we're heading with the growth plan and the housing work that's going to be done in that, These are really aggressive. I think that's the main thing. This is more production than the city has done. One time we had a road to 3,000 over a biennium, right? And we barely hit that. And now these are even more aggressive in a different market, in a different financial constrained market and different affordability issues coming in. So to me, it's like this is challenging and this is where a lot of the hard work is going to be when we start looking at housing policies and goals with all that work that's going on.

We're not different from many other cities also in Oregon.

but also it also demonstrates the housing need and the housing crisis in the state at the same time and remember we went round around about this and you know i was one of the folks who said let's go for ona it's going to be a stretch goal for us we got it and so we acknowledge it's a stretch goal but let's not aim short let's go for it all right i'm going to keep going if that's okay so um

Turn this one over to Jesse and he's gonna just explain this is now we're moving more internal Like what do our staff do and kind of how we're looking at residential reviews again So as you think about that last slide again, how are we using data?

What are we looking at? So one of one of our goals the council goals was right to get our first review out for 35 days for those residential Reviews and how are we how are we using the data to say hey if something's sitting there for a long time? How come how can staff get there? So we track that we look at it and and right now for this binding we're sitting at um 25 days so we're under and prior to kind of going through some continuous improvement work uh and the year well basically starting uh went live in like may of 2025 april 2025 we were averaging 37 days at that point so we've done a little bit of work to kind of get it down to in that around 12 day average but um we're hoping that with some of the reports from that we've got uh coming out from the state and others there are other ways to look at it and try and see if we can like improve on these numbers so we're always watching always looking at that uh and then the bottom one is how we're kind of breaking down where is the time in terms of um getting a permit out uh for an application how long is it taking and where is that time sitting And the key item here is kind of on that. If you look in the last kind of few months of that is we're seeing that permits are actually we're approving them. We're getting them ready to go. Everything's there, but they're sitting there waiting for their final fees that the applicants are waiting a while before they're even picking them up and paying. And that that's kind of what's driving. And you can see is that top part of the light green or teal in that chart and that it's growing and growing a bit. And that used to be an aberration for us. So when you look at it in that 72, in that July of 2025, That didn't happen all that often back previous years, but we're seeing it happen more and more now.

What that graph shows is the dark blue on the bottom. That is the time that the application is with city staff. The middle bar is the time the application is actually with the applicant waiting for them to respond and get back to us. Then the top is permit's been approved, it's ready for pickup, but it's sitting there. The reason it's sitting there is when you come pick up your permit, that's when you're paying SDCs and all the large fees. so one of the indicators that you see here is people are putting permits in but they're waiting to pick them up because they want to make sure a lot of times they need they want to make sure they have a buyer on that lot they're not building as many spec homes and when you see that time goes up that means the market there's something going on in the market that because a lot of times when when things are moving quickly as soon as the permits ready they pick it up and you have a couple of days between there. So that's another indicator for us. And we also, when we have conversations on monthly calls with builders and things like that, and every time I get in a room with a builder, we're hearing that of like, yeah, we're not just putting a lot of product out there unless it's sold or pre-sold. This is a look at engineering. I know engineering has been a big focus. In fact, Ben Barry is sitting right here, and if you have more specific questions, he's the city engineer in that department. He can come up and talk about it, but this is just another indication. Same graph just for engineering in terms of permit review times. Again, dark blue on the bottom, time with us. Middle band is time with the applicant. Top band is time waiting for a permit to get pulled. What this shows is there's always great fluctuation in this. And what we do as we have conversations on this is when we see this graph, I or Colin pick up the phone and call Ben and say, hey, what's going on with that bottom number there? Because it looks out of whack. And he goes, Ben can immediately go to the review engineers and figure out, hey, what's going on? So this one, it had multiple review rounds. Comments went back multiple times. The comments were not addressed, resubmitted. We had to review it again. We had to kick it back. And so you see this multiple times. Other times when you see long review times, it could have been, well, it was a major roundabout. Sometimes an infrastructure plan can be a simple fire line connection. Other times we're talking major infrastructure, arterials, roundabout connections, and it takes long times. Or we're doing bridges, and there's special outside consultants we use for that. So there's always a storyline behind these numbers, and one permit doesn't equal another permit.

Yeah, and this this, uh, graph, uh, specifically, when we're looking at this now that 974 is active, Ben sent a good job with his team prepping for it. And this is helping us measure whether or not we're getting out that, uh, those permits in the required state time frames as well.

So the next thing that we've been doing this before, but now I'm showing you the next layer of continuous improvement that the department's doing. So first we started with the overall timelines. Are those in balance now with our kind of where we want to put them out in projections? Is that workload balanced? So now we're going to the next question is like, okay, so why is it taking so long? How many review cycles is someone to go through and why are they going through so many review cycles? This is the same kind of data set from the residential reviews, and what this shows is on the bottom, the darker blue, is those permits that pass on the first review. And those permits are, I would say, our theoretical goal, the ideal goal is, yep, you're in and out in one permit. Permit cycle, the reality of that is that just doesn't happen is typically between 2 to 3 review cycles to get a residential permit through for a variety of reasons, which we can get into. So that the next block where you see the majority of them, they're in the 2 to 4 review cycles and then the gray is. over five review cycles so now we can break it down and say what's going on in the two to four and also if it's five plus that's usually when our our team is starting to call people saying what what is going on you know and it could either be a complexity problem that you've heard about before or there's just some something weird with that permit or we're not getting responses on comments so now we're able to dive in a little bit deeper and figure out how we can be more efficient with that which i'll give you an example of that as we move forward before we leave this one

First of all, because I'm the guy who made us produce this slide. Russ, and you and I talked about this, and I talked with Colin as well on this. We talked about this. I mean, I'd love to have a goal where with our concierge for the low-volume builders, and this is kind of what I understand right here, low-volume builders tend to have more review cycles just as a, just as a rough, is that true?

Yeah, well, let me, I'll put it, what happens is, and I'll just use the home hardening code that just got adopted, right? Every time a new requirement comes out, a new code comes out, a new policy comes out, there is an adjustment shock that happens within the development community. I was just listening in on the monthly call that we have with the Central Oregon Builders Association and all the builders, and our building officials on there talking about issues they're seeing in implementing the new code and what they're seeing on permits and what's getting included and what's getting missed. Because everyone's trying to learn this. And not everyone, I mean, I would say it's difficult for our staff just to keep up with all the changes. And knowing, you know, especially if you're a builder that only puts a permit maybe once or twice a year to keep up with all the changes going on and all the requirements. It's not only codes, but also process changes. It's hard. It is a complex process. So how do we work with that within that system better to help these people? But yes, typically the smaller builders, you know, we see more reviews like us. And also a lot of times those are not That's the first time that whatever they're building is going through a plan review process. If you look at production builders, they have either masters, which is the bottom line. Those are already pre-approved and we're just looking at simple site issues with it. Or they're more in a production mode where we've seen those plans before. They might have an addition or a wall move, but it's not a brand new, completely brand new plan set that we're seeing. I just want to remind everybody, too, when a plan comes in, when you think about the codes, we are a regulatory agency. That's what we do is make sure they comply with codes. They're looking at certain sections of the development code, which if you print it out, it's about this big. The building code is about this big. And our infrastructure code is this big. And so they're trying to comply with all those. And there's a lot of complexity and overlap and things in there. So those typically result in review comments. And that's why it's trying to capture all those on the first review. And it's kind of a funnel where those comments come out in the 1st review. We get to the 2nd review. Hopefully that addresses most of them. And usually the majority get to the 3rd review. We're calling them and saying, hey, if you could fix that and that you're good and then we're ready to issue. So that's that's the idea we're trying to get into is how do we make those 2nd 3rd reviews?

So I don't want to spend too much time here, but. I asked for this based on the most common comment that I got from folks was that, man, when I go through this permitting process, it bounces back a whole lot of times and it's really painful for me. So what I think, and Russ and I have talked about this, but I think there are two, two prongs for us to deal with this. First of all, I think in a perfect world, like you said, it would be lovely if we could help folks get all the way through that permitting cycle and one and done, however. if you are telling and letting the public know that's our goal, but it's a stretch goal similar to our owner goals. Point two may be that a realistic expectation is that 2.2 times is the average that a permit is going to go through the cycle. This is an industry standard. This is around This is around the world that we're at this level. And that's part of our messaging to the public. Like when they come in the door, you can expect one and then another and maybe a third right there. So that can help us talk to folks that were listening to them and hearing them.

Yeah, and so the more, I was talking to Councillor Pratt, what we're trying to do is create consistency in our processes because it translates to when am I going to get my permit, when do I schedule my first set of contractors to come in and start doing undergrounds and concrete, and a lot of times they could be a month to two months out before you can get them there. So they're trying to figure out when am I picking up my permit and when is the project ready and trying to give that predictability. That's one of the things we're trying to do and we keep evolving in that. And we know there are times where There are major issues that come up, and there's issues with permits that multiple comments come in, and that's why we want to get more information, which we'll talk about, so we can make sure that we're always improving.

Yeah, Russ, one of the things that I hear about is a revision goes back to the applicant. They fix it. Then there's another revision, right? Yeah. Whereas wouldn't it be easier if all of the revisions would come at once so that they could move the process along more quickly?

Yeah, that's that bounce back. Yeah. I will say there are some times where Second review happens, and we see something, and we call it out, and we try to get everything on the first review, and that's one of the things that the team's working on. A lot of times what happens in that is, well, we have the first round of comments that say, hey, we need this. We give it back. They submit us more information. We're like, oh, wait a minute. That opens up another set of questions, which that's a lot of times, and that's where we want to make sure that we're getting that information right. where specifically is this bottleneck occurring? So either we need to improve something on our end or we need to communicate better that that's being missed so that we can make sure that the permits move faster.

I mean, this has been a couple of years, right? I mean, Jesse and I met when I first joined council talking about how can we approve, you know, streamlined permitting, things like that. You guys have been working on this for years, years, years, roundtables, all that stuff. I'm more interested in actually looking at something innovative at this point. We're at a public council meeting, so I'm just going to talk about things because we're not supposed to talk about them not in public meetings. But I'd actually really like to see a field issued permits when we're looking at single family, duplexes, triplexes, ADUs, and cottages. These are very straightforward, simple structures, and we can stop focusing on little things like this and the inspector. So the field issue permit means you submit your plans to the city and then you start building. And it is somewhat at your own risk because an inspector can come out and tell you, oh, this is not compliant for whatever reason, but most builders should be licensed bonded insured um architects are licensed bonded insured engineers are as well and then of course the owners and the developers are well aware of the risks of doing something like that so um i don't know i just want to i just kind of want to throw that out there because we've spent i don't know how many minutes now talking about permit timelines and days to issuance and la la la and we have a you know housing goals we're not meeting and housing production is dropping off and and every day is Every month, every week is, you know, thousands of dollars for even private homeowners. Um, so.

Yeah, we can have discussions around that's probably a conversation for a later date, but there are, there are pros and cons with that, which I'm more than happy to explore.

I mean, I would want to know what the experience has been in other communities and the extent to which it's actually worked, especially communities have tried it over time and that what. How successful has it been over a period of time? Or were there much of unintended consequences that occurred?

Typically, what happens, one of the risks of that is when you actually find a major issue, you have something constructed. And to fix it is a major issue that costs a lot of dollars. So it's trying to balance, like, can we make sure everything's, we got all the big rocks figured out and addressed before you go into construction? So when you go out there and look at it, because we've done this before, and if you're I mean, an offset is a perfect example. If you're supposed to be 5 feet and you're 4.5 feet and you've poured your foundation, what do you do? And we've experienced those type of things on even fully permitted approved plans. So more than willing to explore those concepts and ideas, because, yes, we want to be innovative, but we're just trying to balance out, like, what's the best balance of all those things.

I just want to do a time check. Yeah. So it is 5 o'clock right now.

So the main thing I also what you see here is this is just the amount of active permits we call this work in progress that's going through the city so at any one time just so everyone knows there's about a thousand different permits running through the city department that go from electrical circuit to I'm building roundabouts and you know 300 unit apartments so a lot of different story lines and things going on that our team is managing but there's always a lot of activity which is good. I'm not going to go through all this, but this is just where our focus has been over the past year. When you look at this, there's a lot of things. That's why I think it's good for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the applicant of how do they track all this stuff? How do they know all these things are happening and how to get through the process? We're at the place now where I would say we've stabilized the review times and we're more predictable. We're being more proactive in this conversation and the one I want to point out is the top 10 review comments. What our building department did is they went through and said, hey, on these residential permits, what are we seeing that we're always addressing? These are the top 10 things that our reviewers see that they always ask for comments. We publish this out and then also our assistant building official on our calls with COBA and with developers, We say, hey, open door policy, come down, talk to our building official. If you have problems with understanding the code or your permits, please come down. We haven't seen a lot of uptick with that. And the door is always open. So that's another thing that if council is getting questions around that, please ask them to come down, talk to our building officials, talk to Ben. We want that feedback as we move forward. Real quick on the process improvements and other things that are going on. At the state level, they were required through state legislation to do the state housing accountability production office was to go around the state and look at what's going on with permitting around the state. We just received that report about two weeks, a week and a half ago, two weeks. We are digesting it as we speak. High-level recommendations, no surprise, are the things mentioned there. I'm not going to go over there. A lot of it is just how do we get to yes. We have the same common goals. As we look at review cycles, we don't want to hold this thing for four reviews. We really want to get it out the door and get it built. So how do we improve that? Improve applicant information and communication, coordination, overlapping reviews, standards, which is the conversation that we had last week or the last meeting. They also mentioned the volume of state mandates. That's also causing that kind of confusion for applicants on everything you need to be looking at. And then the pro-housing grant that the city got, we also had another study in there related to engineering permit review processes that we wanted to do with that grant money. And I'm going to turn that over to Melissa really quick for an update.

Yes, just very briefly, the project is ongoing. The consultants have had many stakeholder interviews. They have a technical advisory committee. They've done a lot of research with similar jurisdictions and different types of jurisdictions, and they're in the process of compiling all their information. We expect a Formal presentation to the affordable housing advisory committee in September. You're all welcome to come in here the full report and then their final report will be submitted to the city in October.

So, more to come, it's still in process, but I would say there's well, from what we've seen, there's similar themes that we're hearing that are kind of matching. Sometimes I'm like, am I reading the, the, the state report or our report? Because you do see some of these similar things coming. Next steps, this is what's coming up in the future. Going back to those three big buckets of topics, start with the funding. That's an important element of getting projects out of the ground because getting financing now is a lot more difficult and underwriting. The Home Committee recommendations are going to be coming to you soon. That's a critical part of this. We continue to look at every state program that we know about that gets issued. We're having a hard time matching up the state program to what our needs are on projects. And so we want to continue that state advocacy. If there's state money, let's make it work and let's get it into our community. And then as we just talked about, we are promoting our existing tools. At the last meeting, a certain developer came and said, hey, can we look at local improvement districts? We're working on supplemental SDC. So we're trying to use every financial tool that we have in our kind of quiver. process. One of the things that we're seeing coming out of the studies and also what you just alluded to, Councillor Platt, is how do we help the smaller permit holders? And one of those things we want to explore is what's called a housing ombudsman. That's in one of the reports of someone. We have a development navigator role. They're more focused on the larger developments, the big master plans, and kind of the higher order things. Do we want to have someone there for the smaller builders to help them get through the process and with the confusion. Is it another staff person or a combination of existing staff? That's something we want to explore. We want to continue to evolve that development navigator role. We've just started that and it is showing some positive improvements on things. Expand the pre-application process for more technical projects. Then CityView always has updates that are going on. Complexity. All these things we've already been talking about, I'm not going to go into them, but there's a lot of code updates and discussions we need to have the council to figure out how do we try to make things easier and more efficient and also allow different things to happen within the built environment. So last thing is just how can council help? There's some talking points on the left. We do recognize this is complex. We're trying to simplify it. But when you have all these different codes and requirements, it is hard. And we just want to make sure that that is fully We have full awareness of this. We know the process is confusing, especially for the smaller builders. Infill is very expensive. We're trying to work through those issues. Project funding and feasibility, extremely challenging right now in the market. We're seeing some projects get held, not even moved forward or held up, pulling their permits. As we talked about, the codes and policies are always changing. We do have over 1,000 applications churning at all one time, and our team is trying to get those out. Why? We're also trying to have the conversations on complexity. also i was looking at the 80 20 rule 80 of the permits get through in a predictable fashion and dependable fashion and the 20 is we want to focus on those and where why are we seeing problems with those how can we move and improve those but we are we are trying to move a lot of things through and some projects have definite very unique issues that we want to focus on so If you are getting questions from the community, what we're asking the staff is, can you please ask them, get an address number, a permit number, and ask what specific issues are you having? Because it's hard for us to say, well, the processing permitting time is too long. That does not help us right now. We've done a lot of improvements. We want to know where are you getting hung up. I was talking to Councillor Platt a lot of times on big projects where there's big issues, I bring everybody into a meeting, including the owner, the contractor, and the design team. And a lot of times what happens in there is like, hey, we've asked this question on a review two times. We haven't got an answer. The owner's not even aware that this issue's out there. And there are some times where we actually say, OK, we're going to leave the room for five to 10 minutes so you can figure out how we want to approach this, and then we'll come back in. We're willing to do that. I know sometimes it's on us, Gina. I know. But how do we work through those issues? And so we just want more awareness. So if you could get that to Colin, we will look at all the permit information, get back to them, schedule meetings, and move forward. But as a staff, we're at that level of kind of information that we're asking for now because we want to know specifically what the problems are and how we can tweak that. And that's it.

And then just to wrap up, so as I mentioned, we're changing our council schedule, so kind of back to the bigger picture here. Beginning in September, we're moving to a new schedule of just one work session a month, two business meetings on the 1st and 3rd as we currently have, same start time. It's start time for the work sessions also at 4 o'clock. But we're extending it to 630, so a half hour, we have a sheet in front of you that has timelines. So the commitment is that you'll be posting information for the business meetings a day earlier on the Monday prior week prior. So more than a full week. Of information posted ahead of the business meetings on the work sessions. We're also aiming for a week ahead of that actual work session of both memos, but a lot more information as we've been practicing this summer with more memo. form of background information and the distinction between a work session and a study session just to highlight that because I think sometimes we do issues are complex and we need to share information not everything is we're coming with very specific questions some of those in the information that's more in that study session category we're exploring ideas of like pre-recording presentations that you can watch ahead of time Obviously, memos are going to be a big piece of that, but we don't want to give up the opportunity to make sure that you are getting adequate information that might lead to a formal business decision and that not everything is at that stage of requiring a lot of high-level direction. Getting you good information, receiving some things along the way the next item that we're going to transition to. There is some specific direction that we'll be looking for. So, and actually adjusting our council rules to be more explicit about naming a work session versus a study session. Just to share that that's how we're kind of managing through all this content flow. I know it's a lot coming to you all, and we're wanting to help you digest that information in different formats. And also just being clear about when information is needed and when.

Thank you. Eric, this is not the fanciest accolade that the staff is going to get, but their memo game is really strong. That's great. Really good. So well done.

We're looking at future work sessions. We're highlighting several memos that will be coming. All right.

Thank you. Thank you. Before I move on, I just want to apologize if you see me looking at my phone. My mom's evacuating, so I'm just kind of in text message mode. And so next we have shelter planning and June 4th discussion with Matt and Amy and Brooke.

So this is a good example as I'll speed this up. Tonight's shelter planning presentation really builds directly from the background memo that we included in your council packet. So we're not going to restate a lot of the detail that's in that memo. We're going to focus on some key decision points here. So the purpose this evening is to seek direction from council with This environment of federal funds being depleted state dollars, declining the potential closure of shelters and temporary safe state area on the horizon. Our real need to prioritize resources and do our best to maintain the shelter capacity in these kind of change this changing environment. And this will also be a big precursor for budget development for 2729. We're not going to solve all the issues today, but we want us to get some high level direction that will help us.

you know understand where you're at so that'll help inform that that budget development process good afternoon for the record i'm amy fraley senior program manager for house solutions and i'm joined by director matt stewart and berko keith shelter coordinator and this evening we'll be presenting information and context for your discussion on shelter planning we're going to highlight the three areas that Eric referenced the funding cuts and how to mitigate the impact of the closures as well as future development opportunities and surplus in property in Juniper Ridge. But we always like to start with the people represented in Point in Time, which is an annual camp representing the single night in January. After five years of investment and resources, as well as the significant effort by our community partners, the number of people experiencing houselessness across the region is declining. We're down 19% from 2,100 to 1,706. As you can see here, Bend has held relatively steady for 23 and 25 and then experienced a 16% decrease in 2026. Over the last several years, the city of Bend has anchored the response to homelessness with the development of 260 shelter beds, 226 of which are low barrier, 10 safe parking sites, establishing the partnership with the county at the TSA that gives 202 campers a place to stay safely. And the city also supported outreach and prevention. In 2025 alone, prevention dollars prevented 447 households from becoming homeless. which is a number I don't think we share often enough. The commitment to these effective solutions is reflected in the 2527 biennium objectives to maintain 525 shelter beds citywide, 316 of those being direct support, and we're currently at 596. We're also working to increase safe parking, though it's pretty complicated, with funding to 51 spaces. We're currently at 40. And then to transition 300 people to more permanent housing. We're at 175 to date.

The money's shut.

Beginning in 2022, the city invested significantly in responding to houselessness through ARPA, which came in 2021. One-time legislative allocations and then direct contracting with Oregon Housing and Community Services. The city deployed dollars for property purchases, renovation, and then those operational contracts with each of our partners. But the state has shifted to regional allocations. And so the city's been actively leveraging our remaining ARPA And any remaining state resources to maintain our current capacity, add some safe parking and then support services culminating on the graph with 316 beds that were also shown on the previous slide. The real question is what happens in 2028 when those are the dollars are are fully expanded. So there are a couple of things that we do know. As mentioned on the previous slide, the state has changed how homeless dollars are funded and how that money is distributed. If you go back to the governor's executive order, they went through what was called the map group, which is the multi agency coordinator group. And so they were really focused on a regional approach to those dollars. And then we've also seen that develop into the regional coordinator. Both of those rules were administered through. So these are the organizations that will be receiving money in fiscal year 27. The state is interested in preserving 398 beds. The region as a whole received that $10.3 million. And next year, we're looking at a 50% cut to that regional allocation as noted in Oregon Housing and Community Services and expanding budget. the asterisks on those are notating city supported shelter shepherd's house which is different than they've done previously is doing it in a group so there's 212. i also included the bed costs that are associated with 2026 awards and um yeah you'll see that no safe parking programs in the city of ben were supported there is an allocation that was given to mountain view community development for their safe parking in Redmond, but it will not cover all of their sites or their current expenses. So we expect to see perhaps closures.

Amy, could you just clarify that? So the slide says that 10.3 million is for current year for 398 beds, but 398 beds is the state goal. And we currently have a lot, we've done a lot more with those funds. We have something like almost 600 beds. Yes. 596. Not to brag, but thank you.

I will say that organizations such as Bethlehem has been incredibly effective at fundraising, and so those non-city supportive beds are often supported by networks or grant writing or things like that.

And again, just to emphasize that 10.3 is across the whole region, the three-county region, and cutting that by 50%. Yes.

And it will say also jaybar jays beds, those are youth heads, and so they usually have a higher level of service associated with those which explains that difference there. And there is a planned bed cost CAP that will go into effect next year that's around $30,000 as well, so you can see that all of these supported shelters are well. below that number.

But that could impact other shelters like J4J. Of course, yes.

I know that there is some talk or some effort to have youth beds funded differently. And I know COIC and J4J are working towards that.

As part of the state, the discussion with the state? Yes.

Yeah. Are there any other questions on this slide? So these are all of the same organizations that received funding last year. So there's no new organizations that were added, though we know that there were other applicants, including our safe parking programs in this event.

Not to ask you to say why, but do you have any

I have not seen the applications. I'm hoping that our partners will be asking for feedback so they can perhaps improve their applications for next year. We know that they're eligible with the changes or the decoupling with habitability. And so we'll see that it'll be even more competitive next year. The only place we saw an increase actually was with Oasis. They have a couple more beds.

Amy, I was just going to ask that you move the microphone behind your screen.

I'm sorry, the smoke made me really hoarse. You may recall that we appeared in front of you in February.

Sorry.

saw the writing on the wall. Council was aware that there would be a gap and gave direction to fill that gap with one timeline sales proceeds in order to operate the shelter through the full fiscal year. And so that was 1.7. And this is where that 1.7 Would be allocated towards based on the information that we have and it's that same information that we had in February. We knew that this was going to be a really competitive grant cycle. We know that the navigation center has never been fully funded. And so we wanted to make sure that the safe parking also continued. in that dollar amount we included the move of central oregon villages currently central oregon villages is located on bear creek and 27th behind desert stream church but as council is aware their lease only goes through december of this year and so we are looking at locating them on 15th and bear creek and combining the franklin site as well for a total of 25 units

So just to summarize for everybody who may not be following along, the cliff is a year from now. Yes.

July 1.

Amy, I noticed on this one that you didn't have sort of the per safe parking space cost on this one. But it is lower, right?

Typically, yes. We have averaged, and actually on the next slide, we averaged it at about $1,400 per month. There are different levels of service. There are different, whether it's a vehicle safe parking, which tends to be a little less expensive, or whether it's an RV safe parking and how many are there. So that is our average. And I just put in this cost comparison slide because it was something that we had discussed in February. So I thought I'd bring it back forward.

I forgot about this slide, sorry.

Oh no, that's fine.

And I noticed that you put the permanent supportive housing at a 15 to 20 million.

Yes.

Depending on maybe land trust or something like that, that we might do.

Possibly. Possibly.

Yes. Okay, thank you.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Matt unless there are other questions.

Thanks, Amy. Matt Stewart with the State Facilities Housing. So tying with that, we have the opportunity to look at exploring affordable housing in Juniper Ridge. As many of you are aware, Senate Bill 8 passing 2021 allowed for affordable housing to be located on industrial land that's adjacent to residential property. So as you'll see here, about 33 acres in Juniper Ridge is highlighted around that west boundary in the green. That is all eligible under Senate Bill 8. to have a capital a affordable housing for deed restricted the law or the statute does create a lot of stipulation on what we can and can't do so there's not a whole lot of variation but one of those is it can be for own or rent at eighty percent ami or less the caveat to that is the average of all that has to be sixty percent so you can't have all eighty percent units you do have to have a mix to get your average to sixty percent for the whole thing does require a minimum of a 30-year affordability covenant and then the stipulation the difference between for industrial land the commercial land that we've seen with the other housing projects is on industrial land it has to the land has to be continuously owned by a public body so that is us as a city housing works as the housing authority also qualifies the public body so in theory they could acquire the land from us if we chose to do that and sell that to them they can own it but that's it everyone else who is a non-profit or affordable housing developer would have to enter a lease with the city and i'll talk a little bit about that later Um, the other caveat to this is obviously we are located within the Juniper Ridge employment, sub district, which add another layer of kind of rules or stipulations to development in this area. So, about 15 acres of that 33 is located within the boundary. We amended the in 2023 in reaction to the Senate bill being passed to allow for affordable housing to be an allowed use under the. So, currently it all being industrial land. That was not contemplated within the CCRs that affordable housing would be developed here. We were able to get pretty much a majority of the owners to step in vote, understanding that this could support them through sort of workforce housing development. Even though it is affordable, they are looking for employee housing as they're stretched into where their employees can reside here in Bend. There's some caveats to that when the CCRs are created, Les Schwab was granted design authority over this area. So they have final say in how it kind of looks. So that is something that has to be kind of navigated with our applicant. We have a good working relationship with them. Obviously, we've had a lot of activity over the last few years in Juniper Ridge, and that's a testament to Les Schwab coming to the table and working with our development partners as well as the city to kind of get things out of the ground. there is building height limitations. So it's based on an elevation, but roughly nothing can be more than two or three stories in height in this area that we're looking at. And we do include a 30 foot landscape buffer that is all on the Western boundary. So kind of a separation between the existing residential in this area, and that will remain in place. we're proposing is to kind of bring port of phase one so about six acres on the kind of south side of this area reason why we're looking at a phase one is most developers that we talk to we're really only looking for about five acres in this kind of market condition as well as what they think they can afford to build and what they think they can go get funding for through state or federal grant and loan opportunities Um, it's also the infrastructure is now in place. So, Northeast and the site, which is. Along the East side of the blue next to no code that is all built sewer water stormwater is all installed. So we see that as a cost saving opportunity to bring on this 1st phase now to be able to tie in and create accessibility. So, as I mentioned earlier around the public body, being able to own it. So there's 2 paths that can be done either the land lease or through the sale. If they wish to acquire the property, we would need to do a partition plat to to create the actual legal lot. If they do a lease, they can opt into the partition flat, or we can just go ahead and do a land lease through a legal description, which is normal basis. So. The applicant could have that choose which 1 they would like to do when they submit their application on this. The process that we're recommending is to utilize our surplus for affordable housing. That's how's our municipal 1.50.4040K. That essentially says it gives you the ability for council to surplus affordable housing at cost. The process for that is it kicks it to the affordable housing advisory committee to make their initial criteria, evaluation, scoring, and then make a recommendation to council. So tonight we're kind of just looking for finalizing the criteria. We'll go ahead and start putting together the documents and bring it back in probably September to surplus the property. From there we'll publish the RFP. AHAC will review the first round and make some recommendations and scoring and then council will have the opportunity to review that and make an award. You do this similarly when we do any sort of notice of funding for our affordable housing fee or CICT, which you'll see one next week that's gone through the AHAC process. So this is more of what we typically do for affordable housing. Because the statute is quite already definitive. We don't have a lot of minimum terms that we need to modify or define, but below is kind of our recommendation. What we'll place in the RFP. For both lease and sales, a minimum of 30 years of the affordability can meet state statute, but they can opt in to increase that and propose 5060 or another. Obviously, affordability will be tied to that for the entire time, and we're requesting that they will be able to secure funding within the 3 year period. So we can actually see construction coming out of the ground and hopefully within 5 years have fully developed units. A few couple of things to note 1, we'd like emphasizing coordination between any applicant and both the neighboring residential property owners as well as the business owners and how that development comes to be. That includes working with as having kind of final say. The other aspect of this is requiring a phase 1 environmental site assessment that we would like to review. Sutera is within a half mile radius. They are, they do meet certain EPA fund sites requirements. So there is, while it pops up and I don't anticipate any impact and I don't believe they're leaching anything to ground, and they haven't had anything on record showing that they're doing any contamination. They do show up in these phase one assessments, and that can affect the potential of an applicant to get federal funding. We don't think it will impact state, but does have the potential to impact if they seek federal funds to support their housing. So part of us requiring the phase one is just so we are able to view that, and if we do feel it's necessary for them to proceed with the phase two, we have that option and can explore from there. um we've done this a couple times in the past for affordable housing and surplusing we did it for Bear Creek and for Franklin so for Habitat and Thistle and Ness respectively in the last couple of years our submittal requirements are pretty consistent cover letter applicant kind of identify themselves their background and qualifications a description of their project a breakdown of where they think they're going to get funding and where they're seeking financial assistance from and then kind of a schedule for their development The criteria that we will ask kind of AHAC to preliminary review is really broken down into four categories plus a bonus. It's kind of evaluate the project as a whole, evaluate their kind of funding and budget. Does that look like it's realistic? Are they in compliance with the rules and the set forth in the statute? Again, this being so prescriptive, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room. And then what is their kind of feeling on the development feasibility of the project? last one is kind of these bonus structures so one do you want to kind of add an incentive and this would be about maybe a five percent bump in the scoring for providing the lowest AMI priority so again because the statute requires an average of 60 is someone able to achieve something lower than that so 50 also one for a permanent supportive housing component so not saying the entire site but would there be a permanent supportive housing component and I'll talk about that more here in a little bit and then providing a universal accessible kind of units. And that's something we've done in the past. So that's what we're asking tonight is are we okay with kind of this bonus structure? And I'll talk about PSH now, what really it is for kind of our audience. It's long-term affordable housing for those who need ongoing support services. It's really designed for folks who have, are looking to achieve more housing stability, improve their health and kind of reduce their possibility of returning to houselessness. This is a nationally recognized model that we do have here in Bend. Cleveland Commons is the first one that opened as 33 beds here in town for ending chronic houselessness. And again, these are for individuals who have chronic conditions, so PTSD, traumatic bandages, some sort of physical disability that are struggling to secure full-time housing. This is not in any way a transition sort of shelter. We're not seeing it coming and going. This is really kind of more of a permanent sort of housing model. We did reach out to a few of the neighbors as well as the businesses prior to this meeting. While there's a vacancy with the Boyd Acres land you share, we do have a few neighbors in the North Point Association that we regularly connect with on development in Juniper Ridge. Some of the feedback that we've heard from them as well as some of the businesses and concerns around the PSH model where the location and access to services, Juneau Bridge being on the north end of town is a really good access to transit, to the healthcare system and any other support services. Obviously with PSH model provides some of the support services on site. Cleveland Commons has a 24 seven kind of handlers on site. So there is that, that's still inclusive. Public safety and school proximity. So just being adjacent to the middle school across the street, how does that fit in with kind of the neighbor compatibility? Concerns are raised around if there's a behavioral health crisis, what is the emergency response that kind of occurs? And then eligibility requirements. So it's particularly looking at minors being near there. how does someone kind of set up and manage the applicants that are petitioning to reside in this? I will highlight that the preference for workforce housing, when we met with businesses back in 23 as a result of Senate Bill 8, we always discussed affordable housing. We never really talked about PSH as an option. Again, it's in no way prevented from the way the Senate Bill or the statute is written, but it's just something that when we discussed and looked to the businesses to help Amend the CCR as we highlighted the workforce housing component of this, and this was not discussed then. So not, I don't think anyone feels that they cover has been slipped over them as presenting us tonight. But I think there's just a willingness to want to understand how this interacts a little bit more. Concern over just the concentration of House of services. Being on the East side, and then the last thing was just kind of an expressive. Does this sort of open the door for other houses or into uses to be located in Jennifer Ridge? Or is it still our commitment to kind of developing that as an employment based center? So, those are some of the items that were raised by the businesses and residents that express stuff to staff as we kind of reached out to them on this concept. In response to that, what we're kind of proposing is as if someone is going to submit a proposal with a PSH component, they include kind of the following with their application and outreach plan. So how will they intend to interact with both the neighborhood, the school and the businesses? A high level sort of operation management plan. So who would be in charge? Who do they think they would have providing support services? Who would kind of be the main contact? Is it a property management company? Is it the actual developer itself? kind of an outline of that and then something we could look at discussing and something we do with our shelters is kind of a good neighbor agreement and that really kind of highlights with the neighborhood if they have issues or complaints who do they talk to you how do we resolve those how do we kind of come to the table so those are the aspects that we're recommending including if they have a PSH component in their application Amy are there lessons learned from Cleveland Commons in terms of this component did they do how did they do their public outreach I'm trying to remember

You know what, I'm not exactly sure because the city wasn't involved. But I can certainly find out.

I would just be curious to know. Where CJ's back here. There's so many people in this room that are so knowledgeable. But I am curious, as we talk about this, because Cleveland Commons was our first PSH, if we could see what we could be doing better and... if we decide to go in this direction.

And we can certainly, I can get that information.

I think we could definitely present that as applicants come in with AHAC and use that as a sounding board first and then can bring that to council as part of that too.

Do we know if there have been issues with adjacent or nearby neighbors, whether that's residential or commercial associated with Cleveland Commons? My sense of things is most of it's been, there's been some challenges internally, but it's not been I think we would have heard about it probably directly as counselors, and we haven't.

There has been an increase in calls, but in that same area we also have the old mill apartments, and so there was quite an influx of people into that area when there hadn't been as many folks there as before. But it's definitely trending down.

I'm kind of interested. I don't think this would be a good place for safe parking, for example, but I think a more kind of established facility that's well designed to kind of fit in with the neighborhood, I think would be the appropriate way to go. But I guess what my question is, I just want to make sure, like my sense is that we are, we have far too few PSH units in Central Oregon and in Bend. So it'd be nice to know the number of like what we, think we need for a region, just to kind of help justify, like, yeah. I mean, my gut is, yeah, like, we should welcome PSH applications for this property, but it would just be nice to have that.

I think we have some anecdotal information. Like, when we talked about the temporary safe stay area, we estimated that 50%, after talking with providers, would qualify. We know that at the Franklin Avenue shelter, which is a temporary shelter, that more than 50% of the households have a medically vulnerable person in that household. And so I think safely we could say the need is triple that.

I remember the Emergency Homelessness Task Force, I think they predicted that we would need, I'm trying to remember, I think it's like 300. Yeah. This is a few years ago, but...

I don't think it's declined. In fact, our population has aged.

Just to remind me, I recall there being the PSH model that there is a staff person on site. I don't know if it's full-time or what the hours are.

We actually have CJ here, who is the manager of Cleveland Commons. Yeah, we're 24-7.

Okay.

and the manager of the franklin avenue shelter so he's here dual purpose hello hi my name is cj desire i'm the program manager for cleveland commons and the franklin avenue shelter um and to answer the question um i was part of the initial planning i mean or not the initial plan but kind of the latter end um and we uh we did reach out to the neighbors, and we have great relationships with some of the neighbors surrounding Cleveland Commons. Personal relationships, not just call these to come by. We regularly communicate. And the community is such to where it's an apartment complex, you could drive by there and wouldn't know it's a permanent supportive housing project. We have 85%. Retention over and we've been open for a year. So people aren't leaving their people are staying and I'm sorry I'm 24-7 presence. Yeah 24-7 staff. They have night staff and and case managers peer support and property manager there for the hours weeks Yeah, maybe just a size the size the issue right here if we were going to go for 300 beds and

50 is 15 to 20k, so we're talking, yeah, or 20 million, right, yeah, so we're talking 100 million bucks, something like that, to just give us the size of the problem. And then the operational dollars that are associated with it as well, the required services.

I mean, I think what you've proposed here in terms of the process and the RFP, I support it in general, and I think particularly what you've proposed for the permanent support of housing. We know the need is huge in the community. I think we need... incumbent upon us as counselors when we have opportunities to contribute to moving forward on something like this is so needed in our community that we look at it completely and holistically and i think what you um have up on the side right now is about addressing the concerns that we've heard from the neighborhood we need to see the specifics of what's possible on this site what it might look like you know how the permanent supportive housing is going to be differentiated from the rest of the affordable housing part of it and to really get wrap our hands around how this would all work and I think the community needs that as well so I'm very supportive of moving forward with this

And I think when you take into account the TSSA closing, you really need somewhere for people to go. I mean, doing the Central Oregon Villages tours, it's just apparent these people need to be in some sort of permanent housing. And it's just not OK that people are living in conditions like that. So I am in full support.

Matt, could you say, maybe I missed it, but what happens at the end of the lease If we go, if they go for the 30 year lease, what happens at the end of the 30 years?

If they, you know, that that'll be a discussion we often have that existing affordable who have a covenant or a land lease that we've seen. They'll typically want to extend that affordability covenant. So we would just enter into longer. We would extend the lease term. There's a part there that individual. The way a land lease would work is any of the improvements at the end of the lease. would revert to the land owner, so it could revert to the city. So if that operator or owner no wishes to do it, we could find another person that can. So we have options at the end. I would anticipate, Any of us are here when that occurs, we'll be having a different discussion. No offense, but yeah, I think that, but that's typically for a land lease is the improvements revert. But I would anticipate. If they are successful in there, it was secure additional funding for kind of operation. They would wish to expand and extend. That's typically what we see with our existing ones that have. Come to fruition once their affordability requirement runs out is desired. To continue under that, but that is a whole nother dollars that we have to.

I mean, is there any reason not to prefer at least from the city's perspective to not why wouldn't we prefer the lease. Scenario over the sales scenario. Just because it's what I worry about is at the end of the 30 years, you run the risk of losing that benefit. Yeah.

Yeah. And in this situation, because we're limited in who can theoretically purchase it, we only have 1. Theoretical buyer under the way the statute written. we have to evaluate on the lease proposal. I don't, I... Yeah, I can argue both ways why it's good or bad. There's always a good reason to hang on to an asset because you have control. There's also an opportunity where the owner operator can assert their own control on that property and sort of make their own financial decisions and potentially kind of elicit that control to defend their arguments. At least as good as owning in the terms of like OHCS and kind of state funding, it's site control, so it still meets that requirement. It's really kind of more preference on how they under, how they write their taxes and do their IRS audits and how do they balance that with them on their backend. But from a liability perspective, I don't think it wouldn't affect us either way. But you're right, yes. In one instance, we have an obligation at the end of the term. In another instance, our obligation is much smaller and much more focused on the affordability, yeah.

Would it make sense to add under the bonus criteria greater than three years?

Yeah, we can do that.

Extra points for that. I don't know if I can follow your lead, but if there's a minimum of at least five or ten extra years, then they might just say 31 years.

Yeah, right.

We can stipulate around like a 10% increase or something like that. But yes, we can have that. That's three years. Three, yeah.

Math in public.

But we don't need to be, I mean, it's Housing Works. Housing Works is the only one that can own it. Yeah. So it's not a concern. It's not like a private developer that could say, well, forget it. Now I want to sell these for $5,000.

I wouldn't others who come under a lease environment. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

A lot can come in or a different lease. It can come in or the lease environment and housing works could if they were an applicant could also choose to. Be under the lease environment, right? And in no instance, would we have a lease and affordability not be. I will, I will, I'm not going to allow that. So if they're, you know, a 30 year affordability and then it's a 30 year lease, if they want to do 40 years affordability, we'll grant 40 years. So that'll always be tied together in, in sync and in operation as, as one is the same. Okay.

All right. Okay.

And then if we're good there, we'll just kind of like hand it over to Amy to summarize.

So the elements for our discussion and direction this evening is around the closure of the Franklin Avenue Shelter. And even if CJ wasn't here, I would add that the Franklin Avenue Shelter is an exceptional resource to the community. They started with 60 beds. They were overutilized. They expanded to 70 beds and immediately filled those beds as well under the same dollar amount that their contract had already existed at. They serve on average 21 minor children at any given point. And then also, as I mentioned earlier, 50% plus of the people living there are experiencing some kind of medical vulnerability. That being said, the property was purchased as part of redevelopment of the core. And with regular debt service, the neighbors and the community was told at large that this was a temporary use. And so we're in that window of the three to five years. And so we're looking for directions.

move forward in this direction, and it seems like it has to be tied, as you suggested, from the way it's structured on the screen, to the development of the housing in Juniper Ridge. So it may, in a perfect world, I'd love to set a date, but it may be that we're not quite ready to do that yet. We have to see how the rest of this evolves. But in order to achieve the rest in the context of the bigger housing goals for the community and the central districts being so important to that, we've gotta figure out how to make that happen there, too. And so it seems to me that we've got to set a goal of moving in this direction and tying it to Juniper Ridge. I mean, the whole picture, the whole housing spectrum from houselessness all the way up to, you know, pot-out market rate.

i think the key here is is that it's it's musical chairs but we don't want to end up with you know less chairs in fact we're trying to add more chairs with music stops here for capacity that we need um so yeah it's got to be careful yeah how long do your residents at franklin uh shelter typically stay

have data for the full contract period but we recently did reporting um and it ranges somewhere from 300 to 500 days so somewhere between one and two years

how people stepped in and made it happen. I love driving by and seeing the kids' bicycles outside of the rooms. I mean, it doesn't look like the stereotypical idea of a shelter. And so I think, like Mike said, to be able to, and like you said, to be able to divide and conquer and say, okay, the families go here and people that are in need of permanent supportive housing could maybe go here. And I think, in my mind, that's the only way that I'm comfortable with this, and I think that most of us are comfortable with this. And it is a commitment that we made to the people in the core area that this would be temporary, too.

I will add that the stepping stone shelter is fewer beds. They do have true ADA units, two of them, but they're also serving the same population. And so it's not as if that shelter is sitting empty or would be sitting empty to bring um, folks over. So we'll still be playing a little bit of musical chairs, but you would also then expect that some of the people that are residing at stepping stone would then also qualify for a permanent supportive housing. And perhaps we could start that domino.

And then on the other two bullets, I think we do need to keep moving in those directions. The challenge is the funding question, which I assume we're not going to solve that right here tonight, right this afternoon. So continuing that discussion both with advocacy at the state and then also what CAM might be able to do within our own resources. If it's not full funding to support it, and you mentioned the cost cap for certain things in your memo, Moving forward in those directions and I would also just mention with council.

We've been having some conversations with the other I've been having it with my peers other County Administrator Redmond city manager and others about how do we all support a local? Funding source not just one community versus the other but all collectively and really focus on safe parking because that's the kind of the highest risk of with what we're seeing from the state. And so what would that like per bed fee that we all can kind of agree to and hold capacity within all of our communities? Because I think if just one steps up, then we really should be looking at this from a regional context.

Yeah, and I think we see that in the strategic plan that's just being completed with the Homeless Leadership Coalition. And we obviously see that with the Coordinated Houseless Response Office. It's absolutely critical that we band together. To get what we need for our community.

I think you had the cliff and then these are the thoughts that keep us up at night of how do we get. Away from the cliff here in the fall and the next 6 to 9 months. So how do we adjust that? So that's really what we're putting forward today is just highlighting the decisions that we'll need assistance with. But yes, we have a legislative session and then we roll into budget. So, what can we do in between now and then and kind of close the gap, but also identify a path forward.

And you know, all of this, I mean, we think back to the time when it felt like it was even more of a crisis around housing and the fact that houselessness folks and the people we were seeing on the streets and risks around fires. I mean, there's been so much progress of getting people into some kind of shelter that keeps them safe, gets them housed, first of all, but also reduces the impacts across the community. on the day-to-day and the risks that might come with some of the wildfire stuff. All that improvement and the reductions we've seen in the stats you mentioned earlier is all telling the story of all the hard work that's been done over the last five plus years or so. And that cliff puts a lot of that at risk, even the reductions, I think, in the numbers, right? Like you take somebody's blood pressure once or twice, but it doesn't show you the trend. And we saw a couple of good years of either holding steady or going down. What we don't want to do is reverse that. and have those risks and all those other impacts increase again. So we're gonna have to figure it out as a community, how we vote funded and where we locate things and how we make it safe and work for neighbors and all that.

There are terrified people right now in the shelter and sisters that have come, many of whom have come out of living in the forest and are really unsure of what to do. From the fires. From the fires, yes. Any other comments from these suggestions or we, I mean, just thank you for continually trying to figure out how to piece this all together in a really tough situation.

Yeah, I want to give credit to Amy and Brooklyn what we stood up and counsel and search everyone what you've stood up in the last 5 years. We should be commending and what we've been able to do. And now the challenge is, how do we maintain that? So kudos to both Amy and that they put in on the city side. It's. It's wonderful to see when you're out there.

thank you we've already done a preview of all the things coming out so great thank you we will adjourn thank you everybody