Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Oh, that's when you're going to be late. You're exactly on time. Exactly. On time.

Good. ready. Okay. Um I will go ahead and call today's meeting to order. Today is Monday, January 26, 2026. We will start with roll call. And Aaron, I'm going to start with you today. Aaron Leen here. Suzanne Johansson, Nathan Nelson, Marggo Clinton, Scott Withers, I'm Bob Gresens, Ad. Great. Next, we will move into the visitors section. And just a reminder, this is for items that are not on today's agenda item. So I have a Kirk. Kirk is this and on the agenda.

Okay, great. And then if you are online, if you could raise your hand if you are wanting to speak on something that is not on tonight's agenda item.

Okay. I'm not seeing anyone. Not seeing anyone. All right. Next, we will move into the work session and we've got a whole crew for us today. Who's who's starting?

I'll kick it off while um while Brienne gets the presentation queued up. My name is Brian Reiken. I'm a senior strategist and thanks for having us tonight. Thank you, Planning Commission. Um yeah, there are a lot of us here and and that's on purpose. So, I'd like to introduce the team to the planning commission and vice versa. Um we're going to have a good long conversation. We have a pretty robust presentation. It's around 30 slides plus or minus designed to be bit of an introduction into um into Oregon land use planning kind of our role in that planning growth plan that you may have heard about. So, we're going to spend quite a bit of the presentation briefing you there, but really more of an opportunity just for kind of informal Q&A. Um see where the conversation goes instead of we just don't want to hit you over the head with 30 slides. We'd like this to be a conversation. Before we jump into it, if I may, just to introduce staff. Um, starting from

down here. Yes. Um, hi commissioners. I'm Susanna Joel. I'm a, um, transportation planner in the growth management division. I know some of you from past life projects. Yeah. And I'm Jennifer Knapp and I'm a senior planner. I'm Elise Fukulich. I'm an associate planner. Rian Gail, senior planner. And I'm Damian Certik and I'm also a senior planner.

Yeah. And so before Brienne begins, the reason why we're all here, each person uh will have kind of more or less a their subject matter expert in one or more of the areas in the growth plan. So each one of us has more or less been assigned to kind of take the lead on a certain subject. So that's why I wanted everyone here um because you're going to be working with one or all of us for a number of years coming up. So Brian, do you want to take it from there?

Sure. Uh just quick overview of the agenda. Um we already went through introductions. We're going to go over just a kind of highle uh update and overview of the state land use planning system. It's helpful to kind of have that context. It's all the rules and all the things that we're going to talk about tonight. Um talk just briefly about our kind of existing adopted growth plans and then provide an update on some of the new state rules as well as really kind of what the meat of of tonight is about. uh giving an overview of our upcoming growth plan and all the components and deliverables related to that and then we'll leave some time for next steps and discussion. So um starting with Oregon's land use planning, I know most of you probably are very familiar with the um statewide planning system and um how it impacts how we plan for growth, but we thought it'd be helpful just a refresher for some of you. So um as you know we have one of the most progressive um and structured land use planning state systems in the country. This was um established by Senate Bill 100 back in 1973. Um this really at its foundation this really was about protecting farmland, forest land, natural resources and um coordinating urban growth, making sure that that's um happening in an urban growth boundary and to limit sprawl um and support sustainable communities. It requires every city and county to adopt a comprehensive plan and then supportive um infrastructure plans that would then um align with the statewide planning goals. So really at kind of at the heart of all the work we're doing really rolls back up to the statewide planning goals. There are 19 statewide planning goals. Not all of them are applicable to us, but I'll cover just the kind of high level ones that are the most applicable to us. And then just one of the main features and I'm sure all of you are very familiar with urban growth boundaries but urban growth boundaries are kind of one of the main features really of the Oregon land use planning system.

So um just quickly kind of hitting some of the key statewide planning goals. So goal one is public involvement. Um that ensures really that the public has meaningful opportunities to participate in land use planning. um the planning commission that is part of our the planning commission's charge is to kind of fill that um goal one requirement as well as all of the other engagement that we do throughout our project which we'll talk a little bit more about tonight. Then goal nine which is economic development and goal 10 which is housing. This is really to ensure that um cities plan to make sure that they have adequate land supply for our next 20 years of housing and job growth. And then goal 12 is transportation. Um, this really sets the foundation, the requirement that cities have transportation system plans, TSPS. There's like a million acronyms. So, um, and I'm sure most of you are familiar with those as well, but you'll hear kind of the TSP, UGB, um, and I'll try and refrain from using too many acronyms in this. And then, so, um, goal 12 really is about, uh, making sure cities, um, have a transportation system plan that supports safe and efficient and environmentally responsible, um, transportation. And also it's really sets the foundation for integrating your land use and your transportation. And then goal 14, urbanization. This is really directing cities to establish that urban growth boundary and making sure that we make the most efficient land uh use of our land inside of our urban growth boundary. Um and then it also ties back to that 20-year supply. So when we talk about um planning horizon or kind of long range planning, typically that's a 20-year um planning horizon. So how are these um statewide goals and the statewide framework uh implemented locally? So the statewide goals really kind of are the foundational element. Um these are then implemented through state statute um which is OS and then state administration or state administrative rule OARS. Um these really are the basis

of everything that we're going to talk about tonight. um the world that we live in and what we're talking about tonight really is in that statewide goals and city plans and policies side of this implementation um state implementation. So the the goals are implemented through statute and through administrative rules. These really provide um the details for the procedures and the standards that we have to follow when we're doing updating our plans and plans that we need to prepare um the city plans and policies. This is really where the the goals and rules are um manifest manifested locally. So this this really lives in our comprehensive plan. Um and then in our functional infrastructure plans, these infrastructure plans and some of the kind of topic specific plans that we're going to talk about um those are those are adopted into the appendix of our comprehensive plan. So like really it's our comprehensive plan and that that appendix is is really where a lot of these plans that we're talking about live. Um these include from our our functional infrastructure plans include plans for our transportation system and our water and our sewer and our storm water. Um and then it the codes and standards really are where the plans are integrated um into kind of our local like implementation to guide development. So that's kind of the the our plans are kind of the foundation for that and then the codes and policies are where that's that kind of next step of implementation and then the projects and programs are where you actually kind of where the rubber hits the road. It's like where you're actually seeing the the built manifestation of the goals and the policies and our plans where it's actually um kind of the physical manifestation of that. it's where they're really becoming a a reality. And then with that are supportive tools that the city has to make that make those kind of goals to pull that conduit all the way through. Um so kind of an example here would be like a mixeduse

project. So um take like the Hixon for example in central west side kind of one of our first larger mixeduse projects. Um the state you know really established the policy and the goal that to to promote urbanization within your urban growth boundary. Then through our um 2016 UGB or urban growth boundary update and our growth plan, our existing growth plan um then we established new opportunity areas. Um we envision we we established new mixeduse zoning. We set policies. We updated our comp plan to really support um that type of the development that didn't really exist before um in in Bend. And then we updated our development codes and our building codes to facilitate that type of development. And then ultimately, you know, a private developer actually then builds that product and then not necessarily in that case, but in other cases, the city has tools to to also support that type of development.

Yeah. And just a a quick note because you we tend to work in our growth management division in that kind of city plans and policies and we're we're looking at the state a lot. So, we're tracking state law. We're trying to understand the administrative law. We're active in the legislative process. So when they're changing state law, they'll have members of our team participating with our lobbyist and observing what that is, trying to make adjustments to make sure it works and fits for Bend. Um, and so that's where we tend to spend our time. And so our projects are really focused at that policy level with an eye to implementation where other groups, for example, our planning group, they are processing land use applications, for example, that are really focusing on development code. And so there's there's this kind of cool we get this ability to kind of look up and follow what the state's doing and there are a lot of changes happening at the state which we'll cover. Um and then we're trying to create that bridge into the local planning process. Um and we're working as a team to do that. And we also end up working with our engineering teams. You've probably seen Damian more than any one of us. And the reason is that Damian um

lucky guy. Oh my gosh. you know, he he gets the honor and privilege of uh working with our engineering uh team to make sure that our one of those those implementation plans you'll see infrastructure systems plans. We want to make sure that those are closely integrated with the land use assumptions we're making for the future. So Damian is this bridge and our team is a bridge to the engineering division so that when they do a a master plan and a public facility plan, it aligns to the land use vision that is more or less enshrined in our comprehensive plan. So I just want to kind of share like the organizational role that we play as well as uh in specific projects. C could I just ask is it possible to uh tilt the or equalize the angle of the screen?

Oh there you go. Yeah slightly. Yeah that helps a lot. Perfect. Okay.

Sure. So um kind of shifting shifting now to our current adopted growth plan. Um and so our existing growth kind of framework is really um lives again in our comprehensive plan. The last kind of major update that we did to that as part of that was um back in 2016 that really set our u our vision through 2028. So as you can tell we're getting close. It's 2026. We're kind of close to that end of that horizon from when we last did this a major update to our comprehensive plan and to our um UGB. So some of the themes at that time and that are this is what we have on the books today. This is what is existing was really about kind of these mixeduse communities. Um as I mentioned opportunity areas. So we have a handful of opportunity areas where we really focused on kind of infill and more density at the time and then we also did a urban growth boundary expansion at that time. Um, subsequently we, as Brian mentioned, we updated our, you know, the the 2016 really set kind of the land use um, framework of establishing where people were going to live, where jobs were going to be in that planning horizon. And then after we adopted that, we um, updated all of our system plans to make sure that they were coordinated and aligned and supported of of the land uses that we had identified. Um and then kind of some of the I think the key things that came out of that was was focus on infill, focus on redevelopment, um new mixed use zones, being making the most efficient use that we could. Um we went had gone for a much larger UGB prior to that. And so this was really of like let's make maximize um our existing our existing infill and our existing UGB. And I think with that, um,

what's notable is this, the work that we did in 2016 really did position us pretty well. There's some changes to state rules, which we're going to talk about. Um, I think we're in a much better position than a lot of communities are because of the work that we did in 2016. Um, we'll talk about climate friendly areas. Our opportunity areas that we have right now, our central west side, our Ben Central District, those really operate in a lot of ways like a climate friendly area. So we're actually pretty well positioned. I think if there's anything else to add more I think just uh to take note of the time. Um so a big land use 20 20 forward-looking 20-year plan out to the year 2020. It was passed in 2016 and then other divisions of the city, the engineering division. It takes years to then create the infrastructure plans. Each one of these plans can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars worth of planning for a specific system. So if you notice the dates, the last bullet there, collection systems have done in 2018 and then a transportation system plan in 2020 and then a water. So you'll see this it takes time to you establish that new land use regime and all the things that you're trying to change and then you back in those infrastructure plans. There's a reason to do that, but institutionally uh it just takes a ton of money and time to do this. You don't do them together. You want to wait until your land use is done. But what I'm trying to get at is the time scale, right? It takes time. You do the big plan and then you update those infrastructure plans um over time. So it's uh this is not typically a quick, you know, get it done in one year and everything's just ready to go for the next 20 years. It takes time for other divisions to do that work to complement the land use work.

Yeah. And what's maybe a little bit different, and Susanna will talk about this more, is that the way we plan for transportation now, it's it's more integrated into the land use. So, it's not a update all your land use and then figure out your transportation system plan. Um, it's much more kind of looking at your transportation system plan as you're kind of doing all of your land use planning. And that's good transition. Okay. To our our existing transportation system plan.

Yeah. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about um our transportation system plan known as the TSP and um talk a little bit about that and then hand it back to Brienne to talk a little more about housing and then talk again towards the end of the pre presentation more about transportation. Um but the TSP is basically a a master plan that outlines um the projects. So all of the infrastructure projects, the bike, pedestrian, roadway network, um that we need based on our population, um growth and anticipated growth for a 20-year kind of system that works together. Um and the last time we adopted our TSP was in 2020. Um I think it started in 2017, 2018. It was a big committeewide process. Commissioner Johansson was on a really important committee, the a lot, the citywide transportation advisory committee and also you were on the funding work group too which was a super important um part and I don't know if you want to say anything about that experience.

A lot of work lot a lot of meetings.

Yeah, it was it was a lot. Yeah. So um but I think it it led to a really good product, you know, and I think one of the important things about it was the funding plan. Um so the state rules, it's division 12 requires that you can't just have like a pie in the sky transportation plan. You have to actually um do cost estimates, very broad cost estimates called class 5 for each project that you're listing there and then attach kind of a funding mechanism on how you're going to how you're going to fund those. And so, um, if folks have been here a little bit, we had a really successful transportation bond, a GO bond, um, passed by the voters in 2020. Um, so it was a $190 million bond. And so most of the stuff you're seeing built around town, um, right now we're funded with that bond. U, that funding plan also laid out, um, kind of a broader funding plan scope for to get all these projects accomplished. Um, and so the transportation utility fee, we had a big need for road maintenance, and we could do a whole two-hour presentation on how transportation is funded, and it's really complicated with um with state regulations on how how things are taxed and all that kind of stuff and what can be spent on maintenance versus capital projects and all that kind of stuff. So, the transportation system plan kind of outlined all that. So you see the utility fee was recommended by the funding work group and was adopted as part of um the transportation system plan. We had a system development charge update which is like the fees that the impact fees developers pay when they go and build things like big apartment buildings or um commercial centers, single family homes, all that stuff. We just did an update based on that work that was done for the TSP. So, it's really an important document that kind of lays the groundwork for the next 20 years. So, as part of this big growth

plan update, we're going to be doing a TSP update. Um, and it'll start out a little bit trickling, a little slower until we work on the land use needs and then it'll kind of ramp up and we need to have that adopted by the end of 2029 to meet state um rules. So, go ahead. Anyone else have anything to add to that? No. Okay, good. So, we're updating our growth plan um not only because we we should we need to, but also there were two um you can go ahead and go to the next one. Two updated state planning rules that were passed since we last updated our growth plan. So, the first one is the climate friendly and equitable communities CFAC rule and that's contained in um what Brienne was talking about division 12 um OAR division 12 transportation. And then the next one is the Oregon housing needs analysis rule rule. Um and that had changes to division 8 housing um division 21 urban reserves and division 24 how we determine our urban growth boundary. Brienne's going to talk a little bit more about the housing related ones and the whole team will dig into that too. As far as um the CFAC rules, um what CFAC really did was increase that link between transportation and land use planning. Um, as Brienne was talking about, it used to be a little bit more separated. You would do your comp plan and, you know, figure out your land use needs and then a couple years later come back and do your your transportation plan based on that. But this time, we're really, I will say, we're kind of forging new ground by doing this, but we're kind of doing it all integrated and together because it makes more sense. and Brian and Brienne and the team will talk a little bit more about that, but um the let's see uh the CFAC rules really um emphasize something called climate friendly areas, CFAs, and a couple of folks were on the SE fog, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Um, so you know a little bit about about that. And these are really they're things we kind of have already brewing, but they're really places that are supposed to accommodate 30 at least 30% of our needed housing in the future and be really focused on bike, ped, pedestrian, and transit. Um, where people can live, work, get access to their services all in one little community um little blob. So um, we'll talk a little bit more about that. We um these CFAs are are kind of viewed as a way to reduce vehicle miles traveled and that's that vehicle miles traveled, BMT reduction is really driving a lot of these new state land use um rules. There's a big emphasis on reducing um carbon footprint, reducing our greenhouse gases um and we have targets um that we're going to have to meet in the future to do that. So that's going to be driving a lot of our growth plan into the future. Um the CFAC rules also require a lot more. We tried to do a lot of engagement with the last TSP update. We had neighborhood um workshops. We had a ton of public outreach. Um the CFAC rules really um kind of focus on um the voices of underserved populations a little bit more than um we did in the past. So, there's going to be a big kind of more of an effort and Elise will talk about that to reach out to folks that normally aren't out the table um when we do the whole growth plan update. Um and there were parking reforms which you probably saw as far as code amendments that Pauline brought through as part of CFAC. Um so, go ahead. And now we're going to talk a little bit more. Did any add to the CFAC stuff? No, I think just to start out just to not to not underestimate or understate just how big

of a change those two rule making laws and rulemaking efforts uh are the facil or even for Bend. They will they are very uh the rules are very directive. They're very specific. Um they're very outcomebased. Um, and so I think for folks that have either been here or participated in some of the planning work that preceded this project, either the the transportation systems plan or the UGB work, this is this is a new day with a new set of rules. And part of our mission here is to basically meet those rules through this project and work with the community and figuring out the best way to meet those rules. But they're really big changes uh to the Oregon planning uh system. So the other um big change that beyond the CFAC rules was ONA was the Oregon housing needs analysis what we refer to as ONA. Um these really set new policy direction on how the goals related to housing would be implemented. Um, one of the big changes is that the state now provides cities with a specific number of housing units that you need to plan for by for the next 20 years by affordability level. So, this is a a very big shift. Um, in the past, cities kind of figured out that affordability level. Um, we derived our estimate based on population estimates. So now the state every year is updating, they're handing you these are the numbers each individual city in Oregon um is going to need to plan for by affordability level. Um as Susanna mentioned um similar to CFC, the the new rules related to housing really um are focused more on kind of equity and production and actually getting Howard's housing had to be built. There's new requirements related to that. I'll talk a little bit more about that. Um, and with a with a

much stronger equity focus um looking at kind of historically um marginalized and underrepresented populations and um looking at how how we can kind of remedy past harms through our um planning updates. And then there's some new requirements um for that I'll talk a little bit about too that get into the um planning for location types and characteristics of housing um which really is the intent is really to kind of like contextualize our housing needs on the ground um to our own um city need and then some new requirements for housing production. So, housing production strategy um that gets into those kind of actions of how a city's actually going to um have tools and and actions to to get housing produced. And then I was going to mention too with the um the estimates the they now um provide or they also include housing for under production and housing for houseless population as well as second homes and vacancies. So those were things in the past that we were determining um on a local level. And so we know we need just over 30, this was updated uh just a couple weeks ago at the beginning of the year. We know we need to plan for at least 34,000 units um in in our next 20 year planning horizon. Anyone have any questions or anything to add for on the owner?

Yeah, I had a question. um in terms of types and characteristics is uh an ownership model

with the ownership and rent and tenure. So tenure is something that we'll look at as well. So rental by income levels as well. So that kind of breakdown and I'll talk a little bit about that as well. So, um, kind of now transitioning for those are the new requirements and then this is kind of the these are all the deliverables that we'll actually be kind of working on and adopting as part of our growth plan. Um, so what you're seeing here, there's a lot I don't and it's small font. I don't expect everyone to like digest all of that um here, but this is really just to kind of give you an idea of the different deliverables that we'll be working on over the next 3 to four years. Um it's a huge body of work and it definitely has a um a big impact on how Ben's going to grow in the next 20 plus years and well beyond that. Um as I think Susanna mentioned um with the new rules I think we are kind of at the forefront of taking a pretty ambitious approach to this to integrating these different deliverables um into kind of one larger update. Um it makes a lot of sense. there's a lot of efficiency in doing that especially kind of um with resources and with public engagement but also I think ultimately it's really about um getting at the real objective of what these goals are trying to get to. So by integrating them, if you look at them individually, you're not necessarily aiming towards the same north star. But by integrating these, um we have the ability to actually make some progress towards the state goals and targets that they've set um versus kind of looking at them individually.

Yeah. And just I want to mention to the planning commission that every one of these documents um and each one of these deliverables will be adopted by you except for the housing production strategy and contextualized housing need which are designed to go to council and be adopted separately and not as part of our comprehensive plan. So you will be you will be along for the ride in in in the approval process of each and every one of these and your role will be to make recommendations to the city council and we'll talk more about your role in the project but um there will be a process that we'll describe later but ultimately you are the body as the planning commission that will be recommending to council yep you know for the buildable lands inventory or the economic opportunities analysis. So I just wanted to assure you that um you we will have that role and you will have that uh you will have that task and all that fun that comes with it.

Um and then I I when I think about this ultimately like there are so many details and so many requirements within each of the for each of these deliverables. Um but really we're just trying to bas answer some basic questions. So, and I we'll kind of go through each of these, but it's kind of at its at its core, it's kind of what our housing needs, what are our land needs, how much space do we have in our existing UGB to act what are what are our needs for jobs, our land needs for jobs, do we actually have space in our existing UGB to accommodate all of those future projections? If the answer is no, how are we going to make more space within our UGB? How are we going to become more efficient in our UGB before we go to look at expanding our UGB? So, as while these are very complicated, like there really are some just kind of basic questions that we're trying to answer as we go through these.

And one quick thing, we're we're bundling this work in packages. So, that's why you see package one, two, and three is what we're trying to do is tackle a number of different deliverables, do that work, bundle them into an adoption package, get that approved, you recommended by a planning commission, goes to city council for their approval, then it goes to the state for the state to approve that work. and then we proceed on the second package. Of course, there could be overlap um in terms of this the timing of when we're doing the work. But the idea is do these deliverables in one package and you can see them there listed and then package two and then package three. So essentially three different big adoption packages providing a recommendation for package one.

Yeah. Yeah. And you could, you know, I'm sure in in the actual when we bring the ordinance before, you could say, well, we we love the buildable lands inventory fine, but we have some concerns about the employment opportunities analysis or and you know, so you can tailor you'll be able to tailor um your recommendations, of course, based on these three the products that are involved. So, kind of the the first um we we're really kind of starting with housing. Um and it's this kind of these basic kind of questions I was mentioning of, you know, what do we need to plan for? Well, the state now gives us that allocation. So, we have an understanding of we know that that target. We know that housing target. We know that by income by income levels. And then shifting. Okay. Now, we know that. How do we translate that into what types of housing do we need to do we need? um what characteristics and and kind of locations. So we contextualize that on our own local level to kind of get that more fine grain on the ground um understanding of our needs. So the contextualized housing needs analysis. This will be um one of the first adoption products um that we'll be looking at and as part of the contextualized housing needs analysis kind of our key the key outcome for that really is to align the state allocated need with our local on the ground context and then to identify the types so meaning like a multi-unit development middle housing um single unit detached so kind of getting that next to that next level uh tenurship um Scott mentioned tenure ship we'll be looking at tenorship Um so is it a rental product? Is it a forale product? And at what affordability level do you need those different kind of um products available? And then looking at characteristics. So meaning um the actual unit type. Is it accessible? Is it adaptable? What is the unit size? Um units for multi-generational living. Um and then looking at location. So and when we talk about locations, this is kind of the

intersection of the CFAs and kind of all the different planning requirements. So we have to kind of marry these and that's why we're doing it together. So each one of these kind of deliverables has its own rules. We want to make sure that what we're doing in the contextualized housing needs analysis is going to talk to where we're putting CFAs. So that's kind of why we're also integrating that work. So when we talk about locations, we're really talking about um proximity to what they call high opportunity areas, meaning um a lot of different community assets um as well as transit and um being well connected to, you know, bike ped um connectivity, those types of things. Um and we can answer I I won't go into like the overdetailed of what it takes to do this, but essentially um we do an affordability analysis. There's requirements for very focused equity focused engagement. We look at our um kind of past trends and we look at our past uh discriminatory actions through an a historical equity analysis and then as we're doing this we're identifying fair housing issues um throughout throughout the project and trying to find ways to remedy those. um kind of the next adoption um deliverable would be our kind of what we're calling a phase one housing capacity analysis and our residential um buildable lands inventory. And at this this is really we're just trying to identify do we have land in our UGB to meet that identified need and if we don't have that um how much more land do we need? It's it's kind of this draft residential capacity estimate. Um we do this through um again this historical density analysis. We do a market analysis. So we look at what we've actually been developing over time to understand what we can expect to develop moving into the future. So we look at densities, we look at product types um to try and estimate what we think is going to kind of happen in the future.

Um we further contextualize our kind of future housing needs based on I know there was some questions that were sent in today about demographic trends and market trends. And then we developed that residential land estimate. So what you're seeing here was from our draft um buildable lands inventory. We didn't formalize it. We were trying to kind of get a ballpark estimate of how much capacity we thought we had um back in this was about 3 years ago. And so the kind of those darker spots are where there was more capacity. And then when there's as it gets lighter, there's less and less capacity. And and this I mean if you're familiar with Bend, you can kind of see okay, Stevens Road tract. It's very red. That's because there's a bunch of vacant land there that's in our UGB now. and some level of entitlement. So

yeah, and that's this map is an example of the kind of scale that you're working at. So you tend to be in these documents you're working at the city scale. You're having to make uh you're doing calculations and analysis on your land base. You're making predictions about how land is going to be used in the future. And so you're able to get this kind of citywide view of this. you're in essence you're kind of making assumptions about how each piece of property within our current urban growth boundary is going to be developed in the next 20 years. Um so it's it's it's it's full of a lot of assumptions, but you're trying to back that up with as much good data as you can and getting people's input on that.

Yeah. And this is directly tied to I mean we use our permitting all of our permitting data so we know exactly like what is actually on the ground. Is it developed? Is it partially is it vacant or is it partially vacant? We look at a redevelopment rate um to look at those assumptions as well. So, and we do CCNR research to understand are there restrictions on on further infill. So, it's a it's a pretty very um data heavy exercise. And we do the same thing for employment lands. And so, um Damen can talk a little bit about kind of this is very much in the housing side and we're doing the same thing. And there's also some efficiency with doing that at the same time so that you're not kind of in a vacuum looking at your employment capacity and your housing capacity. um because obviously we have mix mixed use zones and so it gets a little more complicated. So

okay so I think we're g a break from talking and shift here to talk about economic development. Um, one of the things I wanted to share with you is that this is going to be one of the shorter parts of the presentation because uh, it was about 20 years ago where the state went through a process of adopting legislation through the legislature that directed rulemaking by the land conservation and development commission and updating uh, the economic development goal goal 9 and it's implementing rules. Um, so I'm going to introduce another OAR for you. O 660 division 9 are the rules that cities have to follow when they're planning for uh employment land. Um the deliverable that we're talking about now is called the economic opportunities analysis and I'm going to use EOA as we talk because those other set of words have too many syllables for this light in the day. Uh but it's very similar to the work we're going to do with the housing capacity analysis. Um, we're going to be looking at the forecasts for jobs over the next 20 years. Um, unlike the HCA, we don't have a number that's given to us, but we are going to be drawing from the Oregon Employment Department as one data source to see what they're forecasting uh over the next 10 years and extend that out. Uh, we've already done some work on our our target economic sectors. That was something that uh the city council approved uh last spring kind of identifying those key sectors that look like they're doing really well in Bend and their position to grow. Uh unlike housing, we're going to be looking more at uh sectors and their site characteristics in terms of like their size, their access to infrastructure, their topography, uh their relationship to other supportive uses. and then, you know, looking at our current boundary with our our employment land inventory to see what that supply of sites looks like for our different sectors.

And we're going to be doing this for everything almost there. Um, if you looked at our zoning map or our comprehensive plan map, everything that's zoned commercial, uh, mixed use, industrial, but also public facilities will give you an idea about our range of different types of employment lands. Okay, please. Thank you. So, with respect to the the EOA itself, uh it includes an inventory of all of our land. Um we're going to be doing again some forecasting. Uh but this is also where we're going to be incorporating some visioning. Uh you might remember, you might know the city council adopted an economic prosperity goal u with their uh uh work they did in their goals uh last year. And uh on February 4th, uh Katie Brooks, who's our economic development officer, is going to take forward for their approval an economic development strategic plan. So we'll have some idea about what are the things that we're trying to achieve as a city to promote economic development, business growth, retention, and also job growth. Um, we're going to be doing a lot of also looking at trend data to see what's happening locally, uh, statewide, nationally to see what's going to influence the not just the demand for land for employment, but also its consumption. And then we're going to start getting into some of the nitty-gritty about what our our site needs are for future growth, where we're looking at the current boundary uh, and trying to see what that supply of sites looks like for different sectors. And then while we're doing that, we're also going to be looking at our infrastructure planning to see if we have what's called a short-term supply of land, meaning at least 25% of our land supply for employment is going to be ready for a development in a year because it's already been planned, zoned, and infrastructure is either in the road or it's going to be on the way very soon because of a uh development project or a um CIP project, capital improvement programming project. I'm sorry. Our capital improvement program is our

five-year plan for what infrastructure projects get constructed, water, sewer, storm water, transportation uh every 5 years. The current EOA is um appendix E in our comprehensive plan if you want to take a look at it. And that informed the work that was completed with the adoption of our uh current chapter six of the comp plan, which is our economy chapter. and that includes the the background text and the policy that really uh represent a snapshot of what we were doing back in in 2016. So what Damian and I just covered is most like okay what is our need and do we have capacity for the need like those are kind of the basic questions like what's our land what's our housing need and what's our employment land need and this the the meat of it really is kind of the like okay now now we understand what our need is and and what are we actually going to do about that

yeah and so that that's where it gets interesting um I think if you're looking at this work from a broader perspective you know, the first year, year and a half, you're kind of doing this what do we need work, right? And what's our capacity work uh and that is more or less the conclusion of the first package. And we want to get the the Department of Land Conservation Development to approve that before you do the next part, which I think is the more interesting and arguably difficult and arguably just fun and meaningful work, which is how are we going to accommodate any unmet need? Um we've done some work in the past. Brian mentioned the uh the housing capacity analysis a draft just to get us kind of situated, see where we are. Um and that study suggested that we need some small UGB expansion for primarily single unit detach and that we had pretty good supplies of land for middle housing and for attached. Okay, so that's that's one example. So we're anticipating some kind of urban growth boundary expansion. We don't know that for employment land. So, I'm really fascinated to see what will that need for sites be. Um, are we okay with the supply? Are we going to need additional sites? Um, and typically in that case, um, you're either reconfiguring land inside your urban growth boundary or adding sites. So, this becomes a point of we know now we know what we need. Um, and we are we've been essentially approved by DLCD. We are operating safely. And now our mission as a community is to figure out how to meet that need. and you're meeting that need through really one of two ways or both ways which is usually the outcome which is you're making changes inside your current urban growth boundary. What are those changes? So, you're typically looking at upzoning of some kind or another. Um, or you're looking at changing a land use designation from one type to another to kind of fit a number of different goals, either to meet a need or to do something that is otherwise a good idea. um per some of the other work that we'll talk to you about and what you can't meet inside through either upzoning,

reszoning, or making tweaks to your development code. Then you're in the position of saying, "Okay, we need to expand to add capacity for either employment or housing or both." And then you go about a process of analyzing the land that's most suitable. You have a lot of discussions with the community about the pros and cons of that work. Um, and then you move forward typically in a form of kind of scenario planning where you're running different scenarios um, and eventually analyzing those scenarios and making some decisions about where an urban growth boundary expansion would be alongside those changes you make inside your current GV. Brian, could you expand a little bit by what's meant of zoning and give an example?

So, in 2016, good example. I think we have a map and we can it's right there. Oh my gosh, look at that. Bri and you're brilliant. Um, so if you I don't know if you can see, but kind of in the center of town, you'll see number 21, uh, which is over by the OSU site. Um, that was called an opportunity area. That area was upzoned from what you could previously do, which was mostly either commercial or industrial or a strip mine and a what was it? It was it was surface mine. Surface mine. Surface mine. Demolition land. Yeah, the demolition landfill. Um, and now you can do vertical mix. You can have college there.

Yeah. So previous zoning did not allow that use. After after the 2016 project, we reszoned that, redesated the comprehensive plan and the zone. Now then you can do things there you just simply couldn't do before. The Hixon is another example and uh timber yards is another example in that area that was primarily industrial. You could not do any kind of residential or mixeduse buildings. And now you can see some of those mixeduse buildings taking shape. So also in the central west side you'll see those mixeduse buildings popping here and there. It's an example of how you change the underlying zone, you change the underlying plan designation, you can do something you couldn't do before.

Got it. So, upzoning suggests uh well, it's a type of land use classification. Is that correct? Yeah. You typically apply um either an existing designation. So, say you can say, well, this this industrial land isn't moving. Let's it should be commercial. Okay, let's analyze that and look at it. Or you can create a new designation. One of those for example being a climate friendly area is there's a new designation we will have to apply as part of this process but it doesn't imply that there's some hierarchy of land uses industrial commercial res

not at all no it's really based around the work that we were talking about which is kind of around it's a little it's need what do you need in order to accommodate your 20 year needs right so there's one really important piece another important piece so that's meeting goals 9 and 10 right so we need to meet the requirements of goal 9 and 10 by providing sufficient opportunity for employment sites or housing and one of the ways to do that is through making changes to your land uses inside. Yeah. Um no hierarchy though we love all the zones you know serve a different purpose.

Um so let's see. Yeah. So we have land use efficiency measures and we just spoke about that. um making that efficient use of land and then the urban growth boundary expansion which is essentially where you're taking rural land and urbanizing that land over time by expanding the UGB and when you do that you're also creating what kind of uses go out there right and so you're often looking back at your need and you're saying well if we need residential and we need some commercial or we need some employment then this is what we're working with it's almost like a bucket that you're dealing with like okay we have to accommodate this how are we going to do it you can do it inside you can do it side. Um, and I know I'm simplifying that process. Um, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of technical work that goes along with that process. Um, I think the last time we did this, it was I thought it was really exciting is that we essentially create scenarios for future land uses. We analyze them through a wide variety of models. We come up with pros and cons for each one of these scenarios. We talk about it as a community and then people end up centering in and ultimately a city council will say, you know, we like we're going to go this way. We do some refinement process and that becomes the basis for um that comes the basis for what you end up adopting along the way. Of course, community engagement, people's input, a committee of committees, planning commission, everybody is part of that process in advancing that recommendation to the council. And along the way, probably most importantly, and where this differs from the last time we did it, is you're also making sure that while you're doing all of these things, you're ultimately moving towards your your BMT reduction targets. So, you can't just do this all and then hope at the end it magically reduces your BMT. So we'll that's I think when Susanna was saying, you know, kind of early on we're trickling in the the TSP to say, okay, if we make these changes, how is that going to impact our VMT over our per capita VMT?

Can I ask a question about the So we've recently been having some discussions about Senate Bill 8 and the housing uh affordable housing on commercial lands. And so all of this planning and all of this visioning and all of this creating of this and then the state has all these rules that you're following over here, but then they just throw one in over here and go, "Oh, by the way, here's something else." And all those plans go out the window. Is there what do we I mean, we just have to plan for the stuff that we have and then hunt when the state

Well, you do your best with what you have, I think. and the rules and laws that you have in place, right? Um I think you can however use the past as a little bit of a indication of things that could change. So for example, if Senate Bill 8 stays the way it is, right, and there's no amendment to it. Um and we're looking in the future if we're expanding an urban growth boundary or designate an area for more walkable commercial that it's probably a good idea to have a little bit more of that designation. so that some of that could be absorbed by affordable housing. So, um that's an example. Um it's it's never perfect and state law is changing uh frequently. Um every it seems like every session now we're chasing something uh that is affecting vend um so we adjust.

Okay. Um I had a question about the so the needs analysis for like employment lands and housing. Is it citywide and you come up with a number or is it broken down into kind of areas within the city? Because I'm thinking if you have an area that's already lots of commercial, you know, and then you expand and put more commercial there, that's a whole different effect than if you were to put like what we were talking about neighborhood commercial nodes or something like that. Is so is it I guess for the needs analysis, is it essentially just citywide or I think there might be two different answers. Yeah. two different answers.

I mean, well, because of residential versus employment. So, let's let's go with Yeah. I mean, I the housing requires you contextual there's the contextualized housing needs analysis. So, you're like looking at proximity

um to to different to different things, but I think it's it's not necessarily like it it could be attributes or characteristics, too. So, I think that's something that we're thinking about when it's like, okay, we need proximity to these things. So then through the urbanization, you're actually either creating new proximity by creating new types of uses that are going to be adjacent to this. So it's kind of retroactively looking at it. But um I mean we we do we will look at location when we're looking at housing specific of okay what types of where do where do we need to actually put what types of housing where a little bit early on. I think some of this will come out the arrangement of land uses will um let me back up. When you do transportation modeling, you see certain patterns of travel and those patterns of travel are in large part based on the arrangement of land uses and Bend is has a commercial strip and then it has some small commercial areas, right? But what you'll notice in travel behavior, and we have maps and models of this, is that at the periphery of the city, with some exceptions, you have much higher rates of automobile use, which makes sense because you have to drive to work and that might be across town and that might be your only option. In areas where we see a greater mix of uses, um, where you have more of these uses all in closer proximity to one another, people take shorter trips in their car or they use another mode, right? So that's one of the reasons why when we're looking at how we should arrange our land uses in the future as a community and we have to meet requirements for lowering our use of single occupancy vehicles, you have to look at these things together. And then you start saying, well, what could you do with land use in this particular part of town to affect travel behavior in such a way to help the city meet its legal requirements but also provide amenities uh as well? So, I I think it's

a it's complex, but yeah, you're looking at all these things together. And then I'd say you're layering on top of that your actual like vacancy vacant land and like the and then the market reality of something changing. So, there's that like that's great. We might need something somewhere, but if it's fully built out and they're CCNRs and it's it kind of, you know, we have to take that into account, too. So, there's that kind of complexity of like, well, that's great. We're not starting from scratch. So it and then

well and with with respect to economic development that is a citywide land need and I think once we've got those those kind of base assumptions developed in terms of what we have in our boundary and what we're going to need then through the work we do on arranging a uses that's we're going to get a good idea about what we can accommodate and it's going to be different from what we did in 2016 and just before that 2015 2016 because we do allow a lot of mixing of uses Now, for example, some housing can be allowed in commercial zones or mixed employment. Some jobs are allowed in in residential areas. Um, with CFAs, there's definitely pardon me, climate friendly areas. With climate friendly areas, there's a focus in the rules on um accommodating a certain proportion of housing. it makes mention of things that are employment related like supportive um office, retail, commercial uses. And so that's going to factor in too to what extent um we'll need to accommodate those needs in climate friendly areas to support the housing goals that we need to achieve.

Okay. So, the comprehensive plan um is the document that kind of balances the community vision with all the state requirements that we've been talking about tonight. Um the new plan will be adopted in phases throughout the project along with the packages and the final pro the final product though will not be um adopted until the end along with the transportation system plans in that picture. Yeah. to me. Can't put that any better.

And so the technical deliverables that we've been talking about, so like the AOA, the HCA, those will all be adopted as appendices to the policy document. And um this new comprehensive plan, it will be a major update this time. Um, the last one it it updated some chapters, but there are others that haven't been touched in decades. So, this will be a much more forward-looking document. It's going to have new chapters, and that's also going to have a format that's a lot more accessible for the community members. And then as as we're um updating the comp plan and and looking at our land use sufficiency measures and our um kind of our potential UGB expansion, we will also be looking at okay, we understand our housing need. We're starting to look at where all that housing is going. But um the state now, this is a new um requirement that came out of the Oregon housing needs analysis rules was um a housing production strategy. So, it's how are we actually going to produce that all this housing? And this really is a requirement by the state that we identify specific measurable actions, policies, and programs to support um the production of housing with specific timelines. So, it it really is trying to kind of these new state rules are trying to kind of take it one step further. So, it's not just make a plan and hope it all happens. Um this is really trying to get cities to um work more kind of interdep departmentally and even outside of the organiz outside of the city organization to make sure that we can actually identify the actions that the city is going to take in a timely manner to produce housing. saving me.

The best for last, the simplest. I think that

we kind of talked about this the basic integration of land use planning and transportation and um what the climate friendly equitable communities rules require. But if you go to the next slide, kind of a big a big change in um all of this is that the cities now that are under um CFAC requirements have to report um on our progress towards meeting certain um performance measure targets. And we worked over the last year and a half, I guess, with um the Department of Transportation, ODOT, and then um uh DLCD, Department of Land Conservation Development to um produce sort of our baseline targets in um let's see, six different sort of categories and there's 16 performance measures that they set targets for us that we have to show progress in how we are meeting them. um every time we do a transportation system plan update or we also have um the um MOO's metropolitan transportation plan update and those need to be synced now. So that's a kind of a change as well. Um and so the performance targets all relate to um a lot of it is related to those climate friendly areas and how much affordable housing we're getting in those climate friendly areas as opposed to citywide. um how many housing units um we're getting in those climate friendly areas as opposed to citywide um active transportation. So um the percent of collector or arterials in climate friendly areas, safe crossings, um accommodations for pedestrians. Yeah. Um and transit and there's performance measures related to transit, parking costs and management. We don't have a lot of paid parking in Bend, but what we will need to do is make sure that we

have paid parking in um climate friendly areas. So to the whole thing is to disincentivize people driving within those areas and make sure that we're building out little kind of nooks or nodes or neighborhoods that people can, you know, access their daily needs. But the big thing is that we'll have to report on these. And so actually our our major report that has all of our baselines and all these targets, I can send you a link to it. Um DLCD is still reviewing ours and um we don't anticipate any problems with it or anything because they helped us set these targets for us. So um but we'll need to monitor our progress. Um they have kind of fiveyear increments on where we need to show progress towards meeting these and it's kind of interesting. So I I can forward you that link. Um and I think anyone want to say anything on that?

I would just add all the things that we do all the land use efficiency measures everything kind of has to point us showing progress towards these targets. So and the targets are are more or less set right as soon as the major report. So it's everything we do has to those are kind of the rails. It used to be maybe a little more open-ended when we did our planning and now it's much more focused um towards towards achieving those targets. What's the penalty for strength in the target?

We've asked that. Well, if you um for example, um you may not get your transportation system plan acknowledged, which means that you wouldn't have a project list to build, which means that whatever kinds of transportation improvements or programs that you would like to create in your community after spending years going through this process, uh the LCD would have the right to say, "Sorry, you have not shown us how you how your transportation plan um has is showing progress towards meeting these targets. Our goal the goal the safest goal from a regulatory standpoint and to get this work done is is first of all on the land use side of it that this is accomplished through the work that precedes the transportation systems plan. The transportation systems plan in of itself isn't going back into your land use your arrangement of land uses. So that is why we want to keep visibility on these and use these targets and measures as as we're doing our analysis of all of these land use efficiency measures and urban growth boundary expansion. How are we doing relative to these targets and these metrics, right? So that we can finish that land use work and it paves the way for the transportation systems plan to naturally comply. It just will it will be an easier lift at that point. Um there may be a DLC jail. I don't know. I mean, do they withhold funding or permission to build the street that they told you to?

I think there actions they can take on you. I I don't think we need to go there. I don't want to um

let's I I I feel um before this the major report I was um concerned that we would not be able to do two things at once. One expand an urban growth boundary and two meet our uh vehicle mile uh our vehicle miles traveled target. I I feel more confident that we can do that if we pay close attention to how we arrange our land uses now. I don't feel like it's unrealistic. Um so I think we can hit and that's the major that to me is the major um obstacle in terms of doing those two things at the same time. So that is why when we analyze all of our land use um scenarios, one of those metrics we'll use is take it through the transportation model that the state uses to analyze and evaluate us to make sure that we're in we're in the ballpark and we meet the standard. And then I would add with the targets, they're they're ambitious um and they're but they're meant to be ambitious so that we'll make progress towards them and we just need to show that we're making kind of meaningful progress towards those targets. So it's not a like we're going to reach it year two or year three or four. It's just that over time we need to demonstrate and that's what the reporting is about. So showing that you're over time making meaningful progress. Um, for the housing, if you're not meeting your housing targets, the state does have corrective actions and that's a little bit more like you go, you do go into enforcement and they can force you to, they will just adopt your their housing code for you. They they say state or city, you are now going to just use our middle housing code. That's

they can essentially suspend hostile government takeover of your development code, suspend it, drop in the states. It's a pretty pretty consequence. Yeah. And they and they have an entire basically enforcement office now to to hold your feet to the fire. I mean,

we we kind of joke just don't be the slowest runner, you know, as long as we we are in a good position. I think we we've made some really we've made some amazing progress um on our housing front. Um I think we're kind of a model. So we we want to continue to show good faith and it's in the best interest of our community to to meet those targets too. of um and then

one of the biggest frustrations in my time on the planning commission has been that we've been using this 2016 housing needs analysis which actually was developed before and adopted in 2016 and we grew so much faster than anybody anticipated. But we didn't necessarily build all the things that we said in the housing needs analysis. How many single family? how many resident multif family attached blah blah blah whatever the criteria were and so I've been asking over and over and over so I'm really happy to hear that we're going to update it because it's just like we need to update this like we're just we're we've gone so much further in different directions than what we thought and so my question is will in this performance targets will there be some way that we don't have to wait another 20 years until we update our housing analysis because I I don't know how we're going to grow in the next 20 years, but it's probably not how we grew in the last 20 years. And what if we didn't grow at all? I mean, I don't I don't really know, but I feel like we we need the ability to get that data and adapt our development in a more timely manner than waiting for these enormous three or fouryear projects to get to the point where we have some data that we're going to use and we have the plans in place. where will these targets kind of help with that? uh the CPAC targets maybe are this is this is more kind of transportation related but there's

probably the housing but I mean it's integrated now more than it was before right

yeah and our our intent is these are we'll update I mean ideally you're not usually waiting through your entire planning horizon to update your plans you really should be updating them every kind of 5 8 10 years within that kind of 5 to 10 year refresh part of our approach to this has been to look at more of kind of what we're calling like a growth monitoring tool So as part of our uh request for proposals, we included an element so that we would be able to more real time integrate it with what's being produced through our permit data to actually track over time. And then the reality is that state rules are also they are like changing in real time every year. So there are curve balls um for us to to look at

with the just the progress on data that is available and and the processing and sorting and analyzing of that data that's coming. It just seemed like like I've been asking all this time for reports on what were what did we think in 2016 that we needed to build and then what what have we built and there weren't even there weren't even progress reports until just recently. there wasn't even that kind of data out there. So, you'll have better information, more real time information um that we will be able to use as we're moving forward. Yeah. I mean, that's our intent. We have a housing um dashboard now, but I Yes. And I think our hope is to kind of

marry it up with our projections a little bit more in a little bit more kind of

maybe not necessar could be real time, but it might be quarterly or at some other duration. We will have to update our housing capacity analysis every 80 years. Every eight years. We're on a rolling cycle because the state knows that advanced planning is important in creating housing supply. Um and and that's that's a perfect timeline. Um so this project, as Brian said, is meant to set up a situation where we anticipate that we will be doing this work over and over again. So therefore, we should set up our data and our systems and our modeling in order to prepare for that. And then in the in between years informed policy makers of how things are going keeping in mind that um you know you mentioned the prior work the the prior work was very effective in shifting the housing mix.

The housing mix has shifted in a really big way since the the 2016 UGB and our housing production is about what we really anticipated. And what we didn't anticipate though is that we are getting much we're getting much higher

higher density. We're getting higher densities and the land that we brought in is actually being used more efficiently than we anticipated in 2016. Um, but you're right, we also don't have a way right now. Our dashboards are not set up to be how are we doing according to our 20-year policy. They tend to be set up either around council goals or other kind of metrics that are of importance u to people. So that's our goal through this is to have have a way through this and then have efficient systems to be able to constantly report on where we're at relative to those 20-year targets. So on the the CEX performance targets, I feel very confident in the city's just directionally general ability to meet housing production targets just because we have all this infrastructure in place, all these like these departments and stuff that we've used to pretty good success in 2016. I'm a lot more worried about meeting transit

performance targets um given the whole lack of transit density I mean they go hand in hand and I'm just curious how what are what are the I feel like we have to be a little bit more um I don't know if creative is the right um in terms of how we're trying to approach those targets, but like what's kind of on the table? I guess the question

the transit targets, the performance measures, it's more related to the land use around the the transit because like many cities, we don't run our own transit system. So, we we have limited control. Um and we do fund CCT. Um and um I I think they're going to be trying to go out for their own taxing district at some point in the near future, which would be great. But um

but yeah, we do have sort of a um a tough situation with set up. Yeah. But the targets that we'll have to meet, it's share of households with within one half mile of a priority transit corridor. So the number of households, you know, along a transit line, that's a priority. I would say all of our routes right now are probably considered priority. Um because we just don't have a lot of like secondary routes. Um they don't run a lot of those. And share of low-income households within one half mile of a priority transit corridor. And then share of key destinations within one half mile of a priority transit corridor. So it's much more related to what we can control as like planning policy um long range plans. So rather than um you'll increase your transit ridership or something like that. Um so yeah um

so we're not going to be doing any direct action to increase transit.

I think we probably will be. I mean the last tsp um you know things have changed a little bit for CCT. Um I think we looked a lot at different technologies like leaning more on microransit um ride sharing. we had um you know um intelligent technology systems, things like that. And I think CCT with maybe getting some more funding um is going to be able to expand a little bit more. But we'll be looking at transit and working with CCT at the same time um when we do the TSP update because that's a huge part of um meeting our greenhouse gas reduction goals and just providing a way for people to get around where they don't have to have a car um because having a car is expensive.

Um yeah, hubs was the other one. Transit hubs. Oh, transit hubs, mobility hubs. We're we actually are going to be building two of those in the next this summer, I think. So those are sort of like setters where Yeah. Okay. bikes and everything kind of comes together. Yeah. I think we have two or three slides left. And is there any talk of Ben doing its own transit? You know, I don't I don't know in the future.

Probably still scarred from the blue bus if you've lived here 20 years. Um yeah, I'm not sure actually, but it's a good question. Um so communications and community engagement on a project of this scope come with some challenges but also a lot of opportunity which our team feels really excited about. Um some of the challenges include the length of the project. Um to put it in perspective, children born at the beginning of the project will nearly be in kindergarten by the end. So keeping momentum and people's interest is going to be important. Um, the project covers multiple topics that I think we all understand how they're connected, but that might not make sense to the average person. Um, and the work is technical and can feel somewhat inaccessible. Um, there's also requirements from the state around who you engage with. There's new deliverables that didn't exist 10 years ago. Um, so the engagement process will look different than it did the last time the city expanded the UGB. Uh right now we're working on a communications and community engagement strategy um that will address some of those challenges and to fit the needs of the project. We feel like the strategy needs to be really broad and include a wide variety of tactics to reach different audiences. Um so the strategy will kind of act as like a north star guiding light for engagement throughout the project and we'll also include goals and metrics that we can use to evaluate how we're doing along the way. Um, but we also do need to get detailed on short-term timelines about what exactly we're going to be doing. So, our solution to that is to draft what we're calling engagement action plans. And these are going to plan out our engagement events um and our communications for short-term timelines. Uh, I think particularly the phases that you saw on that timeline slide. So those will be really tailored to whatever the deliverable is that we're working on at that time because

they all require answers to different questions and different people to answer those questions. Um the approaches I have listed on this slide kind of describe our style for engagement. Um but overarchingly our goal is really to include as many people as possible in this project. Um this really is the opportunity to weigh in on the development of the future of Bend. uh a lot of the buildings that are going up today were the direct result of decisions that were made 10 years ago. So we really want people to be involved and share their opinions with us. Um so equity based engagement has kind of been referenced throughout this presentation, but the state has requirements that we center the voices of underserved populations. Um, so to us this really means we're going to proactively include groups of people who historically have been left out of planning processes but affected by them maybe more than other people. Um, engagement is going to be wide reaching like equity based engagement doesn't mean we're not going to reach everybody else. Um, it just means that our process is going to be built around getting everyone's opinion. We also want to focus on meeting people where they are. Um, so that's going to involve us as city staff getting out of uh city buildings and doing more events in the community. Um, getting out of this room a little bit. There will be a lot more events and opportunities to engage that won't be committee of committees meetings or city council meetings. We also want to be transparent with the public. Uh, so being very honest and clear about how their feedback is going to be used and what they have influence over. As you can tell, the rules um don't leave growth open-ended. So, we want to be very transparent with people that um we have to grow within these guidelines, but here's what you do have influence over. And one way we'll be doing that is uh education on Oregon's land use system. So, similar to the presentation you're receiving tonight, we feel that the public will better

engage if they understand the system better. Um and we'll also be looking to build relationships that last beyond the length of the project. And one of the ways we hope to build trust is by uh reporting back and staying in touch with the people and organizations that we work with throughout the process, not just disappearing at the end of the project. Um, and then throughout the project, we're going to have questions that need to be answered by every single person in Bend, as well as questions that need to be answered by more specific groups of people. So, our tactics are really going to try to balance um messaging that needs to reach everyone with more focused engagement. Any questions on engagement?

You mentioned that we were going to be doing the engagement tied to the different phases. Does that mean we're going to like do for package one an engagement push or is it going to be like per plan? Uh it'll be for package one, but because there's different deliverables in there, there might be different needs for all of those things. But I think the the action plan will be for that time period, which goes through the first half of 2027. Thank you. Will the public engagement include things that happen in the evenings and on the weekends when you can actually reach people that aren't available during the workday? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

And other tools beyond just like an inerson event, too. I mean, I think that's the vision is to have more a bigger diversity of tools than maybe we've had in the past like online engagement that people can kind of do at their own time or their own like leisure. seems like they do on show up at the roundabout art that they have at Lark Spur. They have, you know, they have something up there that people can interact with when they're dropping their kids off for swimming or whatever. Yeah. Um I was curious if you' be using like the uh the neighborhood districts surveying and having directly meeting meeting with them or surveying them. Neighborhood associations.

Yeah, I they're a really they're one of the only like geographically focused organized groups that we have in Bend. So, they're a great resource, especially if we're um maybe trying to reach like the northeast side of Ben specifically on something. So, we'll definitely be reaching out to them and meeting with them individually to learn how we can work with them best. That's you, Katie.

And there's a lot on this. This is the we we can talk all day about all the detailed laws and rules because you can read those, right? We can go out and so we spend a lot of time with that. The engagement in communication strategy is something we are figuring out together with our communications department and with the consultant that we've issued an intent to award to. So I have a meeting tomorrow to talk about engagement, community engagement. So I'm Elise and I are really excited about this because we finally get to sit down with the contractor that's going to be helping us provide services to be asking these detailed questions. Um but leave it to be said that the intent is clear within this group and the city and our communications department that we need to do a different a better and different job of connecting with the community. Right? So the assumption of uh committee meetings here at city hall at 2:00 in the afternoon and that's what you're running with a workshop here or some you know some boards that you set up here at city hall you know once a year is not going to fly uh with this project. So um I don't have all the details but I can assure you that um we have a lot of ideas and I'm really excited about pulling these details together as we get um as we get into the project. to just curiously be like at different community events. You'll like have a booth at the farmers market or or places where you can actually like have a little more uh conversation with people when they're on their leisure time.

Yep. We've done that. We did that for our climate friendly area study for example. You know there are popups, you know, they're popups. I think some of the things we're excited about are more the um and Elise please feel free to share too when meeting with communication there's a communication strategy which is to get people across different walks of life to be aware of the project and then when you're making them aware give them an opportunity to connect to the project in a meaningful way either that's in person or it could be some kind of online or electronic. So, we're trying to get the message out as well as a way to get the messages back as well. And so, that's what I'm I'm excited to dive into the details of that with our consulting group.

The climate friendly area engagement is I think I think it's the best engagement process you guys have done recently. So, I think that that was quite a job. Thank you. question. As the state is mandating cities do things, is there is how is this tying in with like Redmond and Sisters and their development or the county development? Is there coordination there? There is comm community. There is coordination. So, we meet with the county planning staff's about once a month. Is it more quarterly?

Quarterly. Um, we will be doing more direct coordination with Dashes County because they're at our doorstep or we're at their doorstep,

right? Not as much with Revan, not as much with sisters to be honest. Um it's um it's a strange uh it's an oddity of of Oregon land use planning where you tend to be looking at your urban growth boundary and that work typically doesn't reach into another community unless you're in metropolitan planning organization with them in which case you're then you have two communities like Springfield Eugene Springfield for example they're in the MO so they have to coordinate their transportation land use plans in order to meet the state requirements so um we do some of that coordination with Redmond in the MO because um in the metropolitan planning organization because Redmond is in the model that is part of the transportation model the city uses to do this work. So that coordination is around coordinating their future land uses and how that model is interacting between Redmond and Sisters. Um but

it has quite an impact. Yeah, it is. But it's not a situation where they Brian what do you think or you know city of Ben what do you think about our land uses here in Redmond and they were like well typically like well we're going to do our thing and um so it's a you know we're still we don't have a uh a regional uh planning entity that more or less forces that kind of detailed coordination um through each other's plans.

Redmond and Sisters are not subject to the Cact rules. Um, Sisters is too small and Redmond is not what it's a little confusing. They're in our travel model that Brian was talking about, but they're not within our MO boundary, our metropolitan planning organization boundary, which gets federal funds to do transportation planning. They're in our model, but not not the boundary. So, they're they don't have to do comply with the CFAC rules either. They do have to update their plans just like any other jurisdiction in Oregon, but they don't have to comply with the new rules like we do. And we only have one more slide left.

I just want to add one quick note and then about our coordination with the county and why it's important is because um a lot of our infrastructure is in the unincorporated portions of the county. Um our water treatment facility is at Ridge Creek. It's under the jurisdiction of the county. Our water reclamation plant is on McGrath Road, which is north and east of Bend. That's also under the county's jurisdiction for planning and zoning. And so we are in the process as a city of trying to updating our our facility planning and looking longterm about what kinds of uh reservoirs, wells, wastewater digesttors we're going to need and coordinating closely with them. So they understand that we're going to be approaching them over time for different forms of lane use approvals. Mhm.

And transportation is another one too because of that county city interface. The rural roads leading to urban roads, urban roads leading to rural roads and people using county facilities to get around urban facilities. So that's another way that we end up coordinating when we have transportation plans. They will get involved in our reviewing our work and we also get involved in reviewing some of their bigger uh legislative uh products as well. So last slide.

Last slide. So um the community engagement and the things the themes we learn there are very closely related to the government or the governance structure. Um we talked through quite a bit of this already this evening. Um so city council is the final decision makers. um planning commission will be making their recommendation to council on all three of the adoption packages and we will be forming a com the a committee of committees which is kind of a tongue twister and as we said Margot and Scott thank you very much you were on the um committee of committees for the um climate friendly areas and so this will be following a similar format which is that we'll have one to two representatives from our standing committees commissions and boards um based on their subject matter and then this is an opportunity for planning commissioners commissioners to volunteer for this. Um and these volunteers will then report back to their home committees. Um we'll also have agency advisory committee and those so those are our partners. um it's like the school district, it's the parks, it's CCT and then we'll also have the ad hoc technical advisory committees and these are on kind of a project by project basis and these will be really people stakeholders that are really diving into the details on the really technically dense deliverables.

Where are we at? Okay, next steps. And we we were you know I want to be conscious of time. Um we want to make plenty of space for you. Renee gave us she said take the time you need to. They'll have lots of questions but I'm feeling bad now. There are people in the audience that are here to testify. Um so it

so um these you know again u these are the adoption packages deliverables. I think we've gone into you know good level of detail. Happy to answer more questions. Um, I think it's fair to say we're really excited to start to work. Um, we issued an intent to award to Cascadia Partners and another group of a group of consultants including uh KDson Associates, DKS and Associates, um, Walker Macy, Echo Northwest, Cascadia, um, am I forgetting? I think that's most of them. there might be one or two other smaller firms that are brought on um to provide the services to do this work with us. Um so we issued a very detailed RFP, excruciatingly detailed RFP uh and they have uh they are excited to do the work as well. Uh we're negotiating the contract which takes uh it's a considerable amount of detail to put together. Um we're hoping to get to the council in March um to get the contract approved and begin um begin the work. And so with that, here to answer questions.

Great job. Yeah, thanks. Very helpful. Thank you.

And these slides will be linked to this meeting agenda minutes or meeting minutes when those are posted online. So, anyone can go back and look at the slides. And then in terms of just staying up to speed on the work effort, should they go to the main growth management web page or navigate there and follow along the progress? Yes. Yeah. I think things are going to kick in once we get the contract approval. We'll we're going to be preparing for a council workshop that'll be in the summer or and then after that to kick in the committee of committees work. So, we'll be um and also we'll be briefing you at the u boards and committees summit that's coming up. So, we'll be talking about the growth plan there as well. But, I think assume we're going to get started. We need to start moving this thing. Um so it's going to take some time but we'll lead with the uh the council workshop and then after that it's going to be committee committees work which we anticipate like once every quarter. So a committee of committees meeting every quarter a council work session every quarter. So and we just keep rolling until we get into adoption where then it becomes more formalized. So um it's going to be consistent. Hope it's achievable um and it'll go pretty fast. I think it'll be very fascinating.

I'm excited. I hope you're excited too. There you go. Work of our lives. Before we go, do want to warn everybody that the city has updated its website. So for finding stuff, but everything on our growth management site is still there. The comp plan is still there. All dependencies are still there. That's beautiful. It looks better now. It looks much better. Much easier for you to navigate. Congratulations on transitioning without any major fires. day one. I know that's why it's congratulations.

The fact that I was able to get to the agenda before and after the transition um was beautiful. Like wait, what is this? I I was curious. that I I I think I heard that that the state is giving us like updated targets every year now for like housing and such. So, is that data accessible to us and where would we find? I can send you a link to it. It's all on the state um like their own uh page through DSP. So, I can send Okay.

links on they they have a dashboard essentially for all communities. So you can see all communities and then the estimate there they put out every like beginning of the year. So, and we'll have to because that estimate is changing. They're the state I think is working on some smoothing I think is what they were referring to is how they're going to actually because this is a long duration, right? This project so that number can change like year to year, but it we'll we'll they'll smooth it so that there's kind of a a target that we can work towards. And it's not like it's changing dramatically, right? I mean, it's changing on a in a direction, trending in a direction. So, not like, oh, now you only need 2,000 units. But is their data the quality of their data pretty good?

I mean, I think so. It's not necessarily as like um maybe as uh contextualized as we would like locally necessarily, but on a I mean, they're using PSU forecasts to establish those and they're so in terms of quality of data, I think PSU's forecasts are pretty good. Uh they've been doing this consistently now for about 10 years in terms of forecasting. uh the employment department does their employment forecast every couple of years and I forget how long they've been doing that. So I think there's a good nucleus of people at the state to make sure that we get good data for this work. Okay. And then as you're collecting the data that'll be on the this growth management site accessible

for which data well it sounds like you're doing a lot of surveys and studies and research and so as that data is coming in is that it a place where we can access it publicly? Yes, it's I mean it's all public, but most of it's going to be coming probably in the form of like a draft the draft report or when we're coming with larger um like larger questions to the community or council of you know here's kind of where we're at. But I mean we're getting that data from our building permits we're getting in our historical density analysis but it's it'll most likely be probably kind of in a draft um in our draft documents like draft deliverables as we're getting through the deliverables. It's like, okay, here's what we found so far. And

the website like the dashboard is being updated in real time. Correct. Right. Not yet. No, no. And we are planning on doing um I think some engagement reporting. So that's maybe a little bit that's a little bit different than like the data that we're relying on because a lot of that it's a lot of it's census data too. So it's it's already publicly available, right, for helping and for those types of things. that um we are planning on doing and correct me if I'm wrong but at least through the RFP was doing um kind of updates on our our um engagement efforts and so that will be available. We'll be pushing that out probably quarterly or I don't know what the duration that we've set on yet, but of like here's what we've here's what we've done, here's summaries of what we've heard so far and rolling that up. That'll help

the website our website will be the major repository for all information related to this project. Um, so we need to get the new website updated and we have uh Jenny who's been working with our communications person like in anticipation of this project, how are we going to make that website really easy to use to give people great access to what we have um and what we're creating through the project. So you can just you can follow the bouncing ball through the website and we'll probably have other activities that you can connect to there like oh there's a survey, go take this, there's a story map, go do this. Here's a press release, go check this out. here's this other thing. So, we're going to try to build all that into the website to give people a consistent place to go. So, they'll be awesome.

Yes, that is that's that's the best thing that we have at this point. Um, but some of these more external data sources, we're happy to connect you to other sources of information you might be curious about like the owner estimates or PSU or anything like that. NO website has a lot of really good granular data. I don't know the sources of all of their data, but when you're talking, especially when you're talking about things like equity where you can really go into specific areas of the community and get information about the economic and other aspects of different uh communities, which is really helpful when you're trying to look at Yeah. Yeah.

They use the American Community Survey. Um the latest is like 2023 I think the last five years or whatever. Yeah. But that is a good web it's really good data. Yeah.

There'll be the qualitative data or the quantitative data that's like mostly census based. So it's American community surveys and then the the larger census duration. Then we use our building permits. So then that's all kind of open source or public not open source but public. Um, and so I maybe a good example is you can see like our draft historical density or our not historical density analysis but our draft um housing capacity analysis that's on our website that shows you kind of exactly like the type of data that we were collecting and those stats from the census.

So that includes things like demographics. So like the population and the kind of housing needs that we're going to have in the future might not be the same as what size based on on race even and we we it gets into a pretty gran like granular and then we'll also be doing qualitative data and then that's probably what you're going to see be more that's like if there's gaps in our data we that's where we're doing a little bit more like targeted engagement um to fill those gaps for specific populations for example and then that would be reflected in in the draft reports. Okay,

most of the data will be part of a deliverable, right? I think is where I'm trying to go. Rather than the city uses dashboards, here's a dashboard. Well, we're doing deliverables that all get adopted. So, we tend to create something in a draft form, present it, refine it, present it, refine it, build, build, build bill, build build, build build until you have a document which has both qualitative and quantitative data sources included in it. Um, and if there's a link out to the master data set, we can provide that. But typically, it's a deliverable based um, kind of format, either a PowerPoint presentation or a memo or something like that. So, there's going to be plenty of um, there be plenty to dig into. Um, there will be no lack of reading and no lack of analysis, I'm sure.

Any more questions? I mean, thank you for all the work that you've already done into this. Like, I know that like just doing like the climate from the areas analysis stuff like that was part of what's gotten us to this point. Uh, so I'm I'm excited to see where we're going. But I think that getting here is also a major accomplishment. So, and thank you for the commitment of what's to come because it's a huge lift that you're starting off on. No, this is a we thing. So we

I think it was actually just such an amazing concept to be looking at the transportation and the housing and the commercial development and the like all of it together instead of peak meal and if it's I it's awesome. Yeah. The end result will be so much better. We hope so. So so I like kind of the forefront of doing it this way and so I think there's a lot of eyes on us.

Yeah. Yeah, we've had I have had a number of conversations with people who work either with the state agency at state agency saying things like do you think that this could change how DLCD for example issues grants to maybe do it this way instead of just doing most communities will just do we'll do our contextualized housing that's that's the project right or a housing capacity analysis that's the project or EOA that's the project you know so it's kind of a one-off thing um this whole team has from the beginning just said you Well, that doesn't seem like the way to do it. So, I really appreciate the team and how bold they have been been. Bold and patient, I think. So, what it's our job to make it work. So, we'll do our best.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Um, how's everyone doing? Do we want to do a quick five minute break before the next one? Okay. before you leave. Whenever I saw you land that

I think we're good. Oh, all right. We will move on to agenda item number three, a legislative public hearing. I will go ahead and open the hearing. This is for PL text 20250658 legislative text amendments to the vend development code relating to tree preservation requirements and BDC3.2.200 200 tree preservation. Colleen, it's all you.

Good evening. Um, commissioners, tonight um, we are going to go over the tree preservation code amendments and I have with me uh, Ian Gray, our urban forester to help answer um, specific questions to the tree preservation code. Uh, I wanted to just go over kind of where we started and um what the the next couple meetings look like for the planning commission and city council when it comes to reviewing the tree preservation code update. So, as we all know, back in July of 2024, the council made the adoption and all the amendments um starting the new tree code update. And at the same time, they asked um staff to come back to present an annual review based on data that we collected over the year. And that data was uh well the code went into effect on August 16th and we started collecting data from August 16th to September 30th of this year. And we presented that data to city council during their annual annual review on October 22nd. uh that data looked at how the options are being used like the 25% DBH or 20% priority trees being used or our developers using the 5% um or the discretionary pass. So, we went over the data with city council and again with planning commission during a work session on January uh 12th and then tonight is our public hearing where the planning commission will make a recommendation to the city council. And then the city council is scheduled to hold their public hearing on March 4th to review the planning commission's recommendation. And then also on March 11th, the city council is going to be holding a work session separate from this code update just to talk about juniper trees. Just a friendly reminder um what the tree code does apply to when we do get applications. It applies to our land division applications. So like partitions and subdivisions. It applies to site plan review applications. So

like an apartment building or new commercial or industrial uses. And it also applies to single dwelling units or middle housing when it's on properties that are over an acre in size. Uh there are two um areas where the tree code has some flexibility. So land divisions or site plan reviews on those smaller properties if they're under an acre, they can choose to preserve trees and meet the clearing objective standards or they can even clear cut but they have to mitigate. So that's one um area where land division site plan reviews had a little alternative review process. And then any housing um regardless of what type. So could be mixed use um with housing. It can be apartment complex or single family middle housing. If it's on one acre or smaller, they're completely exempt from applying uh the tree preservation code. So that's the one acre or smaller for housing. They they just don't have to uh comply with the code. So the proposed amendments um are, as I said, they uh the code went into effect on August 16th. The city council did hold the work session, reviewed the data. That data, as you saw in that time frame on the first slide, is it's a year long, but it's very limited data based on the number of applications we had. So, the direction from council was to keep the code up date fairly narrow in scope and let give us uh staff another year to continue to collect data to see how the code of data is working. So, that's why when you see your package of amendments, it's fairly small to what we normally have um in any package. So, I'll highlight the amendments tonight and then we can answer any questions that you have. Uh, first of all, the proposed amendments include some additional exemptions where applications do not have to comply with the tree code. So, again, if you have dwelling units 1 acre or smaller, you don't have to comply with the tree code. For consistency, we are adding that residential land divisions or middle housing land divisions where the original lot is 1 acre or smaller. also

doesn't have to comply with the tree code because if you have housing and you're one acre or smaller, you don't have to comply. So, this residential land division is creating lots for housing and they do not have to comply. So, it's being proposed for consistency. And then land division applications where the resulting lots or parcels are all larger than an acre, they will always have to comply um in the future. So instead of looking at the tree preservation standards at the land division stage, we will look at their tree preservation standards in the future when they come in because they're all going to be lots one acre or larger. So they might be building a commercial building in the future or um an apartment complex. We will get an opportunity at that time to look at their preservation standards. And then just for clarity, we even had it come up today. What do you do with the a site with no trees? So we're just making it clear that they do not have to go through the exercise of um tree preservation. And then um on-site tree replacement. As you may recall, the commission um recommended and the city council approved some deferral of landscaping improvements due to weather or um the grounds frozen or maybe the treerees not available during that time. And the commission even bumped up that deferral from staff's recommendation from 6 months to 8 months which was adopted. And so we're just carrying this through again for consistency. So if an applicant is required to mitigate and they choose to replace trees on site, they will be able to defer the installation of those trees for up to 8 months due to the um reasons um up on the screen. And then on-site tree replacement. Um, as you heard from our um, planners before uh, a lot about the climate friendly and equitable communities rules. One of the requirements that planning commission and city council have already adopted and implemented is if and required by CFAC is that if you have a parking lot that's over a half acre, so a new parking lot that's over a half acre of surface parking, they have

to either provide a tree canopy that covers at least 40% of that new parking area, which is a lot of trees. um installing solar panels on the property plus planting trees along the parking lot driveways and drive aisles or um what we just added into the code which is consistent with statutes is a developer can choose one or the other. They can choose maybe do 40% of some of the parking lot area and then they also want to do some solar panels. So they have that option. What we're finding is that it's um overlapping tree replacement requirements. So they're already putting in 40% canopy and then a developer is required to maybe replace a couple trees on site. So we're saying that those trees would count towards that 40% tree canopy. Is that I mean it's a little bit small on the screen but you can see this is one application where they had the 40% tree canopy and I mean it's just the parking lot is covered in trees. And then the root protection zone. This is the clear and objective standard that's currently in the code. Um, no changes to this. And just as a reminder, the clear and objective standard for the root protection zone is only required for trees that are identified for preservation. And what they have to do is put up the protective fencing around that uh defined root protection zone, which is um let's see, a circle area measured from the outside of the trunk of a tree equal to 1 ft in radius for every inch of that tree. So if a tree measured at 4 and 1/2 um ft above the ground is 12 in then that diameter is going to be 12 ft and that has to be protected. In addition to um protecting that area there is an allowance for encroachments up to 25% into that root protection zone but it cannot be in that inner circle. So the first half of that protective area you can't have any encroachments and so this allows 25%. What we've seen over the past year is that there are opportunities to save larger trees. However, it encroaches maybe a little bit more than the 25% or

not in that perfect shape that you just saw online or up on the screen and to incentivize developers to preserve those trees and then they because they would be able to count it towards their um their either 20% priority trees or their 25% DBH um that they can apply for what we call a discretionary track. It's a type two process where they would um request that um a specific tree on site be able to use an alternative root protection zone. And because we have um Ian on staff now, we are able to add this discretionary track because he has the expertise to review these uh proposals and make a recommendation. And we do recommend in the code that the maximum encroachance 25% if they want to go beyond that 25% area. Uh they do have to provide some specified mitigation me measures and um the project has to be under the supervision of a ISA certified arborist that's assigned to that project to make sure that what they say they're going to do is actually happening out in the field. So again the next steps um the package is narrow in scope. The next step steps is city council public hearing on March 4th at 6 o'clock. The second reading of all goes as planned would be March 18th. And then these um this package of code amendments would go into effect on April 17th

question. Are you done? Yeah. Okay. Questions? I have a question for Ian. Um, so obviously keeping a tree is better than not having a tree. Sorry, but having the discretionary track as an option is clearly better than not being able to keep the trade all. Uh the thing that I'm curious about is if the discretionary track do do you think that it is more or less likely for the tree to survive the uh transition with the

that's a fair question and that's why we have the requirement up there that they might need to attach an ISA certified argus to the project so it can be monitored. That's a fairly standard practice where you've got big mature trees that you really want to preserve because it's those big trees that provide us all those ecosystem benefits. So, there's a lot of value to retaining those on the on the parcels. The reason why we say case by case is all trees are different. You're going to have to look at the root architecture, the buttress of the base of the tree, how it comes out. You can't allow intrusions into the critical root zone if you're cutting more than three or four three to four inch diameter structural roots

because it just it runs the risk of destabilizing the tree and making it prone to wind throw. Um also the 25% is kind of an industry standard. Um certain trees will put up with it. certain species particularly if they're younger uh and smaller uh some species just won't tolerate any root impacts whatsoever but there there's clear standards in the ISA international society of arboric culture um which speaks to this is like a list of trees that and the impacts they can withstand um fairly typical industry stuff but um so yeah you're going to have to you're going to have to pick the trees that are going to be suitable for it and police those the resulting root protection zones. That's why we assign have them assign an arborist to supervise it. There's never any guarantees with these things unfortunately. Um one of the big problems with trees preserved on development sites is that the contractors might do a perfectly fine job of putting up fencing around the trees, but then they just forget about them. So sometimes we see uh supplemental irrigation prescribed to help keep those trees irrigated because what happens in mass grading is the top soil is stripped, the hydraology of the site changes. It's just a tree standing on a pedestal of dirt in the middle of nowhere. So it's a really challenging environment. So to your point um survival is never never guaranteed but there are some best practices which we can uh impose that will give the tree a fighting chance. So,

and going through the disc discretion rate track and having like a certified arborist looking at it even with the with the 25% reduction like is it sixes on tree survival? Is like your expertise going to like increase the chance of the tree surviving or is it Well, I hope so. Well, I mean with the 25,

but yeah, we do we do have to be honest. If it's if we're looking at a inappropriate species and too much root loss or is this going to be too impactful, then we'll just have to say no, it can't do it. Um, and that's a judgment call. Yes. Um, whether or not that'll be another case for the data next year, next go around. Um, how many times did people resort to this? How successful was it? I mean, we're hoping that it will introduce a level of flexibility that will incentivize and encourage the retention of more trees and allow the developers to avoid uh you know any punitive costs for having to you know replace and mitigate for trees elsewhere on the in the final landscaping on the development parcel. So, thank you. Absolutely. I had a question about and I'm sorry I didn't bring this up during the work session but in the tree inventory it says um submit a tree inventory table with following information one of them is tree type and it used to be tree type or common name genus species and now it's just uh coniferous or deciduous is is the intent then you just have a tree inventory of

of that of rightifous or miduous and uh how come that came out of the TRE process. So I could not answer that directly. Um I don't because we don't have any like species distinction in terms of the way we prioritize uh the trees that are kept on development parcels. There's no need for species specific uh categorization in those tree inventory charts. Was there a push back from

um developers? I mean I just think it's you know have the choice of what to provide. So, a lot of times we were just getting the the what we're providing here, the caniferous and the deciduous. Um, we didn't always get the specific species. And then when they did fill it out, I mean, there's really no reason to even ask them to fill it out because we're not tracking like, oh, is it a your favorite maple or a you know, a pondo or a spruce. We weren't tracking the trees or the types because based on what Ian's saying, that's not part of the requirements.

Pauline to help in answer to Scott's question because I attended a number of the meetings. Um there was a lot of debate as I recall within TRUAC whether there should be um uh different uh measurements this that and the other thing for deciduous versus conifer correct and it was decided no let's just treat a tree is a tree right yeah no this is just about data collection not about like having to differentiate legally

I was just kind of wondering I I mean the if if you could have somewhere where it shows certain types of trees or whatever, it'd be I think it'd be neat. But some of these inventories are like thousands of trees.

All the trees in the city right away, right? That'll be my first big project for the city. Would that be a species? Oh, absolutely no. It's going to be um wait absolutely no

absolutely yes absolutely yes the uh it will appear as a data layer just like anything else in the city data platforms whether it's fire hydrants lights curb cuts whatever um but you'll click on an icon in the GIS system that shows a city tree in the right of way it'll populate a whole list of attributes species genus species diameter condition maintenance whether they're, you know, what kind of planting spot it's in, the whole nine yards. So, I like that.

And I wanted to let you know too, unfortunately, um, Melissa Steel, the deputy fire marshall, she was supposed to be here tonight to help answer any questions you had on that, but she is sick, so she's not able to make it. I have a question about if someone does want to have an arborist come look at their tree, is that cost on them or like are you going out?

Um, kind of depends where it appears in the process. Um, there's a possibility like in a preop situation where they're exploring uh options. We could go and do a an early inspection um and give them some advice. It's like they're and that would actually be preferable, you know, like a sketch, a sketch development plan, something like this. This is the idea of what we're working on. What do you think? Can we retain these? I would certainly love to see that an early discussion so we can encourage them to retain clusters of trees or specimen trees um and and say, "Yeah, that tree would put up with building a little bit closer to it. So, let's try and work that into your plan." So, The one concern I had about even you I appreciate using the ISA certified arborists was just that people were coming in with the report from their arborist saying all the trees were diseased and need to be taken down and and they were an arborist and if that's what we require then that's what we get. And so part of our hope was having you on staff so that we had a second opinion on some of that?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, when we get the tree calculation tables come in and they've done their inventory, I will go out onto the parcel, walk around because they'll have dead trees listed. Well, you'll see some stuff that's clearly not dead or they'll say it's heavily infested disease and it's got a little bit of sequoia pitch moth, but it's actually a fairly healthy tree. So yeah, that's why I'm here and we are looking at those lists when they come in. When they've done the tree calculations and the inventories, I'm going to go out and field proof uh some of their assessments and sample them. So

fantastic. What about is the time estimate for like assessing a tree? If they're being really nitpicky about it and you guys need to go out there and see like how much is that folding up the permitting process or the building

that we don't know yet and it's a good question. Um, obviously we don't want this discretionary option to be super cumbersome in terms of time consuming. Um, but that's kind of a TBD, but we'll just have to see how that plays out. That's why we're just doing a minor tweak. See if it introduces some flexibility and see what implications that has for permit processing. But we're we're on the clock, so there's a limit to what we, you know, can take time on. Any more questions for me?

Okay, we will go ahead and move into public testimony. Um, I've got one attendee online and one in um, go ahead and have this on. Um, we'll go ahead and start with Kirk who is here in person. Uh, thank you, Chair Clinton and commissioners for allowing me to speak tonight. Uh, my name is Kirk Scheler. president of Brooks Resources Corporation, which is the managing, excuse me, the managing member of Taylor Brooks. And um we sent a letter in last week, I think dated on the 16th. I hopefully you saw that. Um that was asking you to consider an additional amendment to the tree preservation code that you're looking at tonight. Specifically to amend the definition of a regulated tree to exclude juniper trees located on industrially zoned land. And I'll talk a little bit about that. My letter goes into more detail about why we feel that's important. But tonight I'll spend a little time on the motivation of the economic development or economic uh prosperity that you actually heard a little bit tonight in earlier presentation on uh city goals. Um so uh an ironic side note um the current city of Bend approved street tree list excludes juniper trees. So, I couldn't save a juniper tree. If I if I had one in a planter strip, I'd have to remove it. My understanding of the of the code. Um, I will also say this. Um, we are in favor of the proposed amendments that staff has brought to you. We believe those are positive improvements uh to the code and we applaud their efforts in researching and reaching out to to develop those and the continued effort to do that. Um there's been a lot of discussion about economic prosperity both locally and at the statewide level. Um we proposed this change in the spirit of the council's

goal pertaining to economic prosperity right on the wall there. Um the council established metrics around business formation, job creation and GDP growth. These are all significant things. This didn't exist in the prior administration. So you can see that growth. On in addition to that, Governor Cotch recently established a statewide prosperity council naming Oregon's central Oregon's Tim Canop as chair um to develop administrative or legislative policy change recommendations to improve the state's lackluster economic performance compared to other states. So this is an issue that's rising politically across the state. How do we as a community uh foster economic prosperity? Uh, in January 2024, Taylor Brooks responded to a request for proposals from the city of Bend to purchase approximately 95 acres of undeveloped industrial land in Juniper Ridge. That was a full 6 months or more uh before the tree preservation code was adopted in August of 2024. Our proposals were based on the terms the conditions that existed at the time. Um, since then, Taylor Brooks has closed on that property and developed the first 20 acres into five industrially zoned lots. Um, and the letter we submitted on the 16th, which was the letter I mentioned, goes into the details of the obstacles that the tree preservation code presents for industrial users. So, for the sake of time, I'll I'll not revisit all of those, but I will share with you, we've we've had prospects come look at these lots. We're selling our lots. We hope to save some of the lots for our own development over time. We build industrial buildings. In fact, we're building industrial buildings in Juniper Ridge right now. So, we do hope to build for our own account, but we're selling. The prospects we're seeing have concerns. They don't these are users. These are manufacturers. These are companies. They're not developers. They're not planners. They're not these are just they know their business, right? So, they have concerns when they

look at the site and they don't know what the costs are going to be to um for the tree preservation and the tree mitigation and there's a lot if you've never been out there. There's a lot of topography to deal with which compounds the tree problem because large industrial users typically need and this is well documented in the letters I sent uh relatively flat and large sites. So um for storage of materials, circulation, manufacturing, things like this require large swaths of land at a relatively flat grade. Um we support the existing sections in the bin development code that require the planting of trees and you heard a little bit about those tonight with those are street trees, drive ale trees and even the new seedbeck trees. It's not that we don't believe in that. We think it's real important that trees get planted. It's just that there's a cost to removing all these trees that we've that you you know about and that's what adds to the cost of this industrial land. Um the preservation of juniper trees in industrial zones where site development requirements necessitate mass clearing and grading is really just not feasible. There won't be a lot of preservation that goes on. We've already talked to some of these folks. In fact, we cleared one lot in the first phase.

You're over your three minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't hear the threeminut limitation. All right. Well, in closing, I just wanted to leave you that uh we think this change is helpful for the economic prosperity goals of the city. So, thank you. Thank you. Um we do have one attendee online and that if you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand. And then in the meantime, Robera, if you'd like.

Uh thanks for giving me the opportunity. Um uh yeah, I'm Robera Silverman. I'm Lenny's chair for Southern Crossing Neighborhood and I'm also the chair of Save Ben Greenspace and um really encouraged by the city, you know, adopting the tree code and want to say that we support the amendment related to the discretionary path. Um I think it will help save more trees. um actually have been in conversation with a developer who has an application before the city right now and who says I I want to save more trees. I think I can save more trees but and the discretionary path would give them a way to do that. So I think that's a good thing. I just say about the juniper trees. Um, one thing is that there's a lot of science uh out there research into um the health benefits of urban trees and urban tree canopy and an international goal has been set. It's called 330 300. It means from your home or your business, you should be able to see three large trees. There should be 30% tree canopy in your neighborhood and there you should be within 300 meters. That's about a quarter mile of a park or green space. Right now, Ben's tree canopy is about 20% or maybe 17% looking at different things. So, juniper trees are part of our tree canopy. So, they need to be counted. So, just going to do a little rahrh for the juniper. I know that wasn't part of part part of this discussion and is going to be looked at later on. So, thank you.

And does not look like our online attendees raising their hands. So, I will go ahead and close the public testimony staff comments. You have any? Um, can you possibly just because there was a couple comments on the junipers, do you know what's going to be talked about at the city council juniper meeting? Yeah, being just an idea just maybe that'll kind of help address some of their question.

It was, as you may recall, it did come up in TREAC, so it's being revisited. So there's been letters from Koba um from Hayden Holmes and now from Brooks uh regarding the issue and we felt it appropriate and council did as well that it be addressed in its own work session hence the uh event on the 11th of March. Okay. Where we'll go into it in much more detail. Okay. Great. So does that mean that if there was at the end of that there could be another amendment to the tree code with regard to Juniburn that would be up to city council but potentially yes. And what about the tree code on industrial land?

So we already have the discretionary path for industrial land that they can go um lower than 5% um in if they need to. uh if they go less than 5% they do have to mitigate and reasons for them being able to propose to go less than 5% is just doing to the site and the site layout the user you know if they have loading docks and the need bigger parking lots or bigger turning radiuses or as Kurt mentioned storage areas for goods they can apply for that discretionary track so that is an option today they do have to mitigate is the tree the climate friendly parking lot tree thing does that apply in industrial sites as well. So, anything over one half acre of new parking, it applies,

but it could be like the design that they showed us in something else that had a parking lot, but the trees were kind of all around the edges, right? If they are doing the 40%, it's 40% of the entire paved area. So, they cannot do a perimeter. Okay. Um there's CEC has very specific guidelines and we've included those in the bend development code. We also code for every so many spots and have to have a tree. There is a discretionary um option for severe topography as well. So that's I don't think anybody's taken that. Has there been any applications that took that? One. One. Yeah. And did they get it? Yes.

Yeah. So there are options there. I just have yet to see the math or get them to show us what they're exactly talking about. Any more questions? Okay. Um I that's it. But maybe that's the public testimony will now be posted before we can move into deliberation. Anybody have

anything insightful that they want to chat about? Uh, I I appreciate the adding flexibility. I think that's really important. We still don't have enough data to really say, but I'm glad that we're actually looking at it and using data to kind of tweak and amend to make it, you know, you're trying to trying to balance a lot of things uh with this. Uh, I I appreciated that there is in there. I thought it was an exemption and so I was like, what? but that no trees can be removed prior to the final land use decision. So that was uh when we're talking about all this stuff, you kind of talk about the things that changed but not about some of the things that are in there that says we really are trying to protect trees and get a chance to look at them before um we get a clearcut lot and a raised flat compacted uh pad which I know from a development standpoint is like the best thing ever, right? Like that's the best. But from an ecosystem, it's got to be about the worst that water doesn't percolate and everything is gone. And so anyway, I appreciate that we are trying to do our best to protect trees and allow our community to grow.

I'm looking forward to a year from now here. Yeah, I'm really happy to have you on board. Sweet. Thank you. I I feel like it's appropriate now to not make any because the tree code's so new and there is limited information. I feel like it's appropriate to just the little clue code cleanup and the little discret and the additional discretionary tracks feels like an appropriate adjust level of adjustment to me. Great.

Basically agree with everything that everyone has already said. Um, I do wonder if there I know I remember when we were doing the the the tree code recommendation that this Juniper in industrial zoned land issue came up. Um, I think that it was at around the same time at night. So, I don't really remember where we were at. There's a lot of questions in terms of were species discussed. Apparently, they were vigorously discussed, but right,

do we have is there is there anyone that's interested in the industrial zone juniper exemption or do we want to like leave that to council? I mean, my feeling is they're going to have a in-depth discussion about Juniper. That's the appropriate time really to look at that. Um, I mean, the reason it's called Juniper Ridge should probably be a little indicator about what's out there, right? I mean,

so I feel like the right thing to do would be to get more information, you know, a more detailed discussion. If it needs to be added, uh, we come back. So, this also like a very significant change, which you know, the name of the the game for the minor updates is to leave it the way it is, see how it goes, and then make a change later. Yeah, I I kind of agree. I mean, I I I think that there I mean, I was one of the people that thought juniper should be treated differently. um or at least like some species shuffling around. But I I almost don't like the just the peace meal of this one little thing

because I I feel like there still needs to be conversations about species and also uh uses and zones and and things. I'm not a fan of the tree code at all. That's why I don't I didn't vote for it. Um and I love trees. I just don't think this is the path for it. I the amendments here or the uh um the update. I'm fine with that. I think it improves on it, but um but yeah, I kind of I kind of don't like maybe peacemealing some changes. I think it needs to get revisited.

Like this is just it's inconvenient, which is why they want to remove it. But if that specific corner is really inconvenient, that kind of like I can think of multiple areas where it's like there should be some sort of exceptions. And I think I brought this up uh going through the process of Northstar Elementary. It's a tight

10acre. Um, it would have cost so much money if the tree code was in place because you have parking lot, a school is a certain footprint. Playfields, it's like there was really wasn't any other choice. Um, but I also think that there's sometimes urban areas, they should be urban and uh areas where there's parks and and green spaces. And I I kind of feel like this treats everything all equally in the same. I I don't think I think that it there could be a more robust uh landscape code which uh like maybe per land zone.

No, I I mean I I don't know. I I thought this was a very I think it was compromised to the point where it was like, okay, cool. We all agree that we all kind of just want to get this through. Um but anyways, that's my I'm digressing. I'm planning on voting for the updates. Anybody have anything else?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm supportive of up the of the updates. Um I'm also support of deferring and letting council deal with it when there's, you know, a lot more information for that body to digest and debate than what we have tonight. Um I also just reminder that one of the things that was adopted in the and it might have been our suggestion uh there's an annual review of the tree code update. So there's plenty of opportunity for refinement going forward. Anybody else? Or would someone like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion. I move to recommend the city council approve the legislative amendments to the Ben Development Code relating to the tree preservation requirements in BDC 3.2.200 tree preservation I'll second that. All those in favor I okay unanimous pass. Thank you. Thank you. Um, next we need to nominate any commissioner and that's for March 4th. Okay. Anybody really itching to go to city council?

I guess I could go if since I have taken a turn. That would be great. No, happy to. Thank you. Thanks, Bobby. You're welcome. Okay, next we'll move on to reports from planning commissioners. Erin, we're going to start with you again.

Nothing to report this week. Uh I was not able to attend the January 14th city council meeting, but I did watch the uh recording of the council meeting and and I see that the council has given us a big job um with regard to uh code revisions uh uh in the commercial um development and residential areas. So, I'm excited to to um be working on that because I think that's something that we really wanted to work on and the council wants us to work on. So, I think that's probably going to be coming. You guys are probably going to be telling us what our work plan is going to be on that. They mentioned something called formbbased zoning and I'm not sure I exactly know what that is. Um but I

it's a big upheaval of the development code. Okay. Turning it regulating in a different way. Okay. All right. But also, we talked about uh the master plan process and uh you know, we've had a lot of frustration about that. So, anyway, that was uh that was my big thing was I was um they asked the planning commission to identify the barriers. So, that'll be I don't know. Well, I guess we'll hear about it, but I'm excited about that. I feel like we really saw that our whole work get turned upside down really quickly and unexpectedly.

Um well, I'm going to be meeting with the Southern Crossing Neighborhood Association on Thursday, which is very exciting. Um, one of the things that I I if we're going to all be like taking ownership of like specific neighborhood associations, I'd really like this to be like formalized. And I was wondering if there was a way for staff to get uh feedback from council like get their green light on that. There's a process for us to to make this more official and maybe more consistent. Yeah,

I think that's a great question. I was not at the council meeting last week or this item came up. So, I'm not sure if someone has more context or what council discussed. Yeah. I want to make sure we're my topic switched. I'm sorry. Um I was talking about the neighborhood neighborhood district. Yep. Right. Yep.

Yeah. I want to Yes. Thank you. And I want to make sure I'm sort of tracking. There's two at least as I have understood it, there's two things that's come up. One one has been uh planning commission deciding that you were going to designate sort of what what I would call informal liaison relationships with neighborhood districts and I see that as um informal information gathering listening there's no formalized role for that in the code council hasn't I don't think directed or asked for that but it's not necessarily something you can't do but it's informal you don't have authority individually you're just connecting with neighborhood districts. The other issue I think is this question about a neighborhood district um

planning commission round table and what the topics will be. So I want to make sure I'm tracking which issue the question is about because I see them as

actually kind of unrelated um and they're they're there's a theme in connecting planning commission with neighborhood districts but they're they're different topics. I think the first one the informal liaison thing not it's not necessarily something the planning commission can't do as long as you all understand the kind of the nature of the dynamic which again is very informal if there is this continuing desire for I think a round table or work session with neighborhood districts and the planning commission that's the kind of thing that I think I said at the close of the last meeting that's the kind of engagement that I think in the municipal code provisions dealing with the planning commission really needs to come from council and I think there has there was some direction at the last council meeting for that. I I think we still need to talk about definitely when because it takes time to plan and a lot of what in in other words what the topics or topic is going to be and kind of what the outcome is and I I don't so so Nathan I want to make sure I'm answering the right question.

I'm happy with this whole entire line. Okay. Yeah. But I think those are the issues as I've seen them shaping up. First, really informal. Second, maybe more programmed. I think we do have some council direction on that. I can't remember there was Russ can maybe address it. There was some direction in the last council meeting on that. I can't exactly remember how it was articulated. Um, I do think there's some more work and maybe some input from the planning commission um to get it put together, but that's that's my view on kind of these two issues and we're there. So, Ian, I I I don't understand, let me just be very plain spoken, why there's a concern on your part and Renee and Collins on this topic.

Which one? The broad issue of the planning council having engagement with the neighborhood districts. There's not. But I I think I think I was pretty clear that the the direction has to come from council. I think we have it. So that's not concern. That's just me offering what I can about how the kind of how the how it's supposed to shape up. Okay. If I can continue. Sure.

So as we heard from um in the growth section session, there's keen interest in that process. to leverage the neighborhood districts as communications and engagement. There's keen interest also to engage with the planning uh excuse me with with whoever we are the planning commission. Um there is at the highest level one of the charters of the planning commission per the state is to be a forum for engagement with the community community at large. So why there's why is there a concern about us fostering that and trying to be of service to the community, to city council, etc. Now, I'm very aware of some of the history uh between neighborhood districts, especially the land use chairs, and they're not being as collegial as one would have hoped. And I actually attended a number of those land use chair meetings. I was not the land use chair. There was a vacancy when I was chair of some of West Neighborhood District and I kept hearing about all this trouble. So I attended tensioning. So I attended a number of the meetings and it was in my view dysfunctional the how the land use

chairs were approaching various topics because they were not necessarily um making an effort to ensure that they were representing their neighborhood districts. They were there were a lot of personal views and and very striden views. And my counsel to them was tone it down. And that's exactly the um the position that the Summit West Neighborhood District took, including on tough, which was very the transportation utility fee, which is very controversial. We fostered a neutral forum for city council for Russ others to engage with an audience of about 100 200 people. Um, so I think there is a lot of opportunity for the planning commission neighborhood districts to be very constructive, not make mistakes of the past. And I just would appreciate the opportunity to explore how we can do it. Now, if we've already been given the green light, I'm sorry for wasting five minutes worth of time, but there has been quite a bit of concern from a number of people both on this on the plan commission as well as the neighborhood districts that we're being blocked. Bob, I think your comment, if I can jump in really quickly, your comment about an opportunity for productive and constructive feedback is exactly why several staff have spoken with a few council members to give them an opportunity to give direction to make this happen. So, not to argue with you, but that's not blocking, that's facilitating.

Okay, great. I was not aware of that. because if we have more than four or four or more uh then that's a quorum and so that's kind of a thing where we can't just we have to notice that it's an it's an open meeting but that's the the round table that we talked about that's down I don't think that's the real issue I mean the issue is as I see it is neighborhood district folks and the planning commission kind of I think mutual interest in coming together to assist the council to provide council feedback um I hopefully to learn things and have some

two-way or more than two-way exchange of information that all makes sense. But if you are coming together to assist and provide feedback, I will say up to the council because there is that hierarchical aspect. Some of that involves staff working with council members to say, "Okay, what what how do you think this could best work and how do how can we facilitate this?" So, you can get some of the feedback, not the not the feedback you want in terms of the opinions, but on the topics in the areas that you think are are useful and that are sort of on the menu of things that the city and the council are going to be dealing with over the next year or two. So, that's that's what's started to happen. So, I'm I'm sorry if you felt like you're blocked. I think this is probably a case of government not always working as quickly as some people wanted, but staff including Renee, Colin, and Russ have worked with a few council members to try to create the impetus to make this happen. And I think Russ is here as part of that process tonight because I will say saying that it should happen is one thing, but actually structuring it so it can be productive and useful and constructive is a little bit easier said than done. This is part of that process.

I appreciate that clarification because obviously I was not aware of those discussions. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Wanted to add something. Yeah. Um, so I've been like working with Renee Mitchell and I think that the city's like hiring a contractor to kind of bring all of the districts together and so tomorrow there's a meeting about that and I imagine like going forward it will be we'll be coordinating with them to coordinate with the districts. Oh, okay. And I don't know. I think we'll just plan more directions while they do a little related but but maybe a little bit it's adjacent to this. I think for sure

I mean I think we don't even need something formal if we uh encourage I mean there's the visitor section in the beginning just like growth management came and talked to us about stuff that they're doing. we could potentially, you know, rotate through the neighborhood districts and today we're going to talk, you know, we'll hear from the this district because, you know, to be honest, there's, you know, even though Ben's pretty small, there's some areas I don't go very often, right? I don't see a lot of the development or a lot of the changes and things that happen. And I think

that's my whole point in suggesting that we reach out to the neighborhood associations is try and get that information that we just don't know. uh and and just have a dialogue and open a communication so that when there are issues, we have the ability to bring it earlier in the process rather than waiting until later in the process. But and yeah, seemed like it got more push back than I expected, but maybe that's changed now. So, thank you for that. I couldn't find any meetings for mine. I couldn't find any meetings for mine. Oh, really? Yeah. Not since like 2023 or 2024 for the district you live in. For the two districts too.

No, the district I live in, last time I checked, they they meet on like the second Monday or something like that. Yes. They send out surveys all the time. But Nathan, did that answer your question that you The answer being that the relationship with the districts is informal and we're working to create a round table with staff and maybe we'll see. I don't know.

Let's just wait. promised was going to be on that because after the last meeting and some discussion with uh Suzanne, I reached out to staff and just asked for a little more clarity, but Nathan beat me to it and got that clarity for all of us. So, you're welcome.

Other than that, I have nothing. Anybody else down the line? So, so I did attend the city council meeting last week where the commercial development um you know complete communities was discussed. So just uh building on what Suzanne said, I was very encouraged. Um uh all the seven city councilors were really engaged, understood the issues, the concerns, want to really drill down, see what can be done. Um, we'll get into Russ could probably update us. Um, as well as, uh, Eric and Eric King and Russ being um, very supportive of that and supportive of uh, the plan commission getting our hands dirty, trying to help them wrestle with what's going to be a pretty challenging uh, topic. So, it was great. Okay, I think Renee, you're up.

Sure. I'll hit on a couple things. It sounds like Russ might take on that should come up. I think we've all been waiting. That's okay.

So, so there is interest. I guess one of the things we just want to express to planning commission is we already have a full work plan with council and every as you have heard even today I'm really glad that the the growth management group we've got in front of you there is a lot of work that is going on in the city on a variety of different topics. So what we we're not objecting to having a neighborhood round table. We just want it structured in a way that is informative and is addressing things in the bigger context of what's going on because what we don't want to do is start to have a conversation that is going to happen as part of like a lot of the concerns or questions that are coming up are coming through this growth plan effort. So we want to make sure that we're coordinated in when we have those discussions, the information around that because the worst thing we can do because we've seen this happen before is you start a conversation now and then you rehash it in a year and a half and it goes really sad because there's new players and it gets really confusing and the whole entire thing that we're trying to do with the growth plan is make sure that we're having these structured conversations at the right time with the right engagement with the right folks so that the storyline and thread is continued through the the entire project because we're talking when we When you heard with the growth management group, we're opening up the comp plan and we're opening up everything on the comp plan. This is a very big effort and it's going to touch all the subjects that the communities are interested in, right? Density, where the housing's going, what are we doing in the commercial areas, what are we doing in the industrial areas, growing up, growing out the transportation system. So, we're that's where this team has been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to structure those all together and and our and our cup is already full just trying to manage all that along with the kind of council goals and the related work plan that goes with it. But we're more than willing to come and have conversations. We just want to make sure that's one of the questions I wanted to ask the planning commission. What are we trying to achieve if we have a round

table? What what kind of questions are we trying to answer? What information are we trying to give? We, you know, my first thought is we've been given this task on the neighborhood commercial, which I think is a two-prong task. It's it's the near-term and then I think there's going to be a whole another discussion related to the growth plan that we need to figure out what's in now and what's what's more suitable for this larger citywide community discussion. Um, but but we know when you talk about impacts of neighborhood, putting commercial into neighborhoods is a big deal,

right? You're going to get a lot of a variety of different opinions of that. and some of that information we can say yes we can make these little tweaks to the code now or man that's a that's a what you're talking about is a bigger conversation maybe we should put that with the growth plan when we open up the comprehensive plan and we talked about city-wide policies so again that's one of the questions I was going to ask the planning commission is if we do bring the neighbor districts together what are we trying to achieve and what would you like to talk about because just having like we just want to bring everybody together have a discussion about growth that becomes very challenging to facilitate and it could lead us down path that create more confusion than positivity. And that's from my standpoint. I want to make sure we're having constructive conversations with the planning commission and the community about everything going on in the city, which is extremely broad. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Well, it seems like the neighborhood commercial is a perfect topic that cities keyed us up to have. So, uh, and you know, as we're talking about that, you can see that there's a going to be a lot of opinions in neighborhoods about commercial, and not everybody is going to be all gung-ho as we are for commercial when it comes to a particular neighborhood. So I think that's a great topic to have and uh and that's a good test I think for this whole idea of building the round table into commercial exactly into that discussion which is part of the growth plan. So it's not derailing

anything. It's not creating a another side path that you guys all have to do but but it's giving us that opportunity. My feeling is just getting that communication. I like how many birds we can hit with this rock. Well, and and just so you know, multiple rocks with one bird. Actually,

they mentioned this other process. Um there we're engaging with the neighborhood districts because as I think everyone's aware, some neighborhood districts are extremely organized and some were knocking at the door saying, "Is anybody there?" Right? Is this is this group even functioning? So, we want to improve our relationships and communication with the districts and and we see this all the time. There's there's a cycle that occurs as new people come on the boards. They're questions about how do I get introduced in the land use system? what am I looking for? How do I get into the growth? So there's we see this repetitive cycle that occurs and kind of you get the turnover of districts and new people come in. We we and we come back and we say this is how you engage on on these type of conversations and and and and work with the city. So that's there's that process going on as well um with the consultant to make sure it's like well how do we help support the neighborhood districts? What that what does that structure look like? So there's a lot of different kind of um touch points with with the neighborhoods. And so for that's why I want to bring back to for the planning commission what exactly are we trying to resolve and if there's other issues we want to know about it there may not be a planning like the planning commission may not be the best purview for that right

but we can definitely carry that on to you know people that interact with with those with those groups so so thank you for the thought and care and Ian and Russ speaking to the concerns I voiced which again weren't simply my own but it's been, you know, um, ruining for a bit of time and I thought it best just to be aired and that's very helpful. So, what you've outlined sounds fantastic. Yeah. I mean, one thing I would encourage if you are talking to the neighborhood districts, have them watch the work session that was just done here. Yeah.

Because it's probably just getting a highlight of what's going on over the next two to three to four years is critical for us to make sure that we are communicating with them correctly and trying to engage with them correctly. So those are great like those informal relationships that Ian was talking to. That's those are perfect avenues because as as you can tell what we're trying to do at the planning commission is that education process to get you up to speed to actually have you know when we actually get into the work we can have we can move quickly into informed conversations on what's developed.

So any I guess I haven't talked to you guys about this but this my my my opinion of what I'd like to do with the neighborhood district is I mean I would like to know what's their experience living in the city. Are they I mean are they finding the the things that they need in their neighborhood? Are they um you know which maybe it's commercial, maybe it's parked and it's cool. I mean what's what's their traffic commute like? You know, are they actually living trying to live near work or are they like, "Oh, I found a job in Redmond. I'm going to go up there." You know? Um I mean, I guess I I would like to know what what's their experience like and what are their values? And I think that is part of the engagement plan that this group is already planning on doing. Right. So that's why because we've seen like that what we don't want to go back to the same source several times and ask similar questions.

Sure.

Right. And which I'm I'm not and I we agree with you that we need to get we need to gather that input. It is super important and how we communicate with the community and make sure that we're hearing all the voices. If you behind the scenes, we have to have a very broad engagement plan with the entire community as they mentioned completely different than how we did it before. We have to go out in the community and engage with all the different, you know, represented and unrepresented members of our community to get the feedback. And so that's why we get a little nerv that's why I think you may see us get a little nervous like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We do want to have that conversation. I just want to make sure we're having that conversation in a way that's going to move this overall forward in a positive manner.

I guess part of it is like if I'm a representative for the community, I don't feel like I should talk to the community and find out other people's opinions besides mine, which we which we agree with and and that's that is part of this whole plan that we have around the growth plan, right? So it's we because I want to make sure when we're having I mean this is my opinion when we're having conversations we need to make sure that when we're having these because sometimes people people get um it's kind of they feel like it's it's an open book but when we talk about growth and how the city's going to grow and where it's going to grow as you could tell there there are a lot of constraints that are put on the city.

Yeah. And a lot of times what we've seen is if you start these conversations, everyone starts to go down this path of like we can stop growth, we can't do this. And it's like no, no, no, we can't do that. We have to grow. The question is how are we going to grow? And when we when sometimes when those paths start, it actually creates a bigger problem for us to bring it back into the conversation. So it's trying to figure out how how do we do that correctly? Okay. The other part I wanted the other goal though is to actually be the advocate for the city on there and it's like there are ways that you can get involved when you're like when people that development you know they they go off and complain it's like well did you comment on did did you submit comment well no I had no idea how exactly

okay that is communication that I can help with too going to the neighborhood district you know at least in my neighborhood district they they do communicate with the res. I think if we So, I think it's it's important to also have for them to feel like like somebody cares about helping them engage

and and we're we're right there with you, right? And making sure that they know when and where and how to engage. And we go to all the neighborhood district annual meetings. I've actually been to in the last quarter of last month. And we go and we have specific conversations about who do if you want to know what's going on, this is how you get involved. We try to work with the land use chairs to make sure they know how to get information and then and to make sure they're getting the notices and how to engage in projects and when to engage in projects. That that is a continual conversation that ever since I've been here, we've always had that conversation and those those gaps of of questions. Also, I also realized a lot of people are moving here,

right? And and that you there's always you got to start over because oh, there's another 10,000 people in town, right, that we didn't have before. and they're very engaged and they're so we so we have to start the whole process over and figure out how to bring people through and engage with them. So again that's where I go back as we start to frame up that that neighborhood kind of round table. I think there are opportunities to say, "Hey, what are you hearing? What are you concerned about um because we want to get that feedback and then we can work with you to figure out, okay, how do we engage people in the right conversations at the right time, right? Because I don't want to I don't want to sty the feedback, but I also don't want to set false hope or pretense of when when or what we can do about an issue um in the in over a four-year conversation that we're going to have on the growth plan,

right? Because if we don't engage at the right time, people get frustrated because they provide input, but it might not be based in the information we need to share in order to get the information, the input at the right time, and then they become apathetic like, well, I told you how I felt and nothing happened, but maybe just wasn't the right time to to where we could actually do something active with that information. And I will tell all all of you, we always tell people every time I go, when you see the big yellow machine show up in your backyard, it's a wrong time to engage. Yeah. Right. Yeah, this if you are concerned about the town and how the town is growing, this is the time that you need to engage.

It's not it's this is right now in terms of like if you don't like where apartments are going, you don't like density, now is the time. It is not once we get through this and we see a site plan application come in and you come and you come in city council and say, "I don't like seeing this here." And that's that's the whole point is that if our only public interaction is in hearings, it's way too late to actually do anything. So that's what worried me was at the last planning commission meeting, we were told twice in the meeting that our public engagement, we were the public input for the city and our place where we interact with the public is in a public hearing. But we need the ability to actually interact with people before a public hearing because everything's baked in. It's really hard for us to make any changes there. And often the topics that come up in those public hearings, we're like, "Oh, but that's that's not actually part of these findings, that's not actually part of this rule." So, we can't actually talk about those things now, right? And then we never get a chance to talk about those things. And also, we want to make sure that we can do check-ins with council because we also want to make sure that you at least know the policy guidance we're getting from council because again, the word we want to have planning commission to be able to have their deliberations and comment on things. But understanding the context of where the policy makers are in terms of where their goals are and what they're doing is important in your decision-m because the last thing you want to have is you come up with a recommendation, it goes to council and it gets overturned and goes completely in other ways where you're not aware of it.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Well, we Yeah. So, so again, I would say that we we are thinking around the neighborhood commercial. I would encourage you to to if you're talking with people in in like what else do you want to hear and then we'll work in trying to figure out when an appropriate time would be to schedule a meeting. We prefer to do it maybe on a slow already pres-scheduled planning commission. Exactly what we said. We had another meeting% of our meetings were canceled last year for lack of anything. So we could use those times where everybody's already got it on their schedule. They blocked out two hours. All of us have blocked it out. The staff has blocked it out. So it's a perfect chance to use

So provide that feedback to me or Colin or Renee. We'll pull that together and then we'll come back with a plan of action on how to engage. Is there a possibility of a committee being formed to look at the neighborhood commercial? I don't I think we'll have we'll definitely have some outreach and this and this is where we need to reverse it and get back out in the neighborhoods because if depends on kind of where we're going with what we want to do with the neighborhood commercial. It could be we we need to get to solicit the feedback of the neighborhoods. Right? If we say we're going to put Obodega anywhere in a in a residential neighborhood, I'm sure there's some people that will say that's great. I'm sure there's some people that will say I'm not too thrilled with that idea. Right? What type of uses are you permitting? Where are you permitting those uses? super important conversations to have.

We also want to engage potential users of that code to see if they've tried it under today's code and it didn't work. What what were the obstacles? That's why I was thinking about like the like having a a committee or something. I think that some of them I've been on before and you get people from planning commission and city council. You get uh you know developers and citizens at large and central Oregon landwatch that kind of stuff. and you get a lot of different opinions and that's something that's I think it's pretty important and it's I think it would be hard to like here's this code update discuss that'd be a long night to talk I I think we actually want to engage with you it's like what okay we know that we know the

the question is do we want to integrate more commercial in the neighborhoods great let's talk about how we want to do that right I think there's going to be a series of work sessions with the planning commission like how do we even frame this conversation up what are we trying to achieve in those neighborhoods and why, right? And there may be another touch points with council where we go back and say, are we are we kind of hitting the right kind discussion in a public forum actually raises the awareness in the public as well about, oh, I didn't know I could do that in a neighborhood setting, you know, so it can go both ways

and we and we we will start to frame how to engage with those conversations and and and I I think Colin Rene will bring that back, but that's why I wanted to touch base with you first. Say, hey, you got an assignment. Congratulations. um from city council. It's a big one. Um how do we want to go about it? And then let us start to frame up how we want to talk about it and engage on it. Well, I think that we've got all the clarity we need. Good. And if you always feel free to reach out to me or Ian or Colin or Renee if you have any questions, more than happy to talk to you. All right. Thank you. Chance

Rene, my reports are pretty brief. I'm just following up on what Russ was saying. Um the council work session on January 14th. So there was kind of three prongs of direction from council one was for staff to pursue some targeted amendments to this senate bill 8 legislation. There's opportunity to amend certain aspects of that that might make it a little more uh digestible for our community. Um so

I would offer to go and testify if it's necessary to go to the legislature. I think it's helpful to have people from like the planning commission rather than just our lobbyist going and talking to the committees. So if that's an opportunity, there may be people who would like to go as well. But

so that's one prong. Another prong was a longer term as part of the growth plan work more comprehensive holistic look at neighborhood commercial uses where land use is distributed and what size what size of areas are zoned for certain types of uses. And then um making adjustments to the existing development code standards around specifically the sighting criteria for neighborhood commercial sites as it exists right now in chapter 3.6 in the development code and evaluating again talking to potential users of the code, potential business owners who we've talked to at the permit counter a number of times and interested in a certain site but it doesn't meet that sighting standard. It's this for this or that reason. So trying to really understand what is it about the existing code that isn't working for people um and what other you know what other adjustments we might be able to make in the meantime until this larger work effort is um is underway and completed. So that was neighborhood commercial. Um, did just want to remind you all you should have received an email from Ashley, the city recorder, about the advisory body summit on February 26th. Everyone's invited on the commission, so please let me know if you're not aware of that. Um, and then if you are, please RSVP with the link that's in that email so we know who's coming. And then just your next meeting February 9th. Um I sent to you all u an email with a lot of links to information that's on our website about the Stevens Road track expansion area when that land was slotted into the UGB as a preparation just background reading for your next meeting. So um please take a look at that. Please reach out to me, Karen, anyone else on staff if you have questions about any of that.

And that's it from the um I just wanted to point out that I sent a memo from Renee and myself to the commission on Friday. I hope you all got that. Um if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. They kind of follow up on on what we've been talking about tonight. Things that are coming up for the for the commission's consideration over the course of the next six months or a year or even beyond. So just wanted to let you know what's in store. So if there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But other than that, that's all I have. Great. Thank you. Thank you for coming. And we also have councelor CL here, too. Yes. Did you want to talk to us? Welcome. Thank you for coming. It's not 8:30, so don't Wow.

Happy to answer any questions you have. Thanks for what you all are doing. I'm sorry. That was rude for me. And did you say you have nothing? I said I have nothing. All right, we get Oh, do we have minutes to I don't believe there were minutes. I already closed my window. All right, maybe I'm just used to