City Council - Regular Meeting

Bend Urban Renewal Agency will now meet an executive session pursuant to ORS 192.6602 to conduct deliberations with persons designated to negotiate real property transactions. Representative of the news media and designated staff shall be allowed to attend the executive session. Representatives of the news media are specifically directed not to report on any of the deliberations during the executive session, except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made in executive session. At the end of the executive session, we will return to open session. Council meeting starts at 6. Burra will be after the council meeting later in the evening.

Okay.

All right. We'll go ahead and call tonight's Bend City Council meeting to order. And we will do roll call. Start with your end, Councillor Franzosa. Gina Franzosa, she, her.

Ariel Mendez, he, him. Mike Riley, he, him.

Melanie Keebler, she, her. Megan Norris, she, her.

Steve Platt, he, him.

And Councillor Perkins should be joining us online shortly. So we have a couple of proclamations tonight. So I wanted to get going with those. And I think the first one is yours, Councillor Platt.

Great. And are the Big Brothers, Big Sisters area right there? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So the folks that are going to be accepting this tonight are Jen and Dana and Ren and Veronica and Kimberly, I think. Is that right? Thank you very much for being here from the Big Brothers and Sisters. So Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Central Oregon, a program of J-Bar-J Youth Services believes every young person deserves someone in their corner. Someone who will listen, encourage them, show up consistently and help them see what is possible for their future. Through one-on-one mentoring relationships, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Central Oregon connects young folks, young people known as littles, with caring adult mentors known as bigs. These relationships provide friendship, encouragement, new experiences, and a consistent source of support as young people grow and navigate life. Each year, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Oregon serves more than 220 young people throughout Deschutes, Jefferson, and Crook Counties. As a part of J Bar J Youth Services, the program works alongside a larger network of services committed to supporting youth and families throughout Central Oregon. September is Big Brothers and Big Sisters Month, a time to celebrate the power of mentorship and recognize the people who make this mission possible. We honor the bigs who continue to show up, the littles who inspire us, the families who place their trust in our program, and the staff, donors, partners, and community members who support this work. It's also an opportunity to recognize the continued need for members in our community. Every young person deserves the opportunity to have a caring, consistent adult in their corner. And in recognition of the impact that mentorship on young people, families, and our community, the Bend City Council proclaims September 2026, Big Brothers, Big Sisters Month, celebrating those who make mentorship possible and encouraging our community to help create big futures for young people throughout Central Oregon.

Thank you.

I move to accept the proclamation. Second. All right. Moved by Council Norris and seconded by Council Mendez. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

We didn't, would any of you care to say words at all on that for us?

No, I just want to thank you so much. It's been an honor for us, and it's been a really important one for us, and we have one of our big sisters here. Awesome. Great.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, so our next proclamation is for Constitution Week, and I am reading this one. Whereas the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees the principles of limited government in a republic consisting of three co-equal branches and dedicated to rule by law, and the Constitution promises essential civil liberties for all, including freedom of speech, freedom to peacefully protest, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right of every person living on American soil to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and to receive due process of law, and this guiding document is a critical tool to preserving the democracy that our country was founded to realize, And September 17th, 2025 marks the 200, I'm sorry, 20, Yes, 239th anniversary of the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention. And it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary into the patriotic celebrations, which will commemorate and defend its principles. And Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America, designated September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week. Now, therefore, it be resolved that the week of September 17th through 23rd, 2026 is hereby designated to be Constitution Week in the city of Bend. All citizens are urged to study and reaffirm the ideals of the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this founded document written by and for the people of the United States of America. I think we might have had older dates in there, and I will make sure those are updated, but this is for Constitution Week 2026.

I move to accept the proclamation. Second.

Right. Moved by Councillor Platt and seconded by Councillor Rowley. All those in favour? Aye. Great. And then we have Rachel and then maybe some other folks here to accept. Rachel, is there anything you wanted to come up and say? If you're going to speak, come on up to the mic. And we have time. No worries.

I know you guys have a full schedule.

Always.

But actually, I was just going to not say anything this time because it says it in the proclamation. I just want to thank you once again for issuing the proclamation for Constitution Week. Great. Thank you.

Do you want a picture? Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

all right and that moves us into council action and reports um no letters and appointments at this meeting so i'm going to go into reports we're going to start going the other way down the dais for a change so start with you counselor play

Okay, what I did on summer vacation reports. One of the things I got to do later on in the summer, which was really meaningful for me, and this was based on public input, was really kind of dig in with our permitting process at the city. So I was able to go both on the public and the private side of the permitting, the engineering, the inspections, and look through how that goes, how that goes. I've heard how it goes from the public standpoint, and I want to see how it goes from the city standpoint and sort of the challenges and the wins that they're seeing. And it was really instructive to me to both see the differences between how public developers are working with the city and some of the flexibilities that we have there, and then how private developers are working with the code that we have in the city and how that evolves and how that changes and the challenges. And I'll tell you, our folks in the city are working hard. They know that they've got some changes to make, but they are also working and they really are focused on customer service. So Eric, I really appreciate the access to the staff and the time for doing that. So thank you very much. That meant a lot to me. i had the opportunity to go to the central oregon villages open house there on 15th street and look at that where that new site is going to be and man i'm excited about that what a great location uh right there and i'm really excited about the services we're going to be offering there and how that's going to i really appreciate the organizations that's running that and i'm really impressed so thank you for those folks have having that helping that out I was able to go to the welcoming week skill lab where beyond just teaching us how to approach some uncomfortable situations and doing bystander intervention training. They also worked very, very hard to teach me three different dances. They did not do that. It's my fault. They were excellent instruction. So did great. And then the last thing um i wanted to say was uh i really enjoyed being part of the uh ben made workshop for our growth plan and i'm sure so that my counselor fellow counselors will talk about that that's it thank you

Great, thanks. Kelsey Norris.

Yeah, I had the opportunity to also attend a few Welcoming Week events. I caught the tail end of the Latino Community Association event, the Launch and Market. It was such an amazing party. There were so many folks there, some really great Zumba dancing and just tons of kids running around and music. And it just, it was really, really awesome. And then I got to attend the Stories of Belonging and Resilience movie at the library, our new library. And that was just really powerful. And just a reflection on September 11th, first responder, Muslim first responder going into the towers and unfortunately not surviving. And it just caused me to reflect on my experience being in the Peace Corps and being in a predominantly Muslim country and actually praying along other Muslims and really having that support and just being able to to share that moment was pretty powerful. And so being able to see that move in and have the being participating and seeing the dialogue afterwards was really moving. I also got to participate in the Bend Made workshop. And that was, I really look forward to a lot more discussion on the growth. And we have a lot of great work ahead of us there. And then just one little plug and announcement that the Latino Community Association is having their Amigos concert on September 22nd. And they will have Edna Vasquez, who is the vocalist and guitarist for Pink Martini. And I know that they are needing to sell more tickets. So please go online and purchase some. It should be a great concert.

Great, thanks. Councilor Perkins, I don't know if there's anything you wanted to report out. I'll give you an opportunity.

Yeah, just.

Go ahead. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I just one thing actually, would like to remind everyone that it is hunger action month. And just wanted to give a little plug for family kitchen. They are in the first seven months of the year, they served 140,000 meals to people, which is up 55 to 60% from last year at this time. So um the need is there and um they're doing incredible work uh not only for people that are um you know you can you can be food insecure and not be homeless um and so they're doing incredible work in the community just want to remind everyone you can donate money you can donate pantry staples um you can volunteer and you can look at their calendar for the month and um and see there they have a lot of great partners in the community that are donating a portion of their proceeds on certain days of the month so

just wanted to highlight the incredible work that they're doing great thanks that's Riley um I also attended two welcoming week events uh the skill lab that counselor Platt referred to and um the stories of belonging Arab Muslim and South Asian and um from representatives of those communities here in Bend and um like counselor Norris it was a really moving event there was a lot of just important perspectives to hear and share from people in our community that um both you know experienced the the grief and all the you know from what happened on September 11th but also some of the ramifications for them that came after that so it was a really valuable conversation and um I appreciate the sharara films for putting that on. I also went to the Ben made workshop part 1 of 2 parts of us getting started on our growth plan. And I think we had a great conversation and for anybody who's interested, I would encourage you to look at the information. Um, it's, it's a little buried on the city council agenda web page at this point under additional meetings, but there's really if you're interested in shaping the future of bend a good place to start is understanding kind of how we got here and what our land form looks like and why and there's just really good background information that our staff prepared for us as counselors. But I think it's valuable for all community members to better understand us and also where we're going and some of the forces that we're influencing. Then, so I'd encourage you to look at that and then today I went to a tour of the skeleton fire area in South is outside of. Then city limits, but in the Southeast part of town off a record road, and it was really valuable to go out there and see that and see the scar and see kind of to get a sense of what happened and. and how it burned. I think I heard a couple of things that are important. One, how much response has improved here in the region. Largely, they were saying that that fire was kind of a catalyst for some real changes. And it's really about coordination between all the different fire response agencies and whether they're local, state, and federal, and in particular, being able to stage resources kind of ahead of time when they know something that's coming. Back then, they couldn't do that. They had to wait until certain conditions were met, and that meant it was harder to actually respond to that fire when it happened and probably burned a little bit more than it might have otherwise. There were some difficult conditions that day as well. And then I think we heard from our deputy fire chief about her reflections on her work in the industry for 25 plus years and how when she came to Central Oregon, just being really impressed by how much collaboration goes on here. And it was really... Important to hear that. It's not to say any of that means that things are perfect, right, and that we're not going to have a real challenge when we face a fire, but we're better prepared than we were back then. The last thing I would say is that they talked a lot about the scar that's there today, the fire scar, and that the landscape has significantly changed. It's no longer forested, and it might look like the fire risk is lower, but actually the fire risk remains quite high. For different reasons, we have different kinds of vegetation there now, and it's completely converted to a different kind of vegetation scheme. Um, but the fire is still remains really high and it's important for everybody to understand that even in parts of the community that have burned once. Um, it actually, it's almost like, it becomes higher risk faster now with these new kinds of plants that exist. So it kind of emphasizes that we have fire risk all around our community.

Great, thanks council.

Yeah, thank you. I also attended the skeleton fire study tour. This was the 30 year look back on the fire that affected about 500 homes in 1996. And I also came away with a lot of the same lessons. I was going to mention evacuation and home hardening and the coordinated response. I also think we're in a much better position than we were in 1996. And also just to highlight again that the Bend Fire Department does provide a home hardening service. A staff person will come out and help you inspect your property. That is available not only for city residents, but also residents in the Deschutes Rural Fire Protection District number two. So if you're interested in that, there's a place you can sign up for that on the website. So that was, I thought, very informative. I also just wanted to share that I'm the 25th anniversary of September 11 I shared a personal moment of silence at the bend heroes memorial at brooks park and for anybody who doesn't know where that is it's on the western side of the. Veterans Memorial Bridge, which is also sometimes known as the Newport Ave bridge over the river. I thought that it was meaningful for me to reflect on my own experience, but I also got to connect with a couple of community members who also I think were doing the same thing. And I think it was a meaningful opportunity anyway to find a moment to reflect and think about whether there are lessons that we still need to learn or where we are today and where we're headed. For me personally, I do lament the loss of liberty that I think we've experienced in the wake of that. I think of my own kids and how much society has changed and I think that's something worth trying to get back. So I hope that the next 25 years looks different than the last 25 years. That's something that I will be personally working towards.

Thank you. I guess I had a busy couple of weeks. I have quite a few updates, so I'll keep it brief as brief as I can. I visited the Giving Plate Community Store on Southeast 3rd. I was not aware that it was Hunger Action Month, but this might be an interesting facility that you all might want to check out. They will do tours. And this is the same organization that operates the Bend Food Project. And so that is a way for you to be involved and support the great work that they do. I toured Republic Services Recycling Collection Facility, which is a really impressive facility. And they're doing quite a bit to look at creative solutions to manage recoverable waste streams. I know many of you have done that tour. And then following on that, I did a tour of the downtown garbage situation, as I call it. yikes is all i can say about that right now i know i'm sure the mayor's talked to dbba and others about it and i'm going to talk with stephanie betteridge about it but i think this is something that council will need to take up um and so that they'll probably hear more about that at some point I watched the Welcoming Week movie that counselors Norris and Riley referred to. However, I watched it on my own. It is a free movie that is available and it is truly a moving story. And so I'm just going to say the title of the movie so that you can search for it yourself if you want to watch it. I highly recommend it. It's called American Jedi, The Salman Hamdani Story. So check it out if you are able to. I attended the COAC meeting on September 10th, which is the Central Oregon Area Commission on Transportation, and that was a very painful conversation where they reviewed the capital improvement plan with us. I think everyone's heard of the struggles that the state is having to fund highway construction, but when you look at The intersections and the stretches of ODOT highway across Oregon, or across Central Oregon in particular, and the high crash rates in certain locations, frankly, Bend is not high on that list. And so I think the takeaway for me is that, I mean, so our number one request on that project and that effort was the Empire project. I I really can't unfortunately can't really be optimistic about seeing funding for that there are other grant programs i'm sure staff are following the all road safety. But I think really, we need to kind of plan to fund some projects on infrastructure ourselves, which is a big. Caroline Crouse, City of Benton, kind of thing to consider because we've never really had to do that before. Caroline Crouse, City of Benton, On a slightly brighter note, I did also learn in that meeting that the city of Ben can totally undertake our own projects on ODOT infrastructure in an ODOT right of way. Caroline Crouse, City of Benton, Of course, it has to be done in partnership with ODOT and other cities around Central Oregon have done it, but I hope we don't let that stop us as we look at our transportation priorities. The Ben made workshop was really great. Just echo all the comments that folks made about that. And I will, I want to note, though, I did get some, some notes from folks who, who watched the dialogue that we had, and they had really positive takeaways about our conversation around housing, diversity, complete communities and, you know, and all the rest transportation options and things like that. So, I think that's some really positive feedback to us on that. And then lastly, I just want to mention that I took some phone calls and fielded text messages and emails and met with neighbors near to the eighth and only intersection after our discussion in last week's work session. And they asked how to engage in the process. I was kind of disappointed to learn that public outreach hadn't been done. We were told that it had, but it hadn't. I think there are going to be some community members who come forward to council and share their thoughts on what this major change means to their neighborhood. And, you know, beyond the public input issue, though, what I think has occurred to me about that project and other geobond projects that we're kind of getting some flack for, is something that really came up in the Ben Made workshop, which is the transportation system plan. And I think the disconnect for me right now is that I don't feel like the TSP is being adhered to in the GEO bond project delivery. So I cracked open the TSP and I encourage you to do that too. You can just read the very beginning. It's the values and the policies chapters two and three, I think. Anyway, I think if we were following those values and those policies more closely, I don't think we would see as much. As much public scrutiny and I think we'd be delivering projects that are safer more equitable and actually reducing congestion so.

Thanks. Okay, so sort of going backwards from today, this morning met with DBBA, our Downtown Bend Business Association, at their meeting. They're transitioning their executive director who's going to be leaving this fall, and they're going to be hiring someone new. So that's a transition for them. Just updated them on the Franklin closure, which started this week, and that will be reopening for the holiday season before closing again to finish that work. um how they can engage on the mirror pond project and joe wells was there to continue making connections with them and talked about some round tables that she's holding to help gather feedback um from the wider downtown community um and then um garbage did come up as well um and what i'm encouraging them to do is come up with some priorities to let us know for our goal setting next year what they really think downtown uh priorities and needs are so we can consider those as part of our goal setting um a couple other things i've been doing um the the first week of school was Fun. It's all parents might say. Kids are back in school, which is a great thing, but also kind of a stressful time of year. During that week, I went over to Salem because I've been part of a building codes work group that Senator Pham is convening around single stair construction and elevator reform, just things that I'm interested in, I know a few counselors are interested in. i know some folks in our town are interested in looking at um so that was great while i was there in the capital cafe saw our tribal council members who were there lobbying as well so got to sit down with chairman smith and just connect with him which was great um and and reaffirm their support for the water mitigation bill that includes their sovereignty language um and we're both supporting that so that was great also got to talk with a couple of legislatures legislators about the mitigation bill and how we can continue to educate and provide information for them in the next set of legislative days. I'm really proud to stand with the governor this week and great, great ground at Lonza on their expansion, $250 million investment, over 80 good paying jobs, and really learned a lot more about spray drying technology, which is, I'm not gonna explain it right now, but which is a really important technology that's helping develop drugs and the way drugs are delivered into the body and how people can take medicines and is a growing industry that's happening right here in Bend and that we are globally competitive for.

which is really amazing.

Lonza is a Swiss company, so they had executives there. There was a diplomat, the consul general from Switzerland there. Very serious commitment to our community and to this investment, which is really great to see and great to see the governor there championing this as well. as part of her prosperity work. So that was amazing. I also went down to the LCA sort of kickoff market, which was awesome and really great. And I just wanted to make a couple of comments because we received some communication from Catalina at LCA, who is sort of the overall organizer of Welcoming Week about um troubling comments and and things that they've been getting and the fact that they have to do a little more safety planning um this year because of the feedback they've been getting from some parts of our community and i just want to state that those sorts of hateful or threatening comments are really unacceptable and that we all stand with our partners at lca against that type of hate and very quickly responded to help with any kind of security concerns or connecting with our police department that they needed to make sure that these events are very welcoming and safe. LCA has also put out a call to the community to show up to Welcoming Week events. Just show up, come and attend and show that the community supports our immigrant neighbors and our refugee neighbors and supports these events. And as described by my colleagues up here, you can learn some really great things. You can connect with great community members, see great art. It's a really great opportunity and our website has all the events under Welcoming Week for anyone who is interested. Finally, I will say I took my daughter to get her flu shot. My pediatrician very nicely also gave me a flu shot. Please get your flu shot. Please take care of yourself. We're coming into the season where the sickness is going around, again, as any parent whose kid just started school will tell you. So I hope folks can keep themselves protected that way. okay i think that's it for the reports so we'll move into visitors section we don't have any public hearings um so all the visitor section comments are going to go in this section here including the borough comments which we'll hear your comments now and then we'll be convening borough A little bit later, so I will start with a, we have a couple of folks signed up online and then a few people here in person, everyone's going to get 2 minutes. So, if you're in person, you'll see the timer here online. You'll see the timer for you on zoom. We ask that you direct your comments to the full council, not to any individual counselor and addresses of the body. Please keep your comments respectful and non disruptive to the meeting. And we will ask you to sit in front of the mic here in person, say your name, whether you live in the city event, and then begin your 2 minutes. and we'll go from there so if we can start with a few online callers tonight and i see i think i think three or four so um we can start with michelle monroe and michelle you can unmute and you can go ahead when you're ready okay can you hear me yes we can go ahead

Okay, great. I am here tonight as a Bend resident to ask you to remove a sentence from the draft of the 2027 state legislative priorities. It reads, support expanding allowed uses of responsible technologies that strengthen public safety and service delivery. I'm concerned about how broad that language is. Last year, we learned that federal immigration authorities accessed the city's flock camera data more than 250 times because of user error. That should be a reason to be cautious and not to expand more technology. This isn't just about flock. I'm also concerned about automated license plate readers, drones, red light and speeding cameras, and other tools that expand surveillance under the umbrella of public safety. AI and automated systems can often be wrong. When they misidentify people, vehicles, or activity, those errors can have serious consequences. I don't think the city should be expanding these technologies right now. Before deploying more tools, we need clear answers about what data is collected, who can access it, how long it's kept, and how misuse is prevented. Until those protections are in place, expansion should stop. I'm asking the council to remove this language and instead prioritize policies that protect residents' privacy and place meaningful limits on surveillance technology. I also ask that you seriously consider the proposals already submitted to the city by the Bend Privacy Alliance. They've spent thousands of hours researching these issues and that work deserves serious consideration. Thank you.

All right, next on line, Luke Warbus. And Luke, you can unmute and go ahead.

I have no comment at the moment.

Okay, great. All right, we will move forward. And I have Madison Bordeaux.

Can you hear me?

Go ahead, Madison.

Hi. Hello, Council. My name is Madison, and I live in Bend. I'm here today to ask you to strike a sentence in item seven on the 2027 legislative priorities that says support expanding allowed uses of responsible technologies that strengthen public safety and service delivery. My concern is that it doesn't say which technology, it doesn't say what it would change, it doesn't say who decides what counts as responsible or allowed. What it does is authorize Venn's lobbyists to back broader surveillance authority in Salem before this community ever sees specifics. That's already the pattern here. Plate readers have come bundled into a body camera contract. Federal immigration agents search our plate data hundreds of times through a setting nobody voted on. I feel like disclosure on these issues only end up happening because citizens demand it, and then safeguards get applied retroactively. If you adopt this sentence, this pattern again moves to a room where residents may end up with no comment period, no recorded vote, and no notice. At the start of this year, community members warned you that issues with data privacy, particularly in policing, do not stop at a single vendor. It is systemic. You asked the city manager to bring LPR additions to council and the public before deployment, and we appreciate that. It is a drop in the bucket. This is not the world of 10 or 20 years ago, and public concern about data privacy is not receding. I wish I saw that truth reflected more in government when it comes to public accountability and transparency around advanced technology. Please strike the sentence. If you keep it a technology principle, require a separate recorded council vote after public notice before anyone advocates in Salem on the city's behalf. Thank you.

And then last I had Joey Shearer. I wasn't sure if you wanted to comment during visitor section. And Joey, you can unmute.

Thank you. No, I don't have any comment here at this time.

Great. Thank you. All right, so that will be it for our online callers. So we'll go to our callers who are visitors who are here in the room. So we'll start with Tim Watson, and then after that will be Dr. Ali Boudreau.

Oh, shoot. OK. No, go ahead.

You come on up, Dr. Ali Boudreau, and then after that will be Jennifer Jones.

Good evening. I'm Dr. Ali Boudreau, and I'm talking about public safety for Woodside Ranch. This is my rebuttal for the nine-second meeting regarding our safety there. We've raised the traffic bottleneck, the megawildfire risk, and the surface mines every time we feel our concerns have been dismissed in our community. Nearly 72% of this project, which is 66 acres, sits on two former cinder mines. The majority of the site, the council has never once addressed it. Three years ago, Deschutes County deferred the safety review to the city, and nothing has happened since. This isn't unprecedented. In 2019, near Terrebonne, a hearings officer denied housing on a former mine site for the same reason. That review cannot be deferred past approval. This application is incomplete. The traffic study is obsolete. The mine has never been addressed and Caldera Ranch bypass or review Deschutes County is already required. SB 1537 expedited the land need process. It does not waive the council's obligation under goal seven to prove this site is indeed safe. The obligation remains unmet. Each of you took an amazing oath to protect our safety, our public safety. That oath does not expire because a review is inconvenient. I'm asking the council to require a full geotechnical review and a complete application before Caldera Ranch moves forward. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Jennifer Jones. And then after that, Ricardo waits.

i'm back hi hello my name is jennifer jones i live in woodside ranch i'm here this evening to ask the council to abandon the plan to develop caldera ranch there are a number of serious concerns fast-tracking the program risks the lives of current and future residents city's own application came after its own deadline and is incomplete The applicant's own traffic engineer admitted that the analysis is incomplete. The traffic uses a 2017 model and ignores more than 2,000 nearby approved units, which would obviously be impactful to the traffic report in any attempts to evacuate the area. This city's own fire expert could not define defensible space. The real code is not due until October 14th, weeks after the vote. A public slide showing the meeting on September 2nd showed the housing minimum of 230 plus units with the symbol backwards, at most, instead of at least. Councilor Riley caught it. Staff admitted the arrow was wrong, yet approved the plan, green lighting it to go ahead, even with the incorrect figures. In 2008, the ESEE created a report of the area in question, and it states, the mineral aggregates resources shall be protected by zoning the surface mining, including onsite processing, and by prohibiting future incompatible land uses, i.e., rural residential development. I acknowledge that this document is dated 2008, but the city does a 20-year plan, and this decision and logic has become even stronger given the current court cases due to developments collapsing because they were built on cinder surface mines. I realize that the population of Bend is much higher in 2026 than it was in 1996 in terms of how fire evacuation things that you guys were saying had improved from the skeleton rethink. um there may have been improvements that have happened since 1996 but there are new challenges with mega fires across the west becoming more severe each season resources that have been they're diverted so they're no longer there i have this which if you want to hand it to the video she'll hand that to us thank you thank you all right ricardo waits and then after that jonathan westmoreland

Good evening.

Hi.

Ricardo Waite's been resident. In 2021, I stood here during Black History Month and challenged this council to hire people of color in positions of leadership within city government. Today, we see the results. In 2024, council presented me with a fair housing proclamation. I assumed for our Good Deeds program because its findings were later cited in the city's application for federal pro-housing funding. Ben received $5 million, and to my knowledge, the city still has not cleared its property with a racially biased deed. The same year, the equity director, a man of color, resigned, describing unsafe, inequitable, and professionally hostile environment. The city paid him $86,000, then commissioned an investigation that called his accounts implausible. My community watched that with a familiar taste in our mouth. In January, I sat before the Human Rights and Equity Commission and said, when I see things like what happened to the equity director, it scares me. A lot of people have been hurt by it. The Bulletin quoted me, nothing changed. after the community relations manager, a woman of color, resigned saying it's an isolating experience to be an employee of color at the city. On March 25th, over 40 residents, business owners, educators, and union members sent this council a letter requesting a meeting between BIPOC community organizations and leaders. I was listed as the point of contact. It is now September and there has been no response. So tonight, I am renewing that request directly and publicly. We need communication, not proclamation, not silence, a meeting, a real conversation about what equity actually looks like in this building. Because right now, the whole community, not just Black people, has to ask, what does accountability look like when your own equity infrastructure keeps breaking down? We're here.

we've been waiting and we ain't going nowhere thanks ricardo thanks and i recall the conversation that you and i had after sending that email and i'm happy to follow up with you so thank you jonathan westmoreland

Hi, my name is Jonathan. I live in Bend. Nationwide, people are speaking out against the expansion of surveillance systems and AI data centers. In August, almost 100 surveillance contracts were canceled or not renewed. The majority of those contracts were with Flock, but Axon has used that opportunity to pitch their product as a safer alternative. I have analyzed over 500 patents issued to or acquired by Axon, and I'm here to tell you that they are not a safer alternative. In June, Axon denied a request to sign a Senate Bill 1587 attestation that would protect Oregonians' data from being used to enforce federal immigration law. They have still not met Senate Bill 1516 audit and transparency requirements, and since June 2025, Bend Police have been using generative AI, a two-year gift from Axon, to write their police reports. That's two state laws ignored and a city program that was implemented without council oversight, a public announcement, or public-facing policies. Now, you want to increase surveillance as a legislative priority. You want to loosen the regulations on drones and red light cameras while adding audio surveillance to the stack. While last year's laws are being ignored and the police are expanding their systems with little oversight, you're building an automated system that will feed data to God knows where at the same time that Trump is going to seize power during the 2028 election. You're building the tools for the oppressor. Think about that. Our constitutional system limits government power precisely because we don't know who will possess the power tomorrow. Can you identify any safeguard that is already in place that would disallow these surveillance devices and agency to agency sharing agreements that could act as a functional equivalent of a statewide or nationwide surveillance network capable of reconstructing the normal day of any person? No. We need technical safeguards because the companies that you have invited to our city are ignoring the laws and you are funding them. We need to stop expanding this surveillance network until we get control of the network we already have instead of partnering with the surveillance companies that prioritize growth and profit above all.

Thank you, Jonathan.

No applause, please, sir. Thank you. Okay. That is it for our in-person speakers tonight. Oh, no, sorry, it's not. We have three more that were on the Burra topic for tonight. I was going to have you all come up here. So, Garth, do you want to go first? Yeah, so Garth Finley, come on up, and then Chris McGee, and then Joe Weinbauer.

Good evening City Council. I'm Garth Finley, he, him. With the NCS, North Coast States Carpenters Union, I represent all the carpenters in this area. Public subsidies and tax incentives should assist the public or create a pathway for middle class to better pay jobs, education, or opportunities. Not support more corporate developers, contractors, sub tier contractors, profiting over an already exploited workforce for perpetuating the need for more affordable housing. Other cities in Oregon are implementing expanded labor standards. Meanwhile, Ben, by preventing prevailed wage on your affordable housing is navigating away from labor standards. Not acceptable. You've seen the proof. We've shown you videos of exploited workers that we've provided um from ben's affordable housing and other projects in this area by the contractors that use labor brokers we are shocked to see that ben's city staff has been deliberately instructed to avoid triggering prevailed wages under the bully july 14th determination on publicly subsidized projects within bureau i go on these sites i talk to workers i've seen workers that sleep on these sites. Amazing that they're getting paid substandard and maybe they won't even qualify for the affordable housing. But they've been paid cash, working without safeguards, working in substandard work conditions. I guarantee that the constituents of this city would be appalled to see what their tax dollars are incentivizing. I would ask this council to direct staff to find ways to prevent further exploitation of labor on publicly subsidized projects instead of creating pathways to circumvent this behavior I'm bringing to you. I'm really helping our community by creating a greater need for affordable housing as it's being built. We should do better. Thank you.

Thank you, Garth. Rips, McGee, come on up.

Good evening, City Council, Mayor. My name is Chris McGee. I normally would say thank you for what you do, but I can't tonight. I am a representative for North Coast State Carpenters, but more importantly, a carpenter that wore my carpenter bag on projects. I'm asking why is FIRA willing to weaken labor standards by preventing prevailing wage? This is not a union, non-union issue. This is a worker community issue. We showed you videos of labor brokers not too long ago. Did you care about the workers then? If so, what has changed? Because this will keep the door open to labor brokers. That means cash pay, cheating the system, cheating the workers, not paying family wage jobs. But this says to me, you're okay with wage theft to the worker, to the community. who are now directing staff to go along with this. I said I was a carpenter because I have seen these practices firsthand back then and now as a representative. Prevalent wage is how the community keeps work local and keeps workers home, spending time with their family and money in the community, instead of at the gas pumps traveling for work in cities that actually recognize the importance of prevalent wage, which is fair family living wage jobs. Once labor brokers are in, wage theft, misclassification, and fly-by-night contractors follow. The city still pays for the project, only the workers and the tax base lose enough where workers can't even afford to live in a place where they just help build. Think about what you are doing by purposely not triggering prevailing wage. It's simple. Prevailing wage is a way that workers can actually afford to live where they work. and not rely on multiple safety net programs. Getting housing built is a good thing, but at what cost is a council willing to do it at?

Thank you, Chris.

But thank you for your time.

Thank you. And Joe Weinmiller.

Hi, Joe Weimuller. I live here in Bend, here to speak on prevailing wage. I'm a rank and file union carpenter upon drywall, framed and built ceilings on many jobs across Central Oregon, including recently the Central Library. More often than not, I'm working outside of the city limits. I usually commute anywhere from 30 to an hour or 30 minutes to an hour and a half each way in my own vehicle unpaid. I depend on prevailing wage work to make a living and having that work actually in the city I live in makes a really big difference. I've been tuning into some of the Ben made workshops and I appreciate the affordability as a key point in the discussion. But I think an important factor in making Ben affordable is having good paying careers that people can do long-term in a variety of fields. Even as the city trends towards more of a knowledge economy, we still need people to pick up the trash, clean the schools, and build the buildings, and I think they should be treated with dignity. I'm very much in favor of the city building affordable housing. We desperately need to expand our housing supply, but I hope we can find ways to do it that aren't at the expense of the local workers building it. I feel deep solidarity with all workers and in urging for prevailing wage. I think we also need to work with the same urgency to get better protections for all workers regardless of where they work or their immigration status. Workers keep bend going and I think we should be part of or we should be deciding its future. I'd also just like to add and I want to Or I do not support the, uh, giving the city broad authority to expand surveillance technology. In addition to what I'm talking about without clear limits and public input. Um, that's it.

Thank you. All right. Thanks everyone for your comments tonight. That will move us on to the consent agenda.

I'm going to approve the consent agenda.

All right. Moved by council president, second by councilor Platt. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Approved.

and on to number five this is the first reading of an ordinance amending bend municipal code chapter 12.10 system development charges one moment please

Not pulling up, hold on one second. Well, let's see. Can you hear my tech support? Well, maybe we can just jump in last week. Yeah, there we go. Good evening, Mayor, counselors. I'm Sarah Hudson, Senior Policy Analyst here with Cyrus Mooney, Business Development Manager. Thank you. So we were again just here last week. Again, we are talking about the SDC exemption in the core area. By way of background, the idea is the exemption will help advance economic development objectives. This is a recommendation that originally came from the Core Area Advisory Board. When we do SDC exemption, there is a recognized trade-off that we are reducing some SDC revenues, but it's for support of community-wide benefits. So this was a follow-up to input that was gathered at that August 31st developer roundtable where attendees noted and kind of emphasized that SDC costs can be that determining factor in projects penciling. So there was strong support for this concept. And last week, council provided direction to move forward. As a reminder, the components of this program include the boundaries being the core area urban renewal area with a five year program duration. So this would be exemption of all city SDC, so sewer water transportation. And again, eligibility would be for non-residential projects exempt from or subject to minimum development standards review. And what was discussed last week as well was some ongoing program monitoring. So kind of annual evaluation of program utilization and impacts to the infrastructure systems in the core area.

All right, Council, any questions on this follow-up from our discussion?

One thing that I think we briefly mentioned last time but didn't focus on was, I think, I was trying to find it in the notes from the previous meeting, the Core Area Advisory Board, their recommendation was to narrow this to the Bend Central District. And we talked about focusing on the Core Area. Was there any further discussion about their rationale for limiting that focus to the Bend Central District as opposed to the core area? Why the narrower focus recommendation?

Yeah, I think I can speak to that anecdotally from the observations that I had from their discussion, and it was around prioritization. And just saying, if we offer this incentive, then maybe the investments or the commercial activity that we're hoping to see will be spread to a broader scope of just the core of the core where we're seeing a lot of infrastructure investments being made by public investments. And so I think they're really trying to hone in on their priorities. And that was a way of doing that.

If I can just add, as I said, when we talked about it last week, it's consistent with the approach that we're taking in terms of some of the other incentive tools that we're using with the grants and the loan, the grant program in particular, where there's sort of extra points for the core of the core. Um, and kind of a more of an emphasis on that and making it available. So it didn't seem like there was support for structuring. Sdc exemption in a similar way.

And I think the distinguishing factor is that or city policy and what they were referring to there is more around the programs and incentives that they're talking about. I understand.

But yeah, we're talking about the same geographic area. So, yeah, we're talking about using tools for the same part of our. Yes, right.

Okay, any other questions. Ready to vote.

Can I make a comment first?

Sure.

Go ahead. So as you know, last week I expressed some concern about this tool. I mean, I'm generally supportive of the SDC exemption idea. My concern is more about, really at this point, is about the timeframe. And I would prefer to see the BCD be the focus, but I understand that that's not where we're going. I still think it can work and be beneficial for us and for the community, for the whole court area. I would be more cautious on the timeline. I don't support 5 years, I think it would be better to start with 3 years. And if we did that from now, it would get us, you know, we could go all the way through the end of 2029. so it'd be 3 and a quarter years or so. Um, with an evaluation no later than September of 2029, and if it still seems it's necessary and valuable, and we're not losing, I would ask that we look at how much revenue the city has lost towards that's needed infrastructure revenue source. And that there are not any major infrastructure issues that have arisen during that time. I think it's going to be very difficult for a future council to pull back from this earlier than 5 years if there are reasons to do that. So I would encourage starting with a shorter timeframe and then looking hard and extending it. But I think once you put this in place. It's going to be very, very difficult to pull back. I also think that 3 years is plenty of time to see if it makes a meaningful difference. Um, and to see if there's some other macro level economic conditions that change that might change the sort of dynamics about development and redevelopment. Um, in the core, so my, my proposal would be to do it for 3 years and not for 5 to start with with provision in there about, you know, the council can obviously extend it.

Okay, is there anyone who wanted to change to a shorter period?

I was going to make an amended motion suggesting three years.

Anyone else. Not seeing support for that, but thank you for that point, and I think it's I think it's well taken, you know anytime we're piloting something I think. you want to be cautious about how you're starting that out. I think for me, what I heard from our development community is that five years was sort of a minimum viable period to see if this was going to work. So I'm comfortable with the five years.

I guess the thing I add is I'm counting on this annual evaluation of the utilization And Councillor Riley and Councillor Mendez, I take your point. I am also counting on that and will have the political will, I think, to make the right choice if it's not going the right direction.

Well, I mean, wouldn't it, after a three year, for example, we would probably have some applications that we would have some sense of whether this program is working as intended and If we wanted to certainly have the opportunity to extend it otherwise five years I don't know I feel like five years is a long time and I initially had concerns about also. The geographic scope as well, so I was hoping that there might be some support for restricting it. With the appreciation of the possibility of expanding it or extending it in the future, because I agree, I think, if this is working well great let's expand it. If we have concerns I think it's harder to pull the reins in and restrict it, so I feel like I would support a narrower scope, which was the recommendation of the core area advisory board and either in terms of scope or duration, at least for this initial round.

If I may just add. Thank you. I had been approached by the Children's Museum, and so I contacted the city manager and said, hey, can you get some data on SDCs on tenant improvement projects, which that is what this is, adaptive reuse to tenant improvement project. And I found the email. I didn't have it last week when we were talking. The total amount of SDCs paid on TIs in 2026 was $537,000 and some odd dollars. In 2025, it was 673. In 2024, it was 750. It's not a lot of money. The biggest SDC category that will be affected is transportation. But a few months ago, we talked about how those calculations are not perceived to be very fair by a lot of folks who are trying to start businesses and commercial spaces around town. So I'm not too worried about the lost revenue. I think that the economic activity will far outweigh

lost revenue that we have so i'm really excited about trying this and seeing what happens can you were those numbers for citywide that you just quoted or just for the quarter it was citywide citywide yeah yeah so that's not even just the court right yeah yeah it's going to be small and those numbers i actually followed up with the city manager and asked to see those numbers and that's part of what persuaded me okay let's let's take a look at it but i also think it's important to just remember how much infrastructure is an issue you know all over the place so we just need to be cautious That's why I'd suggest being cautious in a short time frame, and I really think it's going to be hard to step back in three years.

Any further discussion? We're ready for a motion.

I move for a first reading of an ordinance amending Bend Municipal Code Chapter 12.10, System Development Charges.

Second. All right. Moved by Councillor Platt, seconded by Councillor Franzosa. I'd like to make an amendment. Okay, go ahead.

Uh, I moved to amend the motion to limit the time period to 3 years instead of 5.

2nd, all right, uh, amendment to change to 3 years instead of 5 by council members and 2nd, by council really any further discussion. All right all those in favor of that amendment to the motion please say, aye aye. All right all those opposed. Okay, so the amendment will fail and we're back to the main motion and for the discussion on the main motion. All right, all those in favor of the main motion as staff presented the program here, please say aye. Aye. Does it post? No, no. Okay, two opposed. All right. Thanks, everybody.

not done yet we have some follow-up yeah remember we deferred that long list of things yes so yeah we ran out of time last week so wanted to take the moment to discuss the other issues that were raised during the round table um and understand kind of a prioritization which which items might council want staff to explore further As a reminder, there were 6 items we highlight here. So 3 of them really pertain to. So, 1 being expand this relief city wide. There was the other 1 of revisiting the credit for having a more than 10 year look back and then explore flexibility in the transfer of credits.

and some of the other comments that we received during and after the roundtable through the survey that was sent out to the representatives that were present at that meeting one was to look at the percentage of sales that are allowed on industrial developments that was viewed as restrictive to some of the attendees so there was a recommendation to look at that percentage and potentially increase that percentage amount um there was a memo that was sent to council regarding the items hopefully you had a chance to review that uh secondly looking at creating a fast track permitting option for commercial slash industrial tenant improvements and lastly creating a shot clock for the transportation sewer and water analysis review that would be consistent with other permitting review processes that we have already established okay megan i see your hand up

Yeah, I mean, just a question as, as a lay person here, or maybe just a comment. I mean, it, you know, in my mind, these are all really important. It's really hard to prioritize them. I guess it would be helpful to, to understand which is, which are easier to do and which are more difficult to do in terms of staff resources, etc.

Do you want to speak to that, Sarah?

Yeah. So in terms of revisiting, I would say revisiting the SDC credit for kind of that look back, the reviewing the percentage of sales permitted on industrial sites and then creating a shot clock for transportation sewer and water analysis. Those are kind of, I would say, the lower hanging fruit items, but more administrative, straightforward. The other ones, I would say, would involve kind of more in-depth you know look at resourcing what it would take especially now that we are going to pilot this SDC exemption program just want to flag being sensitive to okay we're kind of putting a new item on staff and giving it time to kind of play out before I would say expanding the boundary or even the transfer of SDC credits or just a bigger lift but we would still need to explore it but just on the face of it they're definitely larger items

Sarah you skipped over creating the fast track as you said the shot clock did you want to include that or did you separate that on purpose and in terms of low-hanging fruit I think the fast track would be where you could probably speak to it a bit more I think the fast track option is something we've discussed internally but if we were going to do this prioritization of administrative burden and a little more impact I think the three that Sarah referred to occur the things that we took into account

And what would you prioritize as being the highest impact items on here?

I think the highest impact in terms of the employment site readiness, that percentage of sales permitted we've heard has a lot of potential. There are interested users of industrial lands and that part of the code is restrictive to the type of operations that they want to develop on the industrial zone lands that we already have. and that piece is also in really close alignment with what we're trying to do statewide in other jurisdictions following the oregon business council and business oregon's best practice recommendations so i would say for the employment site readiness yeah that would be the item

And this was the idea where rental sales can kind of be paired, right? Essentially, yeah. But we still are able to put that percentage and maybe bump it up a little bit more, but still keep it below a commercial sort of. Correct.

Any other questions? Gina, go ahead. I didn't really have a question. I was just going to say that I did read that letter. And yeah, I mean, the percentage of sales permitted on industrial sites, I can see how that's. would become something that would become owners to administer and and probably create a lot of confusion and trying to kind of allow it so yeah I would support. Trying to standardize that and allow sales on industrial sites.

I guess I'm, you know, what kind of a review are we going to be doing on these things? And is there going to be sort of a presentation of like, what are the downsides potentially?

Right.

I think this is just, this is just, I understand given direction, but yeah. And come back to it. That's important that we understand for some of these things, like why are they in place in the first place? Do we have a good reason? Is there, what was the reason at least when it was first put in place and what are the downsides potentially to the city and for some of these for revenue and that kind of thing? So, yeah.

Yeah, the shot clock as well for the review, the transportation, sewer, water. And really, I don't know how I feel actually about the fast track permitting option because everybody wants their permit faster. Like, I want to fast track the whole thing. You know, I don't want to just... Right.

I'm more interested. I like the shot clock idea for those reviews because there was just some variability in the delay for those and the industrial site sales. I would start with those two.

Yeah. The only my only question about the shot clock is, are we concerned that, like. I know that sometimes there's this story that, like, are we concerned that we wouldn't approve projects because we got to that that.

Time period, because we have the shot clock process already implemented for other reviews in talking internally with our community development department staff. It seemed like that was a very palatable option. We could implement.

Megan, I see your hand up again.

Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. I was just going to say, I think the expand the boundary of SDC and the fast track permitting, to me, those seem like more like goal setting conversations. But the ones that we've been talking about, the other three, I think are great to focus on.

Okay, so how do we feel about the three that Sarah named as sort of the easiest to start with, maybe having staff look into those first?

Can you say them again?

Yeah.

The revisiting the SDC credit for more than 10 years, the review percentage of sales permitted on industrial sites, and then create a shot clock.

are we good with that and then not that we won't come back to these other things but maybe that we'll come back to them a little later on and would you come back with all three of those kind of at the same time as a package is that or you haven't it might depend is more administrative I think yeah but the other ones would we try to integrate with other packages okay great is that actually no more okay thank you thank you all right brings us to item number six

This is the continued deliberation and 1st, reading of an ordinance to amend the bend municipal code chapter 9.50 science.

right so we had a public hearing on this we started doing deliberation we got sort of a 3-3 standstill on one aspect of this um counselor mendez wasn't here so he listened into the hearing and he's now with us for deliberation so i think we were generally good with the package the the sticking point was the illuminated signs we had three of us that wanted to just kind of punt on the illuminated science not make any changes there and three of us that wanted to go forward with what staff had recommended so not to totally put the spotlight on you arnold but Also, if anyone has changed their mind, also speak up. But if folks are still feeling the same way they did last time, which I am, we turn to you to sort of see what you think.

Yeah, well, thank you for the opportunity to join the conversation in continued form. I completely applaud the effort to streamline the permitting around signs. There's a lot there, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to come back to it at a future date to continue the conversation around how we can make it simpler, even more clear, more objective, Having said that, I have concerns around expanding the use of lighted signs. And so I would support a motion to move forward with the package accepting the portions that pertain to lighted signs.

So the alternate exhibit A. Because I understand it, what was presented to us.

Yeah, I was just going to ask Ian what the best way to reward that motion is, because I think staff was prepared for this.

Yeah, I think at least having nods or questions from planning staff, they are prepared. So I think that tracks, and I'm pulling up the next of the day to make sure that's the right one. So it would be, my understanding is this proposal would be the package minus the allowance, increased allowances for eliminated signs at Parkway.

So one of y'all.

Oh, yeah, there's two exhibit days. There was the original one from September 2nd, and there's an alternate that's dated today. So the alternate removed the elimination.

So we have that. It's clearly noticed in public for folks to see what the change is. I think for the motion, you just need to say what basically what Ian just said.

Are you ready for motion?

Yeah.

I move for the first reading of an ordinance to amend municipal code chapter 9.50 signs and to adopt alternative exhibit A as presented to the council this evening. Second.

Okay. Is that past semester, Ian? That's the September 16th exhibit. Yes. Yes. Yes. Correct. Okay. All right. All those in favor of this motion? We've got a second. Yeah. We've got a second from Councillor Platt. All those in favor of this motion, please say aye. Aye. And then those opposed?

No.

So three opposed, 4-4. All right. I think we'll come back to illuminated signs probably at another time. Not that we're not interested in working on that, but I understand folks' position on that. Okay. Item number seven.

Council is asked to authorize the city manager to enter into a purchase and sale agreement with Pacific Health Associates for the acquisition of real property and improvements located at 2965 Northeast Connors Avenue and 1979 Northeast Tucson Way.

We're going to discuss seven and eight at the same time.

Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Council is also asked to adopt a resolution to authorize issuance sale execution and delivery of full faith and credit obligations in an amount not to exceed 25Million dollars.

All right. Good evening, Council. Matt Stewart of Real Estate Facilities Housing, joined tonight by Samantha Nesson, our Chief Financial Officer. So two items tonight to look at. The first is the motion to authorize the City Manager to enter into purchase sale agreement for what we're calling the Connors property, as Trish mentioned, at 2965 Northeast Connors, as well as 1979 Northeast Tucson Way. The second is to authorize and move forward with a resolution for us to issue, sale, and execute up to $25 million in bond sales, full faith and credit bonds. That would be for all the purchase, but as well as some additional costs that could be from moving in and getting the building set for us. And I'll discuss that as we move along. So just some brief history. I know we talked about this in June as part of our highest and best use, but we are here today in our existing city hall facility constructed in 1990 when our population was just under 30,000. We have definitely outgrown this space and have been acquiring property on this block ever since. So we own pretty much everything on our city block here except for the dry cleaner there at Franklin and Vaughn. We've also been leasing the building across the street, which we affectionately call the Wall Street Annex. That is about 15,000 feet. We've been doing that for over 10 years now since 2014. So in total, we use about, we have about 59,000 square feet. We use about 50,000. So we have some facilities that don't meet kind of our health and safety that also are used for storage. So back in June, we presented on the highest and best use analysis. Council kind of directed staff in the previous November to look at the three sites, four scenarios for what we would do with city property and what that would look like if a city hall was on it. The three sites were downtown, the property owned along Franklin and the BCD at Franklin and First, as well as our 15th Street, which is where we currently have our muni court, our PD, and where our former transportation building was before they moved to Juniper Ridge and the new public works campus. At that time, the consultants then really were trying to address three questions. What could realistically be developed on each of these properties? What were the potential financial and economic impacts of that development to both the community as well as the city? And then what would the city forego if they used that site for a city hall or administrative facility? Again, that could be loss of tax revenue, loss of economic development, loss of other revenue. So they kind of looked at a myriad of items to kind of come to their conclusion, the development capacity, the feasibility, the financial fiscal value, the economic development potential, as well as just how does it fit within our goal and city goal alignments. At the time, they recommended that 15 street would be the best for city hall because the BCD in downtown had the greatest sort of community and economic benefit at the time. Council gave staff the following direction. 1 to no longer consider downtown as a future site for a future city hall, and only to focus on 15 street as well as the 1st street property was just over an acre that we own in the BCD. And then as well, kind of directed staff to move forward with Borough to kind of move forward with some conceptual planning for the Franklin Avenue of what that might look like in the future. And the other one is to sort of address our immediate needs around our Wall Street annex lease, as well as what can we do for our existing facilities? Because I'll touch on this later, that lease technically expires next June, but we do have an option to extend, but we don't have anything beyond 2029 secured. Following that presentation, staff received a phone call from representatives who were representing the owners of what is the Connors property. They reached out with us asking if we'd be interested in acquiring this building. Their clients were interested in selling. And this is a site over on the east side of Bend at Connors and 27th, or Connors and Tucson to be more exact. It's just over four acres in size, involves two tax lots. The building is four stories, just over 70,000 square feet and has about 300 parking spaces. Again, it's a lot is going on in this area. If you've been frequent there, Mosaic is currently under construction, building their new sort of medical facility and Housing Works just completed their second affordable housing project in this block called Nine Peaks. So this is just across the street there at 27th and Connors. I do want to add, we've had a few questions like why was this not considered as part of the highest and best use analysis? I don't highlight what a rare opportunity this building is. There's only five buildings that staff is aware of that are privately owned office spaces that exceed 50,000 feet. That is Les Schwab headquarters in Juniper Ridge. the quad over by OSU Cascades, Crane Shed, which is just over 50,000, and then 360 Bond. So this is a really rare opportunity, not something we could have planned for, and a whole building of this size could actually come to market here in Bend in any sort of kind of realistic timeframe. So through some negotiation with the sellers, we came to the following terms. The city would be able to purchase the building for $17.95 million. An earnest money deposit, which is what you put down if you're If a million home sales, what you put down as you go through due diligence, 350,000, we'd have a few different due diligence periods. The first is 45 days to review the property. That is for us to do inspections of the facility, inspections of the property, as well as formalize an appraisal. We have a financing due diligence policy, and that is surrounded around the public comment period around the bond sale. So that lines up with that. And then there's a lease contingency period where the owner is going to be amending the current lease with the tenants, which is right now a sole tenant and that specific source around ensuring that that is their lease terminates on December 31st, 2028. And those all run simultaneously. Yes, they run simultaneously. Yes. So we look at it from a schedule standpoint. If we move forward with authorizing the signing of the PSA, we will probably sometime early November conclude our property due diligence. And then the finance due diligence and the lease due diligence would conclude there into about mid-December of this year. We then move forward with executing the bond sale and we're projected to close sometime around February of 2027 should we move forward. A few things to consider. One, as I mentioned, our current lease for the Wall Street annex terminates June 2027, but we do hold an option to extend until June of 2029. We don't have to inform the landlord whether we want to exercise that until January. So that fits in with our due diligence periods to complete and actually be able to make a decision of whether we're going to move or not or extend. The existing tenant, again, that lease would then expire on this deal in December of 2028. That then allows us, if we do opt to extend the Wall Street Annex, a six-month overlap where the tenant would move out and we'd have six months before we have to vacate the Wall Street Annex to sort of move forward with relocating staff as well as conducting sort of those initial improvements. The big one would be establishing a permanent customer service center on the ground floor. They do currently have a customer service area, but it doesn't quite meet our needs, so we would need to remodel that and make that improvement. From a cost consideration standpoint, as I mentioned, the 25 million up to 25 million in bond sales at a 5% interest rate that translate to about 1.6 million. I should note the last time we went out and did the bond sale, we had an interest rate of 4.6. So that has some flexibility. initial moving costs moving expenses are relatively not that high at 150 000 if you think we can do it we'll pick up a move it or information technology things are like our equipment that we use for meetings that will probably be about half a million to retrofit all the different conference rooms that are in the facility access control we would update what we have today so we are secure facility access about 150 000 and the big cost would be the permit counter ranging somewhere about one and a half to two million And then if we do have to proceed with purchasing furniture, that could be two to three million. We do think there's an opportunity with the existing tenant to possibly negotiate a deal for some of the existing furniture they have. Some of that is relatively new furniture that they did recently, and we understand they won't be moving to a new location. From an operating cost, should once we fully move in, it'd be about one to one and a half million additional year in operating costs from what we are currently today. That is once we move in over the time period between now and December 2028, that essentially nets out to zero because they would be paying us rent. So over the next two years, we would assume a really no cost to move in, but we would expanding costs into doing our tenant improvement plans and getting ready for the move. It is also anticipated that by doing so, we would be able to, should council give us direction, start evaluating a disposition strategy for the 1.75 acres we own here in downtown. We could use the proceeds from that sale to actually offset some of these costs, bringing that back down to something similar to what we paid today.

Matt, that estimated increase. Yes. Does that include savings on the Wall Street annex?

Yeah. So we pay about $400,000 right now. And this would be incorporating that savings into that. So the 1.6 and kind of like minus the $400,000. But depending on where we land with whether we take out $22 million or $23 million, that can be adjusted.

And includes debt service?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah.

Can we just go over on the topic? Did you model like any operating cost changes? building inspectors are gonna be all the way out there, gas powered cars, more fuel to get to wherever they're going to inspect sites, things like that?

No, we have not. As our policy is adopted for additional vehicles moving electric, I think that would be something as those cars fade out, we'd be moving to electric. I also haven't looked at what our building sort of patterns are and whether as future development occurs, are they actually driving further or not?

Okay. I was just curious. And then the other, the other question you had is, so would the idea be that this building gets vacated and council

meets at municourt or where would council meetings be yeah i think that's a future discussion of council around how would they wish to dispose we haven't haven't moved into that sort of realm of what is the disposition strategy there's an opportunity where you could keep this building this is it says this site that we have downtown is actually two actually more than two tax lots but the alley divides it so it could be an opportunity where you could sell off the front half where kind of our annex buildings are and you could remain in this building for a period of time there is the option where you could hold host council chambers at meeting court should we completely vacate and not use this council chamber there's also the opportunity that we'll highlight here in a few slides about what do we do with the first street property and there's is there a civic center uh community space that could also double as a council chamber to be developed along with a private development through p3 on the first street property that could serve as council's desire for a council chamber so we have options as we look at how do we dispose and move and relocate

Matt, the $1 to $1.5 million also doesn't contemplate the possibility of potentially renting out part of the revenue? Correct. Yes.

Yeah. We haven't factored in anything that we would do that would actually generate revenue outside of what the existing tenant would pay between now and their lease.

Potentially rent there or even in this space if we're vacating.

Yeah. And I think that's all part of how we would discuss the disposition strategy. we'd probably want to have that conversation once we know for sure the deal is moving through to start kind of unwinding what that means for this site. Kind of got ahead of us, but a few things to note. We are the roundabout at 27th and Connors that is scheduled to be under design next year in 2027, and that is scheduled for construction and completion by late 2028. One other thing to note about this is this is in the medical overlay zone. Technically, the zoning is RH. It has a conditional use permit already for its office use. We think we'll have to modify that just to allow government as a facility use. However, It has an outright zoning, which allows for medical and dental offices, which generates twice as much traffic as we would as either an office or an administrative. So we see that as much more administrative, but we'll use this as an opportunity to connect with the neighbors early and sort of address kind of these traffic items that may come up, make sure they're up to date on what the roundabout, and then look to ways we can kind of make sure that we are directing traffic there and not necessarily on Tucson or to NEF to sort of reduce things in the residential area. From an economic development, this really aligns with our fiscal and our economic prosperity goals. So the first is this is significantly less than if we were to proceed with a new construction, over 100 million is our estimate, based on what the highest and best use analysis provided. It will not cause us to increase taxes, fees, or any other rates or revenues. That goes out to the public. We can completely do this in-house. And this also improves our service delivery. We are spread out at our current downtown campus, and this allows us to operate under one roof, which a much more robust kind of customer service center. And also, as we kind of just mentioned, what kind of opportunities now present itself for both the BCD or the Benton Central District, particularly around council direction on the First Street property. This now allows us to look at perhaps pursuing a P3 opportunity and teaming up with a private developer to incorporate some sort of civic center council chamber use that not only can serve as council chambers, but also provide opportunities for the public to host events and serve the community that way. allows us then to accelerate kind of the redevelopment of downtown once we're out of this facility as i mentioned we could bifurcate it or we could look at it in all its one entirety but allows us to then bring that to market uh generate property tax revenue as well as potential revenue to offset costs and then lastly it kind of allows us to look at other catalytic opportunities so how do we want to use our funds going forward not only with downtown and ben central district but also looking at other community amenities as i mentioned the event center as uh Ben has discussed with you the feasibility around another venue space that now allows us to kind of free up space to potentially pursue those and not have the lingering debt that would be required with building a new administrative facility. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions or turn it over to Council for any further discussion.

All right, great. Councilor Mendez.

Thank you. Two questions. One is, can you just elaborate on how servicing the debt would not increase taxes, fees, or rates

Yeah, so this will be, I'm just looking at Samantha probably. Let me know. You might just want to take it. So this will be just a cross allocation along every single department with pay-ins. So we already have everyone contributes into our facility operational needs through our facility budget. So each department contributes. So while some departments may see a slight increase, it's spread across the entire city. So that means we don't have to go out to really increase any rates or fees to pay for that debt that is able to be allocated along every department budget. So you may see slight reduction in people's individual budget because it's spread out as far. We think that is quite minimal. I'm not saying quite, you know, Samantha's done the math, but it's minimal across all departments.

So, but for the water and sewer, this debt load is still going to have to be factored into the rate model for both of those, right? Correct.

But there's, you know, as you remember, as you know, when you work through those rate models, there's a lot of different factors that go into those rate models. we can still we still have levers that we can pull to try and and make sure that this is not kind of impacting that that rate model based on this particular thing and it's fairly small in comparatively to what it could be doing something bigger that was my point is it correct

120 million exactly you know it's roughly 120 or 100 million dollar difference correct the impact is much smaller which was a concern i think for many counselors myself included about the new facilities what does that mean we've already added that load with the public works you know you'll be adding the similar kind of load city hall that was this really gets us i mean it doesn't make it go away to zero but it makes the burden very small right yeah

Other questions, sorry, just to just to ask the 2nd question is, you know, we've already heard some complaints about traffic and I'm glad to hear that. You're considering that my question is, are there any steps that the city can consider above what we're already planning in terms of the roundabout at on 27th and things of that nature? Are there things that we could consider in addition to that that would help us ensure that we're not just going to be expanding the city's overall traffic footprint and things like, you know, I think traffic demand model models and programs.

We already have some of that downtown, so we're happy to kind of replicate that. And there's location incentivizing folks to like, or walk to work, or take transit transit stop. That's so I think all of those are on the table to explore future conversations.

Samantha, you know, there are macroscopic economic forces at play right now. We talked about the debt was relatively inexpensive for the city previously. Do you still feel confident around that number that Matt said in terms of the 4.6 kind of? Is that the Fed rates today? Yeah. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying, you know, because that's the cost of our money is going to change a little bit.

Right, um, yeah, I mean, there's always that unpredictability that we can't guarantee. I can tell you historically, you know, um, those rates for us, because we are considered a triple a rated organization. We are our, our bonds are highly minus plus. We are highly rated. And so that has made our bonds be very desirable for investors. And because of that, it has resulted in our rates being lower than what most would incur, which is what we experienced with our last issuance. So we anticipate that to happen again. What happens in the economy, if we don't know, but we feel fairly confident that we're going to fall within the range that we normally do, which is usually not more than 5%. Thank you.

All right. Thought other thoughts.

Council nurse. Well, I was just going to ask, can you speak a little bit to the energy efficiency? Yeah.

So the building was certified. The golden was constructed. We've actually been looking at their utility data over the past 12 months, and that building is operates around the same efficiency as all of our buildings down here, which are outdated and has much more capacity. So this building has a much higher ability to. service our needs and stay within our goals and i think there's opportunity in the future for us to address even more of our climate action plans through solar or things like that with the parking lot and i think that's something we can talk about as we look into the future great um i just i'm curious so council had said to look at the 15th street campus um and so why are we not looking at an option to renovate the public works building yeah we did i think it was noted in the issue summary around the bond we've actually looked at what that costs and what goes into that i think at the time to get 100 employees into that building again that's that's more of a warehouse space so limited light and other visibility would cost about six to eight million for us to renovate space that then puts pressure on pd's ability to grow And we're really limited then at the 15th street canvas. So it's that would serve as more of a bandaid that we could apply. But in about 10 years, we'd be still in this position where PD would be having pressures on their facility. And we've looked at their facility. We've already remodeled it as well as added onto it 2 other times. It doesn't have the capacity for us to create a new wing. We'd have to do something new. being able to open up that tmd building for pd allows them to grow into that space and us to create kind of a central campus so we felt that 68 million compared to what we'd pay for this and being able to offset potentially this downtown property that actually creates a much positive revenue stream than we are just to remodel 15th it also means we're still bifurcated so we have staff that are now spread out and this brings us an opportunity to put everyone under one roof which we think is just a better work environment for us

HAB-Juliette Boone, yeah I wish I mean i've asked for it a bunch of times I know i'm not going to get it, but I wish we had a overall facility plan. HAB-Juliette Boone, So that we could really look at our long range capital costs for buildings and facilities i'm kind of concerned on Monday that we have that whole discussion about a constrained fiscal environment that we're going to be entering. HAB-Juliette Boone, So i'm trying to think beyond this 25 million. Debt issuance and are we really you know how much is that going to constrain us to do any sort of civic anything you know down down in the core area other things that come to my mind are you know the. they're going to be administrative offices that move to the to that building and then there's going to be the desire to have kind of duplicate offices at a civic Center if we have some sort of civic building that has a you know city hall. or sorry, city council chamber in it and meeting spaces and things like that. So there's, I'm concerned about duplication and added costs with that. So, I mean, I, I get that it's a bargain. Yeah. It's a bargain for sure. Um, There, and there are only five buildings in town for kind of for a reason, cuz there's not a lot of demand for it. So this, this isn't a, you know, I think some of the, the, um, I think some of this con I think there's not a lot of clarity, um, around the plan. And the rationale for it, so I think there's kind of some confusion, is this a long term investment or a short term investment or we don't know. You know, and then I mean the other thing the other call that I got is you know from folks in the core area who were not contacted by the city manager or the mayor. And just concerned that this is another major pivot you know that we're making and it's not presented with. Any really clear numbers or timelines or plans and so it's leaving developers and property owners just a little confused with more questions than answers is the quote. And that uncertainty just has a chilling effect on investment.

So, yeah. Okay, who wants to go next? Go ahead.

So I think this is a really big deal, obviously, for us to make this is it is a big pivot. And that's I think it makes no surprise to me that we're hearing people express like, whoa, what is going on here? Because it's a really different kind of approach. And I think we heard from your presentation about how this came about. Um, and not something we would have been able to plan for. I think it makes a ton of sense because of the. Primarily because of the fiscal responsibility component of it, the fact that we can save a 100Million dollars or reduce the cost by roughly to roughly 20% of what we thought it would cost is a really big deal. I think the fact that it frees up more city on land for the redevelopment. in downtown in the bct and even the part of the 15th street campus that we own but we're not going to use for pd and we're using some for fire and i think all the economic development and community benefits that can come from that and freeing up potentially if there is some leftover bond capacity for us to do some other stuff that is catalytic and important for the community and i would include in that Um, the central district, I think that it's really important that people don't take this decision tonight, assuming it's going to move forward as us pulling back from our commitment to the central district. I think if anything, it's actually demonstrating our commitment to the central district. It lets us move forward and really focus on catalyzing the land that we own in the central district. For new kinds of developments, and I think there is a very strong possibility though. Certainly not set in stone tonight that we would go with something on 1st street for some kind of city hall community gathering space, plus some private activity and potentially through some partnership. So, I think it's a really great opportunity. It makes tons of sense for us. There's a few downsides, of course, but I mean, that's true with any decision that we make up here. So. Um, I'm very supportive of it. I just want to emphasize 1 thing we have talked about, um, already and that is making sure we're doing the good neighbor actions, you know, in and around the campus. They're just riding my bike over there and getting there by using some of the side streets. It's really important. We do what we can and proactively in addition to the roundabout that we know that's coming to just really make it work. Well, for the neighborhood, because certainly there's going to be. some more traffic on some of those local streets there's no getting around it so um and i think i've heard commitments that were willing and open to do that so i'm definitely going to support this all right steve

I guess I'm taking a different view from what Councilor Fransos has said in terms of the time and the uncertainty. And I appreciate the comments that you got regarding that. But Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, when we did the highest and best use, we were going to kind of stand pat for about 10 years here. Is that about right? Yeah, we think we could estimate about 10 years. Right. And so what I remember walking away from that going, man, it's going to be a hard time before we can break some capital free. to then tip into the Central District and try to help out and catalyze there. And so for me, this is actually reducing uncertainty, increasing the amount of opportunity that we have, and reducing the timeframe that we can get into the Central District and helping there. So for me, this is more certainty, more opportunity. It is a big decision. We take this decision really, really seriously when we do this. And yet what I see is a unique opportunity presented itself, we're jumping on it, we're gonna grab it, we're gonna save money, and we're gonna have better opportunity to really catalyze. So I'm very much in favor of this plan.

The only other thing I'll add that other folks haven't said, I mean, I agree about the cost savings and the opportunity. I think for me, some of the big decisions was maintaining the presence in the downtown area. And so I liked the idea about the first street and then, yes, bring up some dollars to invest. um and the central district um i was a little concerned about staff i mean you know we have staff here and um but after touring the building i mean the amenities there and the proximity to um you know some of the restaurants and um there's a park there's a community garden i mean it's there's there's a lot of nice um benefits to it i love the energy efficiency um i just think it has a lot of uh of benefits and perks so um i am supportive and i think it's a great opportunity mr mendez you want to

Anything you want to add anything?

No, I think I mean, sorry. No, I was prepared to just echo what other people said. I think that I was curious about whether we had, you know, we don't have a number, an estimate for the bond capacity that we would hold in reserve for the commitment to the Ben Central District. And I don't think we've been those numbers have been shared. So that would be something for us to Follow up on to be sure, but no, this sounds like. A very unique opportunity that is worth pursuing and I also shared some of the silo concerns of. Having, you know, staff members. Megan Morrisey, Working having the ability to work close to each other, and I think I had over overestimated how much their opportunities for synergy existed here when actually there's a lot of silos here in this building with the annex and. Megan Morrisey, With the building next door, and so no I see a lot of positive things here and happy to support it right megan.

I'll echo what everyone else said. I think this is an incredible opportunity. I'm really, really thinking that this is going to not only provide some really exciting redevelopment in the downtown Bend, but also, of course, frees up so many resources to be able to do the things that we want to do in the core area. I have a great little vision in my mind of a little civic center slash council chambers on First Street with a really cool looking bridge right nearby. And so I think this is, I enthusiastically support. Great. Thank you.

yeah i'm also in support and I really strongly feel we've had very good discussions with staff who brought us a lot of numbers and answered a lot of questions. And has a clear timeline for us and to steve's point a much faster timeline for us to get out of this building. Ever since starting here i've always thought you know, this is a building full of nine to five workers, that is a dead campus part of our downtown. when there's so much potential to build housing, commercial, and other things in this area, if we could find a place to go. And that has been a lot of the impetus around City Hall is not only are we outgrowing here, which you can see our city recorder is in an office with two other people, right? But that we need to maybe leverage what we have here to do something really great for the community while also meeting our needs. So I think this opportunity is a fantastic one. I understand for folks that it came up pretty quickly. We were restricted in talking really publicly about this until we got to this moment. We as the council had said that we weren't going to speak publicly because this is a real estate deal and there's negotiations and I have had as a member of this Council witness us looking at a piece of property and then having a private person come and buy it before we could, which is then going to drive up the cost if we ever did want to buy that piece of property back. And so I think it's financially responsible to be very careful with the information about these discussions. But I know that that leads to confusion and folks not knowing, hey, what's going on here? So I'm completely committed and I've said this to stakeholders in the Corps that I'm happy to talk with anybody about this and talk about why this provides clarity for the next pieces of the puzzle. I think Steve said it really well that it that it us knowing when we might be out of here really helps us then be clear with the visioning for the Bend Central District. And it's actually really great timing because they're just about to start on that visioning project and having a little more clarity. And I agree with Councillor Perkins. I'm committed to looking at that first street property really closely as that future civic space. And council chambers, and I think that would make a great thing for the community and the core and we haven't really talked about the Franklin property, but this also really allows us again to say, okay, how do we make that Franklin property go? And it doesn't need to be a city hall. It doesn't need to be a council chambers necessarily. It can be a private development or something. That's really going to spur. development in the core so i'm very excited about this i'm happy to talk to now that we're at this stage happy to talk to anybody about it um and help assuage any concerns folks might have or answer questions um but i'm definitely ready to vote yes to move this forward tonight and i do want to say um you know just like any real estate deal what we're doing is taking a first step here if we run into a major problem we will we will hear about it and we have a period to pull out of this deal if we find something that we haven't found yet but i know the staff has worked really hard and i know that almost all of us toured the building with staff and and saw the way that they were looking at it and really looking to make sure this was a good investment so i appreciate all the work on this for sure

So I move to authorize the city manager to enter into a purchase and sale agreement with Pacific Health Associates for the acquisition of 2965 Northeast Connors Avenue and 1979 Northeast Tucson Way in substantially the form presented to council and to take all actions reasonably necessary to close the transaction pursuant to the terms of the agreement without further approval by the city council.

Second.

All right. Moved by Councillor Riley and seconded by Councillor Platt. All those in favor? Aye. No. All right, next.

I'm to adopt the resolution to authorize the issue and sale execution and delivery of full faith and credit obligations in an amount not to exceed 25Million dollars for eligible projects, including without limitation the acquisition improvement and furnishing of real property for city administrative functions and paying costs of issuance.

2nd, all right, my counsel ready and 2nd, by counselor Norris all those in favor. okay thank you very much see you back soon on this i'm sure thank you all right moving on to item number nine hey this is to discuss the draft 2027 city of ben state legislative priorities and principles and council we have a printed copy of these in front of you just for ease of taking a look at we've got stuff popping up here to talk to us

Thanks for the issue. Sorry.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Kate Schneider, Executive Policy Officer. Here with my colleague, Sarah Hudson, both in City Manager's Office. And we are here to get your review and input on our draft legislative priorities and principles for the 2027 legislative session. So, like I said, the purpose is to review and receive your input tonight. We are planning to take that and work with our new lobbyist once they are hired later this fall and then return to you in January for your finalization and approval. There are two reasons for that. One, we'll have a new council seated in January. And two, as you know, we're hiring a new lobbyist. We have a RFP out right now. We've had a lot of interest in it, and we're tracking towards having them on board by December. So part of what we'll do is use your input tonight to refine with them once they're on board. And then, of course, these approved priorities will guide our efforts during the 2027 session. Um, just a quick snapshot of what went into the document you have before you. So, 1st, your current council goals, um, updates from the 2026 legislative priorities. Um, the League of Oregon City's policy committee recommendations, Mayor Keebler and Mayor Pro Tem Perkins served on policy committees. And then our own city staff subject matter expertise, we've met with departments and asked them what they were seeing in their work, what they were hearing from their professional associations, and also use that to inform what you have before you. So, similar to the short session this past year, we have tried to really put a spotlight and focus on what we are really seeking to advance this session. So, we were distinguishing we have proposed top 3 legislative priorities in front of you. That is what we'll be working actively working to advance this session distinguished from our principles, which are meant to be a little bit more general guidance to staff to position the cities position the city on things as they come up. So, we'll walk through each of these suggested top priorities and the good news is we have subject matter experts here. So if you want to get into detail or hear more from them, they're all here and waiting in the wings. So, 1st is funding for shelter and housing stability. So we are advocating to continue the statewide shelter program funding at the current biennium level. Um, this actually tracks really well with what you identified all of you as your top priority for our, our legislative agenda ballot. And we have Amy Fraley here. If you do want to get into this topic more. Our 2nd, suggested top priority is the shoots groundwater mitigation program. There's a clear need and agreement on the need to extend this program for 10 years. Staff has been working on this for more than the past year. 1 thing for you to be aware of. We are working closely with Coco. Mark is very involved and given the importance of this to the city. We have hired a contract lobbyist specifically to support our water services policy work in this area. So we executed a contract with proxy. a contract lobbyist firm just recently and they are there's two partners in that firm Andy and Tracy both of whom have extensive local government policy experience having worked for cities special districts and Tracy came from the Lake of Oregon cities before her work with clean water services so we feel like we're in good hands with our water policy work which is still moving as we hire our more general lobbyist and with that I'll hand it to Sarah

Yeah. And then the third priority that's highlighted in that draft agenda is around statewide transportation funding. So as you may recall, in 2025 session, a package didn't materialize. They had a kind of a fix, kind of a temporary fix during the short session. So really kind of prioritizing this moving forward, we expect kind of a full package. There's kind of a visioning committee that's working on recommendations now. A big thing here is maintaining our state highway fund allocation and making sure we're advocating for robust funding and policies that maintain, preserve, and improve safety and reliability for all modes of travel. So that is reflected in the top priorities as well. and then as Kate said there you know down below beyond those top three priorities are those legislative principles so really supposed to be that kind of north star guiding staff of you know how to to move forward during session things move fast um so it kind of allows us to um have that guidance and and be able to move quickly in real time um and again we would uh Amy Nunez, During during the session, as we did during the previous session to provide regular updates on on all activities, but it's really intended to serve as that kind of guidance. Amy Nunez, And with that kind of opening it up to counsel discussion so wondering if there's alignment on those top priorities if there's anything missing that we can note.

Okay, opening it up. Yeah. So let's start with the top priorities, Steve. Oh, top priorities. Nothing to say there. Are you good with what staff is? Okay. Do you have another question? Go ahead.

Well, I'm on email this week.

Okay. Yeah. No, we can get to that. We know folks have raised an issue. So setting that aside, we'll talk about that. Is there anything else folks want to talk about in here?

About the top priorities. I kind of wonder. Why have the statewide transportation funding as a top priority? Because that kind of seems like is there's just that is going to be horse trading that happens at the legislature. And I think there's very little city of Bend is going to be able to influence there. The other two top priorities very specifically affect us. So I, I had a different idea for a top priority, but Don't talk about transportation first. It's kind of transportation-related, but then I see there's a bullet for it under transportation about setting citywide speed limits. Right. Yeah, I think... But there's a bill that was passed that Ariel just sent me that allows cities to set speed limits lower than established. So now I'm kind of wondering if we actually need this.

Yeah, I think so just to talk about the transportation package, and why I think it should stay a priority. I think we, I think our delegation in particular is going to be kind of a key player in that conversation this time around. So I think it's important to sort of align with staying with them in the conversation and making sure that if there are, for instance, you know, earmarks going out, that we are really up at the top of the list of that conversation, especially being on the side of the mountains, away from all the megaprojects in Portland that folks like to talk about. I will also say there's going to be a real fight about transit. And if we want to stand up for our community who need transit and use it to get around and, you know, I think a lot of us want to improve transit in Bend, I think we need to make it a priority to have that voice and be showing up uh loudly on that uh so those are a couple reasons i think it's it's good to keep it as a top priority um yeah i don't i don't know to follow up on your the bill maybe ariel you could talk about that like maybe we don't need that listed specifically um but it could be represented somehow and making sure that they're thinking about how we're preempted on street safety and if there's opportunities to reduce that preemption on street safety something like that but all right what do you think

Just going back to the transportation package discussion. The the other reason I think I also wondering it's really hard to only have three, right?

I know that's the real prioritization.

Yeah, the other thing for that, I think, will be important for us is as the State moves forward on either diminishing or expanding revenue for particular programs. For example, I'm thinking of the Great Streets program. Central Oregon is not eligible for a lot of those. At least Bend is not. I think maybe Redmond might be a part eligible for one potential project. So it's important for our delegation to be involved to make sure that these programs that I think are really great for other parts of the state aren't leaving Central Oregon. I was going to ask staff about the expanding local authority to set citywide speed limits because I This is something that there have been some recent developments on, and I wasn't sure.

if uh if that's it is the own is the ball in our court or is this anything that's actually close to you you know we incorporated the bullet based on counselor francis's interest in it um that's because i didn't realize that house bill 2095 had been passed in 2023 and it gives local jurisdictions the option to lower speed limits up to 10 miles an hour below whatever was statutorily set by odot but you can't go below 20 miles an hour I think that would cover all the concerns that I've heard from folks about excessive speeds on streets and the need to lower speed limits and things like that. There's like an ordinance, though, I guess that has to be passed.

I think if I'm remembering, it might have been a year or two prior to that, there was a change in the law that allowed cities to apply. It sort of created a different path for reducing speed limits and maybe not quite total local control, but a little more. James Heiting. The authority or option. So we we should probably look at these. Yeah, why don't we just look at that further? Yeah, but it has been opening up in favor of some more local country. Three, four years for sure.

James Heiting. Two comments about the transportation stuff. One is on the the overall priority. But top priority, I think, to echo what the mayor said, having sat on the L. O. C. Transportation committee last year. It's really important that we are. I think this broadly aligns with them, and especially on the fifty, thirty, and we need to be very clear that we want to maintain that, because I do think probably for some legislators they want to open up those formulas. and that is not a good thing and that's from places like us to small rural communities all over the state i mean it's a really fundamental operational issue um and i think we have to protect that um should we be mentioning the fix for highway 2097 in this first bullet under transportation and give some an example or two or i think i mean i think we all know that that's i think that's part of what we've been talking yeah that's under support funding opportunities for odot projects and

I think that's what that falls under. And so I think similar to last time when we had a list of projects that's ready, what levels of money might they be giving out? Here we go. So I think we'll do the same thing that we did last time and Empire was at the top of the list of that transportation infrastructure. So I think it's going to depend on how that conversation goes.

Yeah, I was just going to talk about, like, specific, like, funding numbers. So we're just going to kind of, like, not be that specific.

I think we're coming back in January, especially after we have the new lobbyists hired, and that's when we can maybe get a little more specific on what our projects are.

Yeah, then we can sync up, because we've been talking about that ODOT contribution. If there's other projects besides Empire that you want to consider, I think there's... And put on a list.

Yeah.

last uh last camera first which um we had separate one-pagers for the funding ask okay so it's the same with the shelf like we're just not going to get that specific the shelter funding um conversation um is about advocating for our region and advocating for the overall number that goes to the state and to not cut that in half which is potentially what happened But Amy, on the slide you saw, has already started talking to folks in Salem about our particular numbers and needs and what it would mean if the funding was cut. But I know that Amy is also getting involved with a whole coalition of folks across the state that are going to work on this. LLC will be working on it. So we all need to be giving a lot of energy, I think, to this particular topic.

I guess I'm on this one. I'm in your comments, Kate. I think it was a reference to not cutting any further, but that's not what this says. And that was my reaction generally to this. If it feels too soft, like...

Just continue to pay investments, sort of.

Yeah, it's this kind of thing. Well, we'll take something. Just give us something. And I think we need to be very clear. Everything that I've heard, you know, at least we need at least $100 million for our region. And that's what we have gotten. And at the very least, we want that as a minimum. And so, it probably needs to be framed like around the state shelter program. Right. Not just about our dollars, but I'm a little concerned we're not being specific enough here. So we're being very clear on what our priority is.

Council, I'm Amy Braley, a senior program manager. And it is $10 million for our region. It's $100 million a year across. Yeah.

I wish it was a hundred. Sorry. I know. I was like, that was my day. Yeah. Like really?

Where's that? Sammy's been hiding. Is, is what I think we're at for the current biennium.

Yeah.

And I think the best case scenario for the state or the shelter system as a whole would be to maintain that 204, which was allocated in the previous session in conjunction with that.

For the biennium.

Yes. So 100 per year. Right now in the continuing service level budget for OHCS, it's 50 million. So it is that 50%. Yeah.

So I'd like to see a specific number. Amy, could you work with me?

Maybe just pump that language up a little bit around maintaining no pets. I think that's what... So that makes sense. Okay, anything else? Any other topics before we get to the surveillance topic? Yeah, go ahead.

Before we get to the topic?

The topic about the responsible technologies. I'm going to kind of finish off with that.

Glad to set that apart. So just two other things. I know we can only pick three priorities. That was what we agreed to. I was really glad to see the language around grid reliability and energy needs in there. That would have been a candidate. I think that's so important. That would have been a candidate for priority funding. I just want to clarify that I've seen other states like California make progress on plug-in solar, the idea that you can have some commercially made thing that then augments your House. It sounds like there might need to be some state changes in that area.

I think someone is running a bill on that, and we should support it, and I think it would come under that same bullet that you just mentioned.

I just wanted to make sure, because I think there's some perception that we put something in here, and then we're going to get it, and it's not necessarily how things work. But people can read these in different ways. goals around rooftop solar, plug-in solar. I think that fits in here. The only other thing that I didn't see in here that I wanted to put on the table was expanding home ownership opportunities for high density homes. And I thought this was mostly about construction liability reform. but uh counselor franzosa and i had a conversation where she thought that there may be that might not be sufficient so i it's i'm i'm concerned about building out entire new neighborhoods where there's only rental opportunities especially as we look at safe back air uh climate friendly areas um and i wonder do we need to lobby for a renewed focus on home ownership opportunities as we grow.

I think you could add that to that second bullet under housing production, maybe just some mention of home ownership opportunities.

And I would offer actually the construction liability reform actually was, was solved as best as it probably can be in our state. Um, on condo, condo construction liability was reduced to the same as a single family home construction liability to seven years, I believe. So that was done, I think in the last session. Um, so that, that actually is solved, but the more specific thing on housing production is the stuff that, um, the mayor was talking about that, um, Senator Pham is looking at like single point stair, um, elevator reform. And those are things that I would love to see some specificity here, because I think that really could unlock more condo home ownership opportunities, like being able to deliver smaller buildings more cost effectively.

Yeah, I think that would fall under increased supply of diverse and accessible housing types. So I think some of it is just a little bit of like how specific on we want to be in this particular document versus as we develop with our lobbyists in January and then start talking about individual bills is what we've had before when we've had our lobbyists with us and folks bring up bills or concepts that are actually, you know, in place by that time to talk about whether we should support them or not. So I think I think this covers that completely and you can definitely come back to it. And I'm going to stay on that work group too.

Great. I'm good with that. I just want to raise one concern that happened in the last session where we opposed a bill that would have required EV charging infrastructure in multifamily buildings. And that's kind of an example of like, well, sort of two of our priorities are in conflict there, you know? And so I guess I just am curious about like how we can have a process where that those issues that are in conflict, like we either have a little discussion about it. I don't feel good about the executive decision being made without kind of coming to counseling and sort of balancing those priorities. So. Okay.

All right. Anything else on housing?

My concern about the first two bullets is that they're, and this is really just sort of a comment and a question for the rest of you. They seem just so open and broad and sort of like will support kind of anything that broadly advances these principles. And I don't know that that's what we're trying to communicate. The problem I see is that to be honest, I sort of feel like on some level we need almost, at least in some places, almost a policy pause state. There's been so much change that's happened over the last few years. And we hear all the time here about the difficulty of keeping up with the pace of change. My understanding is that there's at least some parts of our development community are expressing those kinds of concerns and we certainly hear it from community members. And I worry about us just not being specific enough here. I get that we want to. have some principles that say we support these concepts like reducing barriers. But I'm concerned about a lack of specificity about some specifics that we're trying to accomplish if it's, as an example, the walk-up apartment kind of concept. It seems like we're saying, bring it on, whatever. We're not constraining. We're not being clear about being a little bit more targeted and a little bit more limited given all the change. We haven't seen it yet, but next week we're going to see the implications of the CFAC rules and what that means for us in the growth plan. So my question for all of you really is like, are you, is basically everybody else okay with this very broad open-ended stuff or how do we get, you know, if people share my concern about too much change that's being imposed on us often without funding mandates for it, you know, are we okay with allowing that to continue and sending a message that that's okay essentially, or do we want to some way try to shape these to be a little bit more targeted and sort of suggest Softly, like, maybe how to slow down a little bit more careful and think more clearly about a few key places that really would make a difference.

Yeah, I think 1 of the bullets on local governance sort of covers a little bit of what you're talking about. It's sure state policies accompanied by adequate resources and consider implementation and operational realities. Yeah, I think that we could strengthen that if we needed to. I know LLC and my policy committee. There was a lot of talk about. We absolutely need a policy slowdown and we need the money for infrastructure. Right. So, you know, the number one bullet being support infrastructure investments, I think, is very important. I'm OK with how these are worded. I think it gives us the opportunity to engage in the housing conversation in Salem and what we have become in Salem is a leader in this space and understood as to have the values of really wanting to produce housing in our city and also support policies that will support housing. housing production across the state, because we know that's good for all of us in Oregon. So I think that's what's captured here. I think if we wanted to strengthen under local governance, sample it a little bit about, I mean, there's something else to hear about legislative intent and rulemaking, which we've seen know bills pass and then the rulemaking sort of starts to balloon bigger than what the bill was and creates more issues for local government but i think something we could add here around you know focusing on funding instead of policies i think that would be okay i think to the extent there are policies that are out there we want to indicate yeah we want to advance those kind of policies um maybe we could say align with policies instead of advance or something else that just indicates it's not a it's not a we're not seeking to create a bunch of new policies but if there are policy is policy work if senator fam is working on this we want to align there right and see what we can do so that's sort of how i would address that i think that's i think that's a good point um to me this document

is is the starting point right and then we're going to be working with our lobbyists through the session um pretty closely so i mean i think to be clear and by having the first bullet really be limited to focus on infrastructure and other funding tools and sort of leave out the language about land use policies you're basically saying the same thing yeah so you know saying support infrastructure investments and funding tools that catalyze housing production and economic development i think that's really land use policy yeah it's just keeping it more focused

So Riley, like we're asking, we want the world. Everything to be fixed and that's just not gonna happen. So, I mean, I would support having maybe like that one objective, like a very specific objective, maybe under each. under each kind of area. And then the rest of the statements are just sort of like in general lobbyist, here's the kinds of things we wanna support, sort of defend against. Like, cause I mean, really, It's, you know, Councillor Perkins, the mayor, like, you know, whoever else, all the staff, like, we're all sending letters and stuff, or you're all sending letters. I've never sent a letter on behalf of the city. But it's when we can focus our efforts that we actually get things done. So I think it would be a useful exercise to say what is really important to us in this biennium. I understand the top three, though. I understand the nebulousness-ish of the top three, like the groundwater mitigation's not that nebulous, but the other two are kind of nebulous.

Yeah, they're just big topics.

Yeah, but I mean, if we could be a little bit more specific, that's just helpful.

Well, I think that's good feedback for you all on the next iteration of this. I think we don't want to be so specific that we have to have our call together the full council for our lobbyists every week. We don't want to be doing that. So I think that's the balance that we're looking for. But it sounds like folks are generally in support. OK, the last bullet that we've had community feedback on is to support expanding allow uses of responsible technologies that strengthen public safety. in service delivery. I know Chief Francis here, if anyone has questions, I know I expressed sentiment out there in the public today that for me, when I saw this bullet, I was thinking about things like noise cameras that would help us with the complaints we get all the time around loud vehicles and the difficulty that our police officers have in witnessing, getting evidence and being able to catch those folks. Noise cameras are something that other places are Taking a look at, I'd like to remove the preemption on that and just allow us the opportunity to have a community conversation to see if we want to try that here. We still have some preemptions on, you know, photo enforcement as well. And our law enforcement does use drones and use them to help with their jobs. And there's going to continue to be a conversation in Salem around drones. That's what I'm thinking when I'm thinking of that. It does not preclude any policies or contract amendments or anything that we would put in place to respond to community concerns about data and transparency. That would go along with it, of course. But I'm also fine with taking this off for now to avoid confusion, to avoid consternation. I know folks are very concerned about this area, and rightly so. So happy to hear what other folks' thoughts are on this bullet.

Steve? Yeah, I mean, my thoughts are that I 100% agree with the things that you're talking about as topics of interest for us. But I'm also very comfortable with moving this bullet from our priorities and letting us take it on piece by piece when they come to us.

Okay. Any other thoughts? Yeah, Aria.

yeah two thoughts, I mean, for me, when seeing this on here, I appreciate it, because I was i've seen other cities use. The common sound cameras, which is sort of a strange term because a lot of cameras also record sound but. it sounds like a really nice way to address a complaint that we hear pretty frequently, which our police department has not been capable of addressing with in-person officers. So I was also interested in removing that preemption to at least allow us to consider that use, because we hear about that. We hear about a lot of vehicles so often, and I think almost everybody has had the experience of having their ears ring after somebody goes by in what is an illegally allowed vehicle, but we don't have the capability to enforce. Um, so that, that was what I had in mind. So I would be okay with either narrowing it or saying, you know, being more specific. I think I'm open to that. Sure. The second comment that I wanted to make is, is, um, the, you know, we heard from a lot of people, which I think is great. Thank you for the input. One thing that I wanted to clarify though that I think is a misperception is the idea that when there was a checkbox that was inadvertently unchecked with the flock cameras when we had them, which we no longer have in use, that it allowed hundreds of federal immigration agents to look up local license plate data. I don't think that was the case, because I think we don't actually know who was doing the looking up and we had very little information about that so. I mean I if you don't mind if I could just ask chief Kranz to explain a little bit more about what that was about to try and give people an opportunity to hear from him directly.

putting you on the spot with no prior i appreciate that we've discussed this several times so it's just a reiteration of the information we've already put out there publicly um i i think to backtrack just a little bit i want to i wanted to open up a little bit about because this is a technology discussion right and i think um there's there's room here to talk and i'll try and keep it brief but just a bit of a reminder of why our community is safe we have an extremely low crime rate I think many of us enjoy living in a very safe community. That doesn't come without a cost. That cost is the police officers out there doing the work every day. We have historically low rates of use of force in our police department at 60 roughly uses of force per year. um with 78 000 calls for service 200 plus thousand contacts with our community members that rape force doesn't come out of nowhere right it comes out of training de-escalation um we have a murder rate that has dropped from roughly five a year to one currently zero which we're going to keep it that way hopefully But all these things come not in spite of technology, right? They come with the benefit and use of responsible technology. So I think that's a really important piece to at least bring to this conversation. And just as much as our community is concerned about misuse of technology, misuse of information getting out leaking, we are too. Like as a police department, that's an important piece. We want to protect our community just as we want to protect from safety. All that is safety issues. So I think I don't want that to get lost, that it's not in spite of technology. We have a very lean police department. One of the leanest in the countries, we have one of the fastest response times in the state. We use Live 901 to increase our response time, to save lives, to get there faster and better. We use UAS or drone systems to make it safer, to reduce force, to sometimes not even have police officers have to respond to a call if we use it in a first responder tool. So there's a ton of benefits around technology that's been vetted, that fits within constitutional standards, that works, and that we know that it is used responsibly. So when we talk about technology in the better picture, we're not necessarily talking about the constitutionality of a piece of equipment that's tested through the courts. What we're really talking about is governance, right? Does it have the appropriate governance? And I think ALPR discussions through this last state legislative session was a really good model of that is we really got in deep when aclu had brought a lot of concerns a lot of people were involved in that and we had a lot of compromise to find what's the best governance model to address community concerns and concerns around how this technology could be used so i think that's the bigger discussion is as we move forward to technology are we as a city ensuring that our state leaders who are bringing these bills forward as we know there'll be about 4 000 bills brought forward this session wait too many yeah Probably many around technology and law enforcement. Are we ensuring that we're supporting good governance models being built? That's what we want to do. So on the bigger picture, it doesn't truly matter if this point is in this or not for the legislative priorities, because what we'll do is the city's address each piece as it comes. I know that. So but on the other side of that, there was. On flock camera systems, one of the reasons we got rid of our flock is there was, when it initially was built out, there was a checkbox that allowed for nationwide lookup by law enforcement agencies who had a subscription service to it, just as we would be allowed to look at license plates ran in Idaho or captured in Idaho. We, that box was checked because that is a tool that seemed reasonable is why wouldn't we let other law enforcement agencies who's investigating criminal acts, see if that license plate came through Bend. Highway 97 is a big trafficking corridor, California through Oregon, through Washington, lots of drugs. We have kidnappers, we have all kinds of things that go on, stolen vehicles. So it seemed reasonable. The issue with flock, and it's not a secret, Jonathan, you probably are very aware of this, Block had a contract behind the scenes without telling any of their law enforcement partners that they had a contract with DHS for about three months that allowed them to inquire into the systems that were law enforcement systems. They didn't tell any of the customers. They took a big heat for that. That's why they've lost a lot of business because there was trust loss with that company. So that's what happened. And it doesn't mean the information was shared. It means that an agent in, Ohio could have put ABC 123 in the system to search, and it hits all servers at once and says, has anyone seen this license plate? And they return back either no information or, yes, we got a hit at Highway 97 southbound through Bend. So that's what it does. There was no system built in at the time of the audit through Flock to tell if there was information returned back for those searches, but it's highly doubtful based on what we saw. Most of those searches came from very far out of state. They didn't, and it doesn't search Ben. It searches all networks that were connected nationwide network. So it wasn't spend specific, but that's what happened. That's since changed with flock that did a whole different business model and back in platform. We're not a flock customer anymore. So that's kind of the long, but short answer.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

No, Jonathan, you can't talk right now. I'm sorry. Yeah, we're going to continue discussing. Okay.

I mean, I just, I think I want to, essentially kind of validate what we heard from the community and that that is that there was a lot of concerns about that the statement was just too broad and that was my reaction and even the word responsible just it doesn't provide any kind of sideboards essentially like what are we concerned about and the things that things that I think we heard about was it making sure that technology is based on real demonstrated community-based needs right not something that's being imposed somewhere else or made up um That a lot of concerns about privacy, civil rights and data security protections and then public transparency and public oversight. And I think that's what you're trying to describe in the government's governance concept. But I think part of what the community is asking for of us as the council is to kind of set a little clearer guidance about how we're going to use technology and the kinds of sideboards and concerns that we're going to have. So I support removing it if the group supports that. That's maybe the simplest and most straightforward thing for us to do. The other ask we had from the community though was some way for the community to see if we're weighing in on bills, that that happens in some kind of public way so people kind of know what's happening here at the council. I know it's actually a Salem legislative action, but if we're gonna be, and so are we gonna commit tonight to in some way help inform through our public meetings

at least on this particular topic yeah i think that's i think you're are you in the police chiefs association still chief yeah you know obviously i do stuff on that side but i think for our reports typically our lobbyists will bring forward anything that we as the city are weighing in on or supporting and you know kind of that bigger picture is that we as the city at least the police department, we don't introduce bills for technology. What this was specific to responding to, because we know we're going to get a bunch. So let's respond to good governance, reasonable use. Let's help craft these when they come through because they're going to come through in a way that works for our community. But it's definitely not necessarily because we're going to do it anyways with our lobbyists when that comes through.

well i think that is the reason to keep something in there that is but it specifies it more so that because it we are going to have to respond that's the reality right stuff's going to come up and we're going to have to decide all right gina do you have a comment um yeah i was just going to say i feel like the bullet just needs to be rewritten right okay um i don't necessarily have support for it but i like to what council o'reilly was saying is that it just needs to be narrow to show what we are willing to support and what we're not supporting um And yeah, I just think saying responsible technologies is just too vague. I think the community does broadly support community issues, which are, you know, sort of red light speed cameras. You know, those cameras that catch the right turn, people turning right on red, or then when they're not without stopping. The noise at 11 o'clock at night. The noise at 11 o'clock at night. I think we would get a lot of support for that. It's pretty, we get a lot of emails about that. It's obscene. And obviously, a police officer can't go like right out and

deal with that like it's just not possible so like yeah okay yeah so just I heard both you and Ariel just saying if we just specify we're talking about preemption on photo enforcement is it the main technology that we're thinking of that you'd be supportive of that Mike are you okay with sort of narrowing to that well the sound enforcement yeah yeah right um and then if we could provide some more sideboards I think, I think there may be something there that staff could craft around responding to responding to bills around technology. Cause I mean, some of this stuff is, we don't know if we're being preempted and, and there are, there are states where legislators may be responding to their studies by saying you can't cancel your contract with fly or you have to allow AOPR. I don't know if that's gonna be happening here, but we just wanna be able to be watchful on that. And so maybe just crafting it to be something more about how we're gonna respond to ensure, um, data transparency and, um, Sarah Banola , City of Boulder OSMP, You know other Community values are are part of these governance models if they're being considered in Salem so maybe you could think about that I feel that their support for that.

Sarah Banola , City of Boulder OSMP, Okay awesome Thank you chief Thank you.

Sarah Banola , City of Boulder OSMP, yeah and just a reminder, I mean these are for legislative priorities and just because we advocate or defend against something doesn't mean that. the bill won't pass or be defeated so um more to come and i think um to your point mike i think uh because this is a you know high community interest topic i think we'll be hearing in our check-ins about you know potential bills that are happening here um folks can also um you know other groups that advocate on this can also help people understand what's happening at the legislature and i know we had a call earlier it was like you'll do this and we won't hear anything and we won't get to say anything i mean if there's a bill there's many ways to give your input directly to the legislature on the bill. And I encourage people in Bend to do that, right? And make sure that you're heard directly to them, not just relying on us sort of as an advocate position. So.

We'll take the feedback that you provided. I also think it was a good idea that Councilor Francisco had about prioritization. So I'll ask that maybe we have you weigh in on your priorities and then we'll try to really come back with the most important. A little shorter list.

A little shorter list because I bet there's a point we'll take about being more effective and more focused. Yeah. And then finishing up with our LOC ballot.

And yeah, just to end, thank you, Council, for filling out. We put out a survey to indicate your priorities. As a reminder, again, League of Oregon Cities develops their 2728 legislative agenda. So they ask all their member cities to fill out a ballot indicating kind of the top five priorities. So this is where it landed. Just wanted to share. I think worth noting is that funding and coordination for shelter and homeless response and the 27 transportation package were the highest among council and also aligned to our top priorities. And then the other three that rose to the top are investing in community energy resilience and disaster planning, support increased energy transmission capacity, and then infrastructure funding.

Okay. So we've got we're basically voting along with all the other cities in Oregon to the LOC board. I'm on the LOC board, so we will be making the decision based on the voting ballot of what we set the priorities as. We'd love to hear if anyone wants to make a pitch for any of the bottom three, since we're sort of tied there. We can submit three to LOC. Well, actually, it's five.

Oh, never mind. So we're good. We don't even have to do any tie breaking. So just wanted to share where it landed.

It doesn't seem like the infrastructure funding is a huge issue for us as a city in terms of whether that's a fix on highway 20 and connection to 97 or not to the barrier that infrastructure poses to housing and economic development. I mean, it's just, it's a huge issue. So I. I put my vote there obviously but I I would really like to see us I think it cuts through a bunch of different priorities yeah I'd like to see that in the top three okay noted great thank you okay we'll send my ballot thank you and we'll see you in January awesome

All right, we got a couple of second readings, and I sent you an email, but I was suggesting a little break before Burra.

Oh, yes, definitely. I was already planning on that. All right.

Item number 10.

Okay. This is the second reading of an ordinance amending the comprehensive land text and map to adopt policies and use designations to implement a binding conceptual plan for the Caldera Ranch development site pursuant to Senate Bill 1537 and expanding the urban growth boundaries.

I move for the second reading and adoption by roll call vote of an ordinance adopting the binding conceptual plan for Caldera Ranch site by amending the Bend Comprehensive Plan text and map to adopt policies and use designations and expanding the urban growth boundary to add Caldera Ranch site pursuant to Senate Bill 1537, amended by Senate Bill 48.

Second. All right. Moved by Council Pat and seconded by Councilor Princesa. Roll call vote.

Okay.

Councilor Princesa. Yes. Councilor Mendez?

Yes.

Councilor Riley?

Yes.

Councilor Norris? Yes. Councilor Platt?

Yes.

Mayor Kuehler? Yes. And this is the second reading of an ordinance repealing ordinance number NS2554 regarding an economic improvement district in central district.

I move for the second reading of an ordinance repealing ordinance number NS2554. Second. All right.

Motion by Councilor Riley. Second by Councilor Platt. Roll call vote. Councilor Franciosa. Yes.

Councilor Mendez. Yes. Councilor Riley. Yes. Councilor Norris. Yes. Councilor Platt.

Yes.

Mayor Keebler. Yes.

All right. Eric, City Manager report.

uh yes a couple of uh announcements uh murphy crossing so we're gonna the vendor regional agency is gonna be conducting a transportation analysis for the west side uh frontage road of highway us 97 for murphy to badger i just wanted to share this it's not on the agenda tonight but it's connected to some of the uh conversations we've been having about that area this analysis will study the feasibility of the proposed facility including the alignment integration with new development and preliminary cost estimates The study is being conducted as a result of property owner engagement and concerns about both the requirement of this road and the proposed impacts to future plan development along the corridor. Now this will coincide with the plans. Murphy crossing interchange development options, and once these analysis are completed, bro will then be presented with options by staff on available funding and its impact on the closure or continuation of the Murphy crossing, or we will plan, which is a key initiative in the adopted for investment strategy. So I wanted to share that kind of a good bridge with our next items. A couple of engagement opportunities. We have a really important safety open house tomorrow. There's sort of two two problems. There's the neighborhood connections project open house. We're looking at better connections and slower, safer streets. The program aims to connect walking and biking routes and slow traffic speeds at various locations across the city. Projects can include sidewalk connections, sections of bikeways, speed homes, traffic calming tools, 20 mile per hour business districts and more. Community members can provide input on which projects to prioritize. And then secondly, transportation standards update. So we're expanding our traffic calming toolbox and looking for community input on traffic calming tools to use on different types of streets. it's tomorrow september 17th from 5 30 to 7 30 at the larkspur community center in the community room staff are there to answer questions and really just help engage and get feedback from the community A couple of project updates. The Franklin closure is now in effect. As of this Monday, it'll be in effect until just before Thanksgiving. I really want to commend staff, particularly our engineering communication staff, Renee and Mary and Ann and Jacob, were out there Monday, the day of the closure, handing out coffee cards. It says, detours on us, coffees on us. And it was really well received, just to show some support for our community. we're going to do this periodically um just we know that's a major inconvenience having we should do it next time what's that mike wants to hand out the card i can't do five thousand dollars per person well no one's going to be doing that so um and the 15th and ferguson on the other side of the 15th and ferguson roundabout will be open this friday fantastic um and then we have an upcoming Southwest Bend area round table these are neighborhood districts there's three neighborhood districts on the Southwest side of town so that date has been set it's been moved around a little bit but we are now settled on October 12th at 5 30 p.m it should be on your calendar invite that's at OSU Cascades in the rainfall so this will be similar to what we did in the southeast area presentation by staff tabling so there can be direct engagement from

community members and staff in various topics okay all right we will go ahead and adjourn the bend city council meeting let's come back in 10 minutes for bura at 25 minutes to nine hey Okay, I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Bend Urban Renewal Agency. Note that everybody is here in the room except for Councillor Perkins, who will not be with us for the meeting tonight. So, first thing, I'd like to propose that we change the agenda and just switch the order of things and do item 6 as item 5 and vice versa. I think it'll make a little bit more sense, that more general topic, and then it'll come up a little bit again when we get to the specifics on JUUL. So staff's okay with that and knows that. And I know a couple members that are here with us have been advised that's what we're going to do. Okay. need to adopt the minutes from the borough meeting motion i move to approve the 06 17 2026 and 0805 2026 for meeting minutes second moved and seconded any further discussion any corrections okay all those in favor aye aye anybody opposed no okay all right um jonathan do you want to join us for them

so Joe uh Jonathan Taylor the first item on your presentation is the motion to approve the development assistance there is no presentation tonight well I think you've heard a lot about grants for the grants okay yeah so does anybody have any further discussion anything that they want to ask questions about us no

I move to the resolution establishing the Business Development Loan Program to provide loans for residential, commercial, and industrial properties in the Murphy Crossing, Deeper Ridge, and Port Area urban renewal areas. Second.

So it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

I move to adopt a resolution establishing the property improvement grant program to provide matching grants for interior and exterior improvements to commercial and industrial properties in the Murphy Crossing, Juniper Ridge, and Port Area urban renewal areas. Second.

Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on this one? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. And let's talk about the Central District conceptual plan process.

So, yes, good evening chair and members of the board. So tonight we're going to be talking a little bit about the been central district. I know Matt had briefly talked a little bit earlier and then also throughout the highest and best use study about moving forward with. Burra and CAB kind of helping lead this process. This next step is going to turn years of good work into the districts into a direction that we can actually build on. So the questions tonight for the agency is, do you authorize the initiation of the Bend Central District concept plan process? And do you authorize CAB to provide guidance on that conceptual plan and the overall development process? So I want to reiterate also on behalf of the Bend Urban Renewal Agency in the City of Bend. There is a continuing commitment to the Bend Central District. Burra has just now approved grants, loans, and rebates. You've expanded CAB's roles and responsibilities. We are in the process of hiring a new urban renewal manager, which the future project manager will be focused on the core area. core area property acquisition strategy is in the process cavill here preliminary outcomes with that in october and then also this conceptual plan the city of ben is refining its scope for first street this opens up other city sites for that 24 7 development that we are all looking for in the ben central district you are also empowering borough to continue on with the redevelopment process and then also due to the CFAC rules we're exploring some development tax credits like vertical housing densities environmental sustainability tax credits so creating that live work walkable Community in the BCD so one issue that cab has heard over the last two years is while the urban design framework and a little bit of background with that so when the core area Tiff plan was adopted in 2020. It was based on the core area report adopted and presented to Council in 2019. This was a process that began in 2016 through the comprehensive plan update. Part of the core area report was the urban design framework. This was prepared at scale for the overall urban renewal area adoption. What this does is it moves the agency that, excuse me, it actually, we've encountered decisions that the existing framework does not answer at the resolution required. So a lot of conflicting desired property outcomes, what's the vision of the area, what's the transportation needs, et cetera. And right now the core area has no present adopted parcel level plan for any of its six sub areas. So Core, Pine, BCD, Greenwood. So CAB has done a lot of work over the last 10 months, beginning with the work plan that you all adopted in december of 2025 you authorized cap to move forward with this kind of high level opportunity map so what they did was they conducted an in-depth analysis of all tax parcels within the district they began with the base of what's our desired outcome and then we moved into the real market value versus assessed value industrial properties built prior to 1993 City-owned properties, vacant lots, etc. Then they reviewed highest and best practice studies. This was something that our chair and vice chair specifically requested. What they looked at was the Denver Rhino District, which is a former industrial area turning into an arts district. We looked at the linen district in Boise, which was centered around one specific development. And then they also looked at the river arts district in Asheville, which was predicated on transportation, green building and one specific development, which is their arts live workspaces. And then, in addition, they completed an anchor mapping exercise, which identified all the businesses that constitute the district's economic and cultural base and their distribution across the core areas, sub areas. So briefly, the proposed concept plan is to address some of the high level BCD issues, so transportation, themes and placemaking, some block massing planning and conceptual designs property acquisition and disposition some design standards and city property planning the completion of this plan will provide direction on form and how the district can develop through form and function creating public spaces and the varieties of mixed use developments that may occur especially between greenwood and franklin and then just place making opportunities through the existing built environments If this concept plan is initiated, we are meeting with BPRD beginning in two weeks to talk about some of the open space developments along 3rd Street and also between Franklin and Greenwood. But then we will begin meeting with our property owners. One thing that Katie wanted me to really point out tonight is this is going to involve a heavy public outreach process, not only business owners, but property owners. Through the EID process, we heard that some property owners had not been engaged. And so that's going to be a priority because that is council priority, but also a cap priority as well. So what the next few steps look like is if the initiation process begins tonight, we will actually work with AHAC, BDAB, EEC and cab and develop a scope of work and then cab will recommend that scope of work and then we will go out and request an RFP. However, internally, we've talked about providing some sort of update of that scope of work to borough slash council of like, what we intend to do. So you can kind of understand what our approach and process is going to be. but in talking with Katie we think that this is going to be between a 12 and 18 month process because we want to get this right and some of the design standards and City property planning that will be sub areas of like true highest and best use like I know we've been using that term uh for City Hall but like what is a highest and best use for true development within the BCD so say the time frame again I think you just said 12 to 18 months for this process for this process

um so just to echo what i said earlier in the council meeting i'm really interested in making sure we include the concept of a council chambers and civic center on first street on that particular parcel of the city and um i'd also under transportation um i know we're sort of talking about that in a different context, but thinking about the end of the bridge and the landing of the bridge and underneath the bridge. I know we've had a little talk about that in the past, but I think that's going to be really important. And also, I assume that this can incorporate thinking about things like the bottle drop property and what might happen if that is moved, as we think it will eventually do. But this is very exciting, and I think you know we want the building owners the property owners the businesses down there to be particularly engaged i also want our wider public to be engaged as this is a place that people will come for arts you know other things visiting small businesses and so helping make sure that there's that public engagement i think is going to be worth maybe taking a little more time with the plan so that we have um a really good concept when we get to the end there's a lot of public buy-in so that's my thoughts can you talk a little bit more about design standards and what that means

So we're balanced, but might be there.

So, in the conversations with cab and some property owners, there's this. Kind of tension between what the district should be and what it looks and feels like. And so what we're going to try to do through this process is merge those 2 together. We're not at this time proposing, like, adopted design standards within the district. But 1 thing that we learned through the best practice studies is. there needs to be some sort of theme. And what we've heard, at least from our business owners in the BCD, is once you lose that kind of originality and it kind of becomes like the standard redevelopment of a traditional multi-corridor highway, you lose that uniqueness. And so we're trying to balance those two together. At this time, we're going to propose some sort of like potential adaptive reuse code changes, those type of things. But for right now, it's more of an exploratory aspect of what could a design standard overlay look like?

I think that sort of identity of place is really important for this area. And I mean, I have my ideas about the type of business we have down there already and sort of the idea of an arts district or something like that. But it's a little bit different than a traditional downtown that we have down here. Um, but I also think of places like the gas lamp district in San Diego, or just places that have an identity and there's, then there's all sorts of businesses there, but there is this sort of overall feel of like the place. And so I'm excited to have this group sort of work on, on that.

Yeah, no, I, I agree. I assume the look that phrasing just concerns me that we're going to get something that's very prescriptive and, and sort of wanting to make sure that we're balancing something that, and my reaction was, you know, and this may not even be the right, um, way to frame it, but is it more of a form-based code kind of approach than it is design standards or just something that is both captures that character and maintains and promotes something that's unique, but it doesn't get so prescriptive that it just doesn't work or it's difficult to do, or it's actually not really consistent with it or produce something that's a little weird.

And I think through our consultant process, because this is going to be a robust opportunity for public involvement, that'll be a key question that we'll have them ask. And what does that look like in terms of what the community is actually looking for? Because the challenge is, is to have an identity, but also get development spurred in the district too. So if you start putting more roadblocks in the way, however, the one thing that we have heard is we want it to be different than other parts of the city. So you have Old Mill as the retail, you have downtown as the curation, and you have Northwest Crossing as that like outer Shefflin-marked placemake. So it's kind of like balancing these things, which we'll definitely have the consultant look into.

Can I make one other comment about my earlier question on timeframe? I mean, I just would like to see it happen faster, you know, rather than 18 months seems like a really long time. I understand it's really important, but if we're trying to catalyze and move things forward, I think we need to be paying attention and asking the consultants, how can we do this at a pace that, you know, it moves? I mean, 18 months is a pretty long time for a planning process that then, what's that mean for what's going to happen to projects and how long it's going to take them?

private side especially so yes i i understand that uh but beginning next year we're going to be talking about these density tax credits we're going to be taught i mean we just passed tonight the loans and grants policies so we're not starting from zero it's just making sure to the mayor's point that we have a robust public involvement because the eid kind of showed us that you know yeah yeah

I agree with you. I just want to say we're not putting everything else on pause to do this. I think we still need to be moving things and advancing things in the meantime.

I think that's part of what we've been hearing is people want to see action. They want to see things moving. I think it's happening lots of ways, but I don't want that to get slowed down by anything.

I mean, I think one way that you could structure the contract is to, you know, take each of those bullets and set, like, interim deliverable deadlines for each of them because, like, they don't all have to be delivered in one nice neat package at the end of the day. And, like, I would put design standards absolutely last. It makes me nervous to even talk about design standards because that starts to really regulate, you know, and limit creativity and limit people, what people can do with their buildings or their properties or whatever. And it's just like, I don't know that we really need to go there. But I mean, if CAB wants it, if they want it, fine. But yeah, that's what I would suggest. And I think the thing that I took from the EID process is that, you know, our planning to date has really envisioned the poor area as a place that's not going to have any light industrial. And like, it's going to be decades before we get to that. Or maybe we never do. Like, even if you think about in the Pearl District in Portland, like there's still some businesses there, like auto repair shops and whatever. So I would just say, like, just make sure the conceptual plan doesn't,

assume like everybody's leaving you know what I mean that like the existing businesses are you know feel supported and valued in that process as well yep and that's why CAP selected the three best practices because those three districts still have active industrial light industrial uses in those areas so it's it's balancing the three

I think, as you said, this is meant to, I mean, it's part of the commitment the city's making to the Bent Central District and the importance of it in moving redevelopment forward there. This is supposed to help us get there more efficiently and effectively and get a really successful part of town.

in in addition you know internal staff along with finance has been looking at like if and when properties do become available can we act on it immediately so to to your point counselor um we're not holding up development or opportunities with this process we're trying to play all sides of the all sides of the field so should i make a motion yeah this i guess the recommended direction is really a motion that we recommend oh sure it says better

yeah yeah yeah okay uh i'm moved that we recommend the initiation of the bend central district conceptual plan process and direct the core area advisory board to provide feedback on the bend central district conceptual plan and overall development process okay we've been seconded we'll call the second for you for a minute um all those in favor anybody post okay great

then we're going to move talking about item number six first the um implement uh policy implementation update on the tia falls

So tonight, my name is Jonathan Taylor, Urban Renewal. I'm here with Elizabeth Oshul from the City Attorney's Office. We're going to be providing an update on our tax increment assistance for housing affordability policy for the adopted Urban Renewal plans. The agenda tonight is I'm going to provide a little bit of background of what this assistance is. Elizabeth will go over the prevailing wage determination. We'll provide you some project updates, some next steps. We'll allow some opportunity for questions for staff, but we also have our developers here present as well, but they'll be online so you can have questions for them as well. So there are a few questions that we're asking Burra tonight. And this is only for approved projects only. We are also recommending that this policy remain paused as we move forward. So we would like to ask, would you include the Bend Parks and Recreation System development charges and development assistance? And do you support front loading the approved assistance or reducing the affordability requirements of the program if decisions cannot be made? So a little bit of background. In 2024, after the repeal of MUPD, city council directed staff to consider options to support housing development. Over a year, we researched a lot of programs and opportunities. In 2025, Borough established TIAAHA or Tiny TIF or Site Specific. This is to support multi-unit developments that included at least 15% of units at affordable rate, which was 90% AMI or below for at least 12 years. Additional benefits were for green energy or local contractor hiring. Assistance at the time was in a form of an annual tax rebate and the use of tax increment revenue to support permit fees and or system development charges. This was modeled after both City of Salem and City of Wilsonville site-specific tax rebate programs. In 2025, the then Urban Renewal Agency also established four urban renewal districts, Breda Ridge, Century, Viridian, and Emblem. Burra then paused the program to new applications to reevaluate criteria, and then the program was paused.

So after those four districts were approved, projects started planning with Jonathan what the assistance would look like through development agreements. And the emblem project requested of the Bureau of Labor Industries was called a prevailing wage determination to determine and just get assurance from BOLI that prevailing wage would not apply to the project as was assumed based on assumptions from prior BOLI determinations. And so I'll just hopefully very highlight, there's lots of nuance into prevailing wage, but just to set the foundation for the issue that's before us today. So prevailing wage applies to private projects that receive more than $750,000 in public support through what is defined as funds of a public agency. Individual projects will get coverage determinations to say the structure of your project does or does not trigger prevailing wage. And it's a way for projects to have some certainty. In the statute, funds of a public agency that counts towards that $750,000 is defined to not include payment by a public agency or waiver of development and permit fees, so this includes system development charges, and also tax credits or rebates that a project receives from a public agency. So in 2021, as Jonathan mentioned, our site-specific program, we looked at programs two other jurisdictions had done, Salem and Wilsonville. In 2021, a project receiving assistance through Salem's site-specific program received a coverage determination that found that the tax rebates that project would receive from Salem were the equivalent of tax credits and rebates and therefore were not considered funds of a public agency and did not count towards the application of prevailing wage. We were looking at Salem's project, we looked at this determination and we felt that that was support to move forward with our own program. In 2026, Emblem, one of our projects, requested their own prevailing wage coverage determination when their assistance under our program had reached a reasonable stage of certainty. Their decision received a month or two ago said, tax rebates are not tax credits, And they are considered funds of a public agency. So this is a different decision than what Boley said in 2021 for a very similar program that was offering tax rebates. And this decision said that the Emlyn project would in fact be subject to prevailing wage. This was a surprise because of that existing decision had said the opposite and was something that the project was not prepared, had not prepared for in their financing because we had that existing decision. Because of the discrepancy in those two decisions, both emblem and The city attorney's office on behalf of borough filed an administrative appeal to go before an administrative law judge of bully and get a reconsideration and appeal of that decision. That hearing is presently scheduled for January, but that decision, the difference between the 2021 decision and treatment of tax rebates and the 2026 decision and treatment of tax rebates is really why we're here tonight.

So as Elizabeth was saying, both Emblem and Ritter Ridge are under construction, with Ritter Ridge potentially receiving their certificate of occupancy in December of this year. Meridian and Century West are preparing to begin. So all of these, as we have worked pretty in-depth with their own financial portfolio, what was presented to you last year during the TIF plan and rebate, none of these project financing costs included prevailing wage, both cost and administration. So what we are trying to do through this entire process is to ensure that projects can meet the base policy. So 12 years of affordability for at least 15% of units at 90% AMI or less, which is what we've colloquially called the base policy. But the caveat is, is We can only do that if enough approved assistance, which would be the normal distributed assistance over 30 years, is morally front-loaded. And the reason being, and we can let the developers get into this a little bit, but it's taken future opportunity costs and the depreciation of those dollars that they would have received in 2041, 2052, front-loading it to today so they can meet that kind of requirement because they've now lost the ability to collect tax rebates after year 12. The one thing that we really want to zone in on is the default provision. No matter how this structure is placed, it still applies for the length of the affordability. So payment if they terminate out early. the way that it would work, unlike in the original assistance, it's going to be front loaded. So the penalty is going to be higher if they come out in year seven. So unlike the original assistance, if they came out in year seven, it would have been a shorter because they've not received their entire benefit. So some of the changes to the development assistance 12 years of affordability is the new approach. We are asking Borough to incorporate parks SDCs. This is just a way for us to pay them upfront. Initially they were going to pay and we were gonna rebate them back. Borough would pay these park SDCs by borrowing from the city and repaying over time with tax increment. We have currently worked with finance and using these sources proposed as juniper rich land sales plus the $750,000 property tax rebate to the developer. Smaller total assistance affordability period and less money to the city upfront. If this approach is not supported, projects may be able to provide less affordability for less assistance, but would also require changes to the policy as amended by Burra. And so here's a breakdown of some of the original versus new approved assistance. If you look, 14.2 million, 24.4 million, 34.7 million, and 8.1 million. The original years of affordability were 30, 24, 30, and 24. This included just city's SDCs and fees, and then the remaining would have been rebated. But the new TIF generation would be 4.7 for Brita, 8.8 for Emblem, 10.2 for Century, and 3.1 for Viridian. 12 all the way across, Viridian may be able to provide 17 based on their financing, but that's still in flux because we're trying to solve down how we distributed the front-loaded assistance, but also their own underwriting. This would pay for all SDC fees, but then allow that rebate up to $749. But if you look, the total assistance is about one-third of the original amount that was awarded, so 4.65, 7, 9.7, and 3.1. The one thing that we do want to call out that obviously with the front loaded of assistance, the one thing that is unique to this situation is based on the individual plan closure at the individual year 15. It is estimated that the City of Bend will receive back an added $12 million in tax increment because these districts will be closing early. This is what we heard from some of the concerns when we passed the original TIF policies of the extended duration of 24, 26 and 30 years. If these individual plans close at year 15, Most of that increment would be returning back to the city in terms of the new assessed value that goes on to the tax rolls and the overlapping taxing districts would receive about 47.47Million over the 15 to 30 year life of what the original tip plans were going to be. I know that is a lot so we're going to do some time for questions for staff and then we'll have some questions for. The developers.

Questions is anyone else affected by this bully decision across the state or other cities seeing this as an issue?

Yeah, I think a lot of people were taken surprised by it because it was a change from that 2021 decision of how it was looking at tax rebates. So I think a lot of folks are. Surprised by it and re, evaluating programs that they may have started to set up based on that 2021 decision. Jonathan, I think you've talked to others.

Yeah. In addition to what Elizabeth was saying, this is also the primary issue that the middle income revolving loan fund is experiencing because it is similar to what tax increment financing does. It provides them the 12 or 15 year upfront, like we're trying to propose here, but it, it kind of triggers prevailing wage. And the one thing that staff really wants to address, this is not a labor versus housing developer issue. This was based on a decision that we did in good faith. And then this is why the original policy required for that added benefit, 23% of local contractors or more. So for example, the city of Salem was taken back by this because we modeled our program on theirs, city of Wilsonville, McMinnville who had reached out to us to kind of create something similar have now shelved that. And see, this is the kind of the philosophical approach of the new urban renewal approach. So, you know, urban renewal has a bad rap from the 1960s and 70s, you know, development agencies would not require community benefit or public benefit and would just go in and strip mall, you know, the entire area and displacement. New modern approaches, especially in this state, have required the but-for case. So you will get assistance if you provide the community benefit that we are looking for. with this type of decision, and I'll be honest, as the urban and rural professional, this kind of really regulates us back to that the non-but-for case like we can build now infrastructure and clear cut entire parcels, but then we can't require the, you know, investment back. So it's it's a little bit of frustrating, but, you know, we're doing the best we can to meet council goals on both good paying jobs and good affordable rent.

And we're trying to move forward with the program that we had in place that was delivering this affordability community benefits for us. In my opinion, we should move forward with what you proposed. So we're retaining as many of those benefits as possible. It's not designed specifically to get around prevailing wage. We're reacting to this decision that we had in trying to maintain those benefits and knowing that There's still going to be delivering on a local contractor, right? And that's what we're going to hear later from Jewel as well.

So, Elizabeth, did we have any warning signs? You know, this is a 2021 BOLI decision. 2026 is kind of when we got 2025. We crafted this policy in good faith. Do we have any warning signs at all on this?

I think we've seen BOLI taking really um precise i don't know um exacting opinions have been coming out more and more recently and i think that's been frustrating across some of the affordable housing um develop developers recently there was a court of appeals opinion today that overturned a bully prevailing nation determination in affordable housing realm so i think there's been um Overall, maybe just watching each BOLI decision as it comes out and looking at the analysis. But each opinion is based on the project before it. So we expected that BOLI would be consistent. And so it was a surprise. We didn't see anything, I think, in the duration of the emblem. request and we do have representatives from Emblem online.

And the Salem and Wilsonville programs have been going along, right? Salem was before ours.

Salem was before ours. We do have a developer online who is part of that project and that request.

They've been going along using this kind of thing, right?

That'd be a great question for the developer, but yeah. Wilsonville, it did do, I think, one and then their community kind of asked for a different approach.

Oh, okay.

But these were programs that were built after Boley appeared to say tax rebates are treated as tax credits.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah, I agree with Mike in moving forward what staff has recommended here. I think it's really unfortunate. I think it's good to remember that our bully director is an elected position, right? And she runs an agency. It's not a court of law, but they are asked to make some significant decisions and those decisions have impacts across the state. And I think it's very good to try to protect the rights of workers and to make sure that folks are getting a living wage. But this is increasingly having this discussion with folks that we need to maybe have a bigger conversation about. What we're trying to achieve with prevailing wage statutes and then what we're trying to do with affordable housing. And I think what the frustration is here is that we've got some things written into statute that the legislature took into account when they created prevailing wage. And so there's some, there's some things where they said, okay, maybe not doesn't apply to this doesn't apply to this. And that's what's sort of been shrinking. but without an act of the legislature. So that's a little tough to figure out. And it is maybe time for the legislature to start to grapple with that and say, okay, maybe we need to come back to the table and have this conversation amongst ourselves and figure out what is the law that we want. Maybe the legislature wants this. They say, we agree. We want prevailing wage to apply to more Things that's what we want to do that would be great to know right, and I think it's just that we need the conversation to happen, because then we can adjust. When you have just five years later, and a complete opposite decision it just creates a lot of uncertainty for all these programs going forward, so I appreciate you doing what we can to keep these projects moving forward. I think would be a huge loss if they didn't move forward because of this decision, or we lost the affordability because of this decision. So I don't want to see that happen. But there's a bigger conversation here going on.

For me, it's a goalpost issue. And a couple of union members up here on the dais, We respect that. We understand that. We understand, as you said, Mayor, at the state level, that this is an issue that we're grappling with. But from my mind, it is also a fairness issue. This is the deal that we set, that we put out there for these developers to come in. And so I want to maintain that bargain, just like I would commit even...

chair to to have another look at this one that when the state says yeah you know when we reassess this policy and we have more clarity from the state right okay the discussion is open yeah yeah I agree with the pause and not doing any more projects until we get more clarity on them so that's getting to the questions before us tonight if you want to move to that next screen um where I mean if is everybody generally okay with going with the staff recommendation of using park for park Sdcs in supporting the front loading of assistance. Otherwise we have to go back and kind of revisit the purpose. It's going to take a little bit more time and we have a couple of projects that are close to certificates of occupancy. So we're making parks whole right?

We're paying back.

It's just the money's coming from a different place from the city over.

We had it on the on the earlier slide that that front loaded assistance for the parks and rec. City SDCs, we have an allowance to pay in installments over time. So that's what borough will be doing. Parks doesn't have that same allowance. So their SDCs need to be paid at certificate of occupancy. The funding that's been identified for that is from the Juniper Ridge land sales that hasn't been allocated by council yet. So if you're supportive of this approach, we have available in that I think it's just enough for the two projects that are under construction, Britter Ridge and Emblem. That fund doesn't have enough for those other projects yet, so that we would have to come back to council. So once Bern says this is the direction we're interested in, we'll have to come back to council and have a couple more detailed financing questions about how council wants to balance the front-loading of the systems.

And we would pay back that fund, right? So talk about that.

In working with Sam and her team, which have been great, by the way, because Andrew, who is a member of Sam's staff, him and I, who you don't see a lot of these people who are helping us do our job. I sat there yesterday and today, I think I look tired. I've been told I look tired looking at Excel spreadsheets for two days. Not only are we paying this back, but we're also going to pay it a little bit above kind of the inflation rate. So we're identifying an interest rate of 4.75% right now. I mean, this is all subjective that will come before a council for your approval. But in addition, I know there's a concern about the dwindling of juniper rich land sales and working with Matt. It has been identified in the purchase strategy for next year of 7.4M dollars to purchase more city own land. So there's what we are doing our best to make sure that. City council has the funds needed from the juniper rich land sales to go do their own priorities, but then also how we use tax increment in the way that kind of benefits everything. So we just want to lay that out. It will be a work session that Sam and her team will help lay out. But that's that's what we've identified thus far.

So, are you saying there's essentially maybe a future opportunity to pay back that fund more quickly? yes out of the burn money right that sort of amending some of the priorities for how those resources are going to be used well you have the potential of having at least 7.4 million next year right from new juniper richland cells but by this action tonight we are we are creating a bill for ourselves on the the last two projects right yeah and so are we it would be eating up the entire balance that sort of remains in the juniper originally in cell phone you have about two million left

after after payment pain that these two so question about is bprd still have the affordable housing waivers i know that they're limited does from what we've heard they've now been tapped out for the next couple and and remember these projects were more affordable housing so most of them are at a minimum of 90 percent and that reached out for the parks and rec cc moochers so i think i'm hearing general support for the staff recommendation to move this forward We do have developers online if you had questions. We wanted to make sure they were here if you had questions about their projects. I know they've been waiting for some time. We want to make them available if you had questions about why the front loading of assistance or anything like that. I know it's late, but...

It doesn't look like we have questions that they...

I just have a comment. Yeah, with that bully determination, right or wrong, whether you agree with or disagree with it, it's there. And so it's not a good look that we're kind of... Caroline Miller, Trying to solve the numbers, so that it, you know that we're just under that. Caroline Miller, we're just under that threshold, so I think I mean I wasn't ever really supportive of this level of incentive for market rate housing and that's now. Caroline Miller, that's kind of. That's kind of why prevailing wage is there, so that when there's a significant public investment going, that it also meets other public interest goals. So I don't see, but I also agree with Councillor Platt. We've gotten ourselves into this, and I don't think we can really back out at this point. I'm just voicing frustration.

Can I just ask also about the appeal? Because, I mean, so if we say we're okay with

um with these changes and do we still need to I mean how much work is the appeal do we still need to pursue it we are talking about that about whether if the changes are made and we're moving forward and we find the path for emblem in particular because it was their determination about all the projects do we need to go to do the appeal I think one of the benefits of doing the appeal is if If the administrative law judge reverses the coverage determination and said it goes back essentially to that 2021 determination, we would have the ability if BRO chose to do the original assistance and get the affordability for longer.

For all the projects or just for the ones that haven't earned?

We would look at each individually. We talked to the developers individually what they were willing to renegotiate at that point, but it could be on the table for everybody.

Well, and it might expand the aperture for the future version of this program, whatever it is.

The programs or the projects would also be, are talking about getting updated determinations based on the new package of assistance. And so there's a couple of moving parts where the appeal may not be appropriate for the first decision. It's all kind of on the table and a little bit in flux based on trying to make this work for a revised program.

If Burra drops off the appeal, but Emblem wants to continue to appeal, that's possible, right? That's possible.

Either they're independent appeals.

Or if they drop off, we can continue.

Okay.

Good question.

So are we going to have a conversation about whether we want to pursue that?

It sounds like we're maybe not ready to do that tonight, but we want to have some more discussion about that in the future.

Yeah. We've been talking about these issues. staff um just kind of collectively to make sure that we're you know are we are all of us including bully investing time in answering the right question at the right time so i think i think if we can get through tonight and get some direction from bura um as elizabeth said the rest moving first i could anticipate coming back to bura relatively near future to give an update and see where where things are at on that because i mean there are resource questions and is it the right question to pursue but yeah that's something we're working through too

And to Ian's point, on the other side, we are actually working with our legislative partners to preserve the ability to use tax rebates because it was defined in the original determination. And we just want, there is no true definition of that in the statute. And so we are working with League of Oregon Cities and also our community partners at OEDA, Oregon Economic Development Association, because as you've seen, one of the governor's prosperity council goals is to attract investment. So this is something that we're looking at and we'll bring back to Borough what that would look like.

Yeah, I think there's there's been some action at the legislature around this. There's a few legislators that I think want to work on this. So I think we'll need to keep track of that as well as a city.

So, I, I hear direction. Yes, move forward with the staff recommendation and keep us apprised as things go forward. And we appreciate the developers being online tonight with us and hope that. You see our support for trying to continue this project so we can deliver the community benefits on the affordability side based on all the good work we've done to date and the creativity to adapt to this new environment.

And I'm happy to meet with our folks who are here. They're not here anymore. You need folks to talk with them and continue this conversation. I understand those concerns. Thank you.

All right, so we'll move on to the final agenda item with the dual project update. Thanks for your patience. Everybody.

So the policy question tonight for Bura is, is this update satisfactory or is there anything else you would like to know before staff brings back the necessary documents for a core area minor amendment? So just a little bit of background, Bura approved JUUL for participation in site specific on June 18th, 2025, but required a finance and project update before directing staff to draft this amendment. So here's the update. This is the new rendering that they provided. So the original project was 125 units. The updated project is 79. They originally proposed 38% of those units, between 60% and 90%. Now they are proposing 100% of units at or below 80% AMI. They intend to still meet their energy efficiency and local contractor requirements. The total development cost originally was 45.5 million. This was for a six-story podium. Now the new development cost is 14 million, which is a three-story. The economic impact is 4.7 because, you know, obviously we're adjusting some of the local contractor usage. The total assistance that they would be eligible for is 1.4 million. That also includes the assistance for SDCs, parks, SDCs, and an eligible rebate. Due to their timing with their certificate of occupancy compared to the core area TIF plan termination date, the original affordability was for 23 years. It is now for 17 years. So some of the finance summary update, JUUL has advanced materially towards construction readiness. They've received site plan approval and it's now fully entitled, a status which they did not hold at the original application process. They've updated their structural design to be smaller and more compact, which is leading to more fiscally, uh cost savings and the revised capital stack which is the narrowing of the remaining finance gap was from 37 approximately down to three percent of the total development cost i know that we have representatives from jewel here but the question tonight is um do you want staff to bring back the necessary documents for that core area minor amendment and when we do we'll just go through the high level process core area minor amendment only requires a simple resolution by borough

Do we have to do anything else to plan for them?

Peter, do you want to tell us anything? Yeah. Since you stayed here the whole time? Yeah.

Got to come up.

Yeah, thank you all for your time. Peter Grubb with the JUUL project team. Excited to be partnering with the city in the aligned objectives of bringing housing to the core area, workforce housing, sustainable project. Eager to bring folks in to support all the city's goals in the core area, like the vibrancy. Been involved in a lot of the CAB meetings. The project, you know, we did have to pivot from our first application. And I think it's a story you've all heard a lot in a lot of capacities, but bringing down the costs of the project. So going from a more complex structure at six stories down to a simpler structure, simpler building methodology. allowed us to make it work, de-risk the project, make it more viable.

Great.

Great. Anybody have questions for Peter? No. No. Thanks for your patience. All right. Absolutely. Thank you all. If there's not a motion tonight, I think there's support for moving. Coming back with the resolution. Yeah, coming back with the resolution. Great. We'll do that minor amendment. Moving. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all. And with that, this meeting of the Bend Renewal Agency is adjourned.

Okay. Yeah.