Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this September 9th, 2026 meeting of the County Board of Commissioners. Just a note for everyone. We are experiencing some technical difficulties in the room today. So the live stream will not be available by YouTube. At least not for now. And we are trying to redirect people to if you're interested in watching the live stream to Zoom on the agenda. There is actually a link where people can. click on and then watch the meeting live streamed by Zoom. So apologies for the inconvenience. We're doing some major overhauls of this room and the IT system in a couple of months, and hopefully we will not experience things like this again. Okay. With that, I'm sorry, I should have called the meeting to order first, but we'll call the meeting to order now. And the first item on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join us. Okay, thank you. Next on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Are there any requests for additions, subtractions, or changes? Move approval of the agenda. I will second that, and we can call for the vote. Commissioner DeBone? Yes. And chair votes yes. Okay. Next up, we have citizen input. If there is anyone in the room who would like to provide citizen input this morning, please fill out one of these blue forms and bring it up to Brenda, and we will run through the People who are in the room first, and then we will check online, although I'm not sure if YouTube's not working, how many we're going to see. First up for citizen input is Amy Sabadini. Please come up and join us.

Thank you chair chain commissioners would it be better to hold my comment for the public hearing on the landfill or do it now.

Actually that is probably a good idea. I didn't. Thank you thank you. That will be item number 5 starting in 15 minutes maybe. Is there anyone else in the room who wants to give public comment on any items that are not on our agenda today as public hearing or that are on our agenda but are not public hearings at this time? Okay, seeing none in the room, we'll check is there... Kim would be seeing anything online if there were anyone online? Okay, nobody in Zoom. With that, we'll move on to commissioner announcements. Are there any commissioner announcements?

Annual chili feed for Deschutes Historical Museum, September 25th. It's Friday, a couple weeks from now. They'll be setting up for serving 400 or so. It's from 11 to 7. So either come in for lunch or dinner on the Friday, the 25th of September. Largest fundraiser of the year for the Historical Society. And then when in doubt, become a member also. So Nick and I both kind of hand off attending the monthly meetings. But they have rotating displays at their different rooms in the building. The Reed School is a Deschutes County facility that we host the Historical Society in. It's just good to get back to the roots and the history of Deschutes County. So September 25th, Millie's Chili, Chili Feed. Very good. Thank you.

Brought to you by Deschutes County Historical Society. Okay. I'll just mention that for many of our youth in Deschutes County, today is the first day of school. So good luck and best wishes for a good school year for all of you. Okay.

I guess being the 9th of September, September 11th, 25 years after the 9-11 attacks in New York City, that'll be on Friday. So just acknowledging that somber moment, a lot of history there. So 25 years. Thank you.

Okay. If there's no other commissioner announcements, we can move on to the consent agenda.

Sure, Ting. If I could make a note for the record on the consent agenda, that item number two, you will be convening as the governing body for the Sun River Service District since it's not notated. Got it.

Okay. So we should... You can still do one. Should we do two separate... Okay.

You can do one motion, but I just wanted to make sure it was noted for the record.

Thank you. All right. With that...

As the governing body of Deschutes County Proper and Sun River Service District, I'll move the consent agenda.

I will second. Calling for the vote, Commissioner DeBone?

Yes.

And chair votes yes. So thank you all to everyone who joined us for a consent agenda today.

Stay for the rest of the meeting.

Hope you didn't make a special trip here just for that.

Some did. Okay.

Moving on to action items. Item number four, a public hearing and consideration of Resolution 2026-040, increasing appropriations within the fiscal year 2027 Deschutes County budget.

Good morning, Commissioner. Stan Kiefer, budget and financial planning analyst. These two budget adjustments before you increase the expenditures by greater than 10% each of the funds and as such require a public hearing. I'll just give a brief introduction and then open it up for questions. In Fund 200, which is ARPA, American Rescue Plan Act, there's nearly $600,000 of remaining funds that will be spent before December 31st. and in Fund 327, the Federal Forest Title III Fund, we received some retroactive payments for fiscal year 25 and 26 that were not budgeted. So this adds those to the fiscal year 27 budget.

Any questions or comments before we move on to the public hearing? Okay. With that, we will now open a public hearing on this resolution, 2026-040, increasing appropriations within the fiscal year 2027, the Chutes County budget. Is there anyone in the room who would like to provide input on this item, public hearing item? Kim, do you see anyone online who has their hand raised for this? Okay. Seeing none, we can close the public hearing and proceed to deliberations.

I will move approval of Resolution 2026-040, increasing appropriations within the fiscal year 2027 Desheets County budget.

I will second. Any further discussion?

So just for discussion, two of our consent agenda items were discussed. Touching the budget also. So today, just to coordinate and make sure we're up to speed, 10% change in some of these funds to a public hearing. But it's good that we know our numbers now. You know, the previous consent agenda item were a few funds. And one of them is mentioning the audiovisual system in this room, in fact. And, you know, being able to get those ARPA funds, you know, safely allocated and spent is a high priority item. Very good. Yeah.

It's always a nice thing to see funding increases. Thankful that the federal government has caught up on processing of Secure Rural Schools Title III funding allocations. With that, I think we can call for a vote. Commissioner DeBone? Yes. Chair votes yes. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you.

Okay. We are on to item number five, a little bit faster than anticipated. Item number five, a public hearing in consideration of the Solid Waste Advisory Committee recommendation to select the Horse Ridge site for the county's future solid waste management facility.

Okay. Morning, Commissioner, staff, Jeff Merwin, Director of Solid Waste. So we have consideration of the Solid Waste Advisory Committee recommendation to select Horse Ridge site for the county's future solid waste management facility. Following the public hearing on the solid waste advisory committee's recommendation to select the horse Ridge site for permitting and development of the future shoots county solid waste facility. The board may take one of several actions at the conclusion of the staff presentation and public comment period. One hold the oral and written record open and continue the hearing to date certain to close the oral record and hold written record open to date certain. 3. Close both the oral and written record and set a date certain for deliberations. 4. Close both the oral and written record and begin deliberations.

Just kind of a sense of place here. So the Solid Waste Advisory Committee has convened once or twice this year already? Mm-hmm. Or did they, what was the last meeting? I guess that was, I'm trying to, so April 21st and then May. What did they do, convene just recently?

Nope. So they reconvened in April and made the recommendation to the staff in May. And so we were doing some legwork before we came to the board.

Right. Thank you.

And from the sounds of it, you've been pretty busy on that exploratory work. We have. For quite a while.

Yeah.

Well, and yeah, Jeff and I toured the site specifically about five, six weeks ago. So I had been out there just to make sure I had a lay of the land and feel what's going on for that horse ridge site specifically.

Do we have the PowerPoint on there? Oh, okay.

No, it's part of the agenda packet.

Put it in with the agenda packet? Okay. We can go through a little bit of the background. I mean, you guys are well aware of... You know, the history we started back in 2019 with a solid waste management plan, um, went through the process of looking at over 200 sites, uh, came down to, I think it was 13 at one point and then finalized down to two and selected moon pit. And that was in 2024, obviously that fell through we're aware of that. So we went back, opened up, um, some site screening to look at some additional sites to see what had changed possibly and came up with several other options, one of them being the Horse Ridge site. And that was selected as one of the finalists with Roth East. And so that site consists of three pits and some county land as well. And then a few residential or farm properties that are vacant land. That's part of the acquisition from one of the pits. There's eight additional properties there.

All right.

Well, it looks like, yeah, they'll be able to get this pulled up. Okay. In a rush.

And, Jeff, you can speak to the presentation. The commissioners do have hard copies of the presentation. So while it's not on the screen, we will get it there momentarily.

There it is.

All right. Thank you.

Oh, yeah. There it is. There's the date at the bottom. Roadmap to opening in 2031. Great.

So our latest data has us at December of 2031. So we've extended out a couple months from last year. So we went through that. Let's just start on the supplemental site screening overview.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

And we'll be able to advance the slides for you if you let her know, if you give her a prompt.

Did you want to go through this part? No, I don't think I hit that. All right. Yeah, so for the record, my name is Ryan Rudnick. I'm the project manager with Parametrics, the consultant selected to assist the solid waste department with the landfill siting study and the first phase of permitting for the site. So I'll just go through now an overview of the supplemental site screening overview. followed by an overview of the final site evaluation process and some of the key findings from that. So next slide, please. And then two more forward, please. There we go. And then one more. So this is an overview of the alternate sites that we looked at after the negotiations halted with the Moon Pit site. We took a look at alternate sites that were previously eliminated due to size, considering that a 75-year landfill would could work would be better than nothing. So looked at smaller sites and the potential to still get close to 100 year capacity with those. Also looked at sites that were positively affected by changes to the sage grouse habitat mapping and also sites with apparent changes to property owner willingness to sell. And so we looked at Another site near the Roth East site, same property, just a slightly different location. We looked at a site along Dodds Road that was owned by the Central Oregon Irrigation District. Looked at the Horse Ridge site and looked at the Golden Basin West site as well. Although the property owner was unresponsive for that one. So that side didn't continue to the next slide. We see one of the ways that we analyzed these sites, one of the primary ways, was through the site selection criteria, a more quantitative approach to assessing the broad range of criteria. that are relevant to landfill siting. The key criteria there are site characteristics and engineering, natural environment, and land use. And within those, there's a handful of sub criteria that the sites were scored on. But this gives an overview of how those sites stacked up with respect to those different criteria.

Can you explain kind of the land use score? So a higher score is more clear path to approval for land use? Is that the concept?

Yeah. And it also looks at the number of homes nearby, the haul route impacts, the zoning changes that may be needed for the site, as well as the potential for archaeological resources, cultural resources and whatnot.

Great. So the 3.6 is the higher score in there too. Yep. Other than Roth East.

Yep. And before we go too much further, can we go, Kim, could you scroll back to the previous slide and can you just explain for anyone who's just tuning into the story right now what the circles are?

Oh, yes.

Thank you. On this map and how... how they result in much of the near-end environment to Bend, Redmond, and Lapine being unavailable for consideration.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner. Great question. This map shows a number of things going on. The pink circles indicate a five-mile buffer around the airport properties, Bend Airport, Redmond Airport, and the Sun River Airport. And the FAA advisories recommend not siting a landfill within five miles of the airport property boundary to minimize the risk of airstrikes. And in years past, the board approved interpretation of that recommendation as rule for siting, essentially, to minimize the potential legal risks associated with siting against that recommendation within that five-mile buffer. And in the event of an airstrike, some of the legal risk that could be with that. Thank you. Yeah. And then also UGBs are shown in gray. And those are areas where a landfill cannot be sited. And then in brown, we see in different shades, core and low-density sage-grass habitat. So, yeah, there's a lot of factors that influence where a landfill can't go or where it's difficult to site. another factor that we looked at is the comparative cost factors uh we didn't go so far as assigning you know millions of dollars to each site at this kind of higher level screening level but we did take a look at the key factors that influence both the upfront development costs for the landfill and the ongoing operational costs and they're weighted to different levels so we can The big driver for landfill costs are excavation costs. That's what we see in blue. And so that has a higher weighting than other factors such as power, haul costs, water infrastructure, and road infrastructure costs. And so we found from this, this just kind of gave us a qualitative sense of of cost expectations for the different sites. And we found that the Horse Ridge site had a lot of good things going for it that could lead to lower costs over the lifespan. These aren't quite proportional, so to speak. This wouldn't be half the cost of Roth East over the long run, but it does show that there are some cost advantages related to excavation, haul cost, primarily. Next slide, please. We also looked at the number of homes that are around each of the sites, both within a one mile buffer and a two mile buffer. And there's one site in particular that drew a lot of attention from the public. That's the Dodds site, 18 residences within one mile, 86 within two. That site was ultimately removed because the COID board made a motion. And that was approved to have that site removed from consideration. And so, but the horse Ridge site has approximately three residences within two miles of the site. And rough East in terms of you know recorded residences with the county for the structure of the improvements report, there are two residences within one mile and eight within two miles next slide please. So that's an overview of the supplemental site screening process that led to the SWAC's recommendation to conduct a final site evaluation with the Horse Ridge site to bring it up to the same level of study that was performed for the Rothy site and to compare those side by side in greater detail. This map shows the locations of these two sites. You can see Horse Ridge is considerably closer to Bend, which we consider to be the waste centroid, since it draws waste from Redmond, the Negus Transfer Station in Redmond, Northwest Transfer Station in Sisters, and Southwest in Lapine. It's approximately 10 miles closer to the waste centroid than Roth East. Next slide, please. Here's just a few photos representing the site. You might be able to see how the Horse Ridge site is at the foothills of Horse Ridge. And it's worth noting that the landfill prominence is expected to not exceed 20% to 25% of Horse Ridge from the base to the top. So it's just sitting at the foothills, won't be built up to the peak by any means. And it is a site that's already disturbed by three existing surface mines.

Before we advance past this slide, in the next slide there's sort of a visual of kind of the footprint of the potential landfill. Can you translate that onto this map or give us a sense of essentially how much of that disturbed area is part of the footprint of the planned landfill and how much... spills out in various directions?

Yeah, that's a good question. All of everything, basically, all the disturbed areas would be developed for the landfill. And some of those have already been excavated from mining, which is beneficial. It would also continue beyond the road, north of the road, so on the near side of that photo, the Horse Ridge Frontage Road, and also further to the east. beyond that disturbed area with the land that's owned by that mining property.

Thank you.

So a large part of that photo would be developed ultimately. It is a drone photo with a wide-angle lens, so it's kind of a sense of... a different sense, I guess, of the extents.

And those would be cells, like a small subsection over time. It wouldn't all be...

That's right. Yeah. The first cell would be just roughly one-thirtieth of the full landfill. I think it's roughly 10 acres or so.

Yeah. Your typical cells are 9 to 12 acres that you develop at a time. So you're not exposing an entire site.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that rendering on – we go to the next slide at this point. And the only note with Roth East is it's grazing land, wide open, undeveloped predominantly. So then the rendering kind of shows how these ultimate closed landfill conditions could look in 100 years, let's say, on those existing sites. And no, it's not a lake down there in blue. That would be a stormwater pond in the rendering. Yeah. but yeah that kind of gives a sense of of those sites uh roth east a benefit to that site is it it has the potential for way for far more than 100 years of capacity if needed the horse ridge site can provide 100 even 125 years of capacity both sites with this rendering represent 125 years of disposal capacity But Horse Ridge gets that in a tighter footprint by going a little bit deeper and a little bit higher as well, working up, building up against the foothills of Horse Ridge.

What kind of assumptions about waste diversion are built into that estimate of 100 or 125 years?

That's a great question. In the waste projections, we assume that the counties... the county will be making steady progress towards the uh diversion goal of 45 percent um i believe we modeled that increasing over is it a 10-year period or um i think it was yeah it was

We phased that in. I mean, that 45% was modeled, well, technically it was 2025 goal for DEQ for us. We're not there. We're at 27. So we phased that in. But we did make an assumption. There was diversion built into that longevity of the landfill.

And Jeff, when do we think, you know, based on those assumptions, when do we think we might get to 45%? That's a good question.

That's what we had modeled.

Okay. It's a good goal. We took a substantial step with the distant rural recycling. I know that the numbers will be out into the future before we really have those numbers, but I'm sure that's going to make a difference.

And we have a strategic plan to try to meet that goal, and we'll be presenting on that probably within the next month or two for some initiatives.

Yeah, and so many exciting projects, construction, demolition, recycling, a potential MRF facility, more composting. I mean, these are all waiting on completion of this process. So the sooner we can get this done, the sooner we can get on to good waste diversion projects. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, as a result of that, if that is achieved by 2040, we're actually projecting a decrease in the waste disposal, you know, from 2030 to 2040, if those projections are, you know, hold true with population modeled and waste diversion. And so those could have a very positive effect on minimizing waste disposal. All righty. Next slide, please. This is just a high-level summary of the comparative cost analysis performed for these sites. A key finding coming out of this is that the average cost per ton over the lifespan at Horse Ridge and Roth East is comparable. $41 per ton for Horse Ridge and $43 for Roth East. But the costs show up in different places. There's a higher upfront cost for the Horse Ridge site. Due to the acquisition cost and the initial development costs being higher. There is more bedrock is present within the excavation depth for the site. And so that is a driver of development costs. There's also road improvement costs. That drive up that initial cost for Horse Ridge. However, the Rothy site being an additional 10 miles further has a higher operational cost that amounts to roughly $800,000 per year in the initial year and that scales up with the disposal quantity. Over time and so that that kind of makes up the difference over time on the next slide You can see there's a graph that shows where that kind of crossover happens. So horseridge is projected to be have a Higher cumulative cost until roughly a hundred years out and then Roth East's hauling costs begin to exceed it And so In that sense, cost big picture is not a huge differentiator between the sites. So then, next slide, please. Just a brief overview of the public outreach that was conducted as part of the supplemental site screening process and the final site evaluation. Letters were mailed to private owners of property within a two-mile radius of the site. So they were given a chance to – an invitation to come to SWAC meetings and make public comment there or to email and follow the process through the Manage the Future webpage. The BLM outreach letters were mailed to the Deschutes Field Office, keeping them updated. Also coordination with them regarding the Horse Ridge Recreation Area project that BLM is going through. Also provided updates to special interest groups such as tribal representatives from Warm Springs, Burns, Paiute, and the Klamath Tribes. Central Oregon Trail Alliance, the Deschutes Trail Coalition, meetings were held with both of those parties, and the Central Oregon Conservation Network. And then public comments that were received were reviewed, responded to, and distributed to the SWAC. On the next page, we have just a qualitative summary of the public comments received. Throughout this whole process, as you may have seen in the staff report, over 1,000 comments were received for the process. So there was a lot of public input involved. And so these – This table just gives kind of a high level indication of what was of the sentiment that was heard from different groups, from conservation organizations, local residents, recreational organizations, indigenous groups, ODFW. and the general public. And while both sites draw some negative opposition, there's generally less concern heard around the Horse Ridge site. I think some of the largest concerns that we've heard relate to bike trails nearby and then potential concerns also from the one or two residents that are out there as well. But generally, the fact that it's a disturbed site, I think, has helped with the perception of that site relative to the Rothy site, which would be a relatively undisturbed site, except for the ranching activities.

And in this chart, when... in the row that talks about local residents. So that is just the near-in homes and the residents of those homes.

Okay. There's a small kind of area that's zoned for residential or allows it, and some homes have managed to do an off-grid kind of setup there. Mm-hmm.

And so here where it says awaiting input under Horse Ridge, does that mean we just haven't heard from any of the near-in residents?

Not officially. Right? Correct.

Not officially.

Okay. But the communication they've received is mail? Correct. Okay. Nothing, nobody went door-to-door or anything like that?

I think we did two mailers. Is that right? I believe so. At different milestones. Yeah. Next slide, please. So a key driver between these two sites emerged as we further analyzed the sage-grouse habitat avoidance criteria. And this kind of turned out to be a key kind of differentiator between the sites. There's a lot here, but essentially because Roth East is designated within low density sage-grouse habitat, approval of the mitigation plan for that site would require evidence that locating the facility outside that habitat is not technically or financially feasible. or that the use there depends on geographic features uncommon elsewhere. And so there's a very high burden of proof to demonstrate that the Roth East site would be the only place to site a landfill, especially after going through this process of robust analysis and consideration of other sites and finding that the Horse Ridge site is available and feasible to develop there. So proceeding with the Horse Ridge site would present a major permitting risk in light of this habitat avoidance criteria. Next slide, please.

Quick question about state trust. Who is that permit from at that point? State? State department?

Yeah, ODMW approving the .

Because it's kind of federal listing or threat of listing that we're dealing with, but the state would implement.

Yeah, as a part of the conditional use.

Okay, thank you.

Application and review. Overall, the key findings from the final site evaluation was that no fatal flaw was identified with the Horse Ridge site. Estimated lifespan costs are comparable, similar for both sites. The Horse Ridge site has greater upfront acquisition and land use complexity. It is an SM zone site, and so some changes are required upfront to the SM zone to allow for development of a new landfill there. However, Roth East carries greater habitat impacts, mitigation requirements and risks, appeal risks, hauling costs, and long-term permitting risk related to all that. So these tradeoffs were carefully considered by the SWAC, and that led to them preferring the Horse Ridge site provided that acquisition is feasible, noting there's three separate owners. So getting them to all come into agreement has been a big part of the department's work over the last four months or so. So that's all. Yeah, key considerations for Horse Ridge. And moving forward with this site, the SM zoning requires a land use approval pathway, so a zone change or amendment prior to the conditional use permitting process. And we've begun discussions with CDD and county legal on how to approach that. Multiple property owners, as we mentioned, although that appears to be promising those negotiations. Cost considerations, initial development costs would be higher. but there's lower long-term costs due to proximity to the transfer stations. Uh, and although this wasn't modeled in the cost comparison, there is a potential for economic benefit from the excess aggregate materials could potentially provide stockpiles for County, uh, road projects in that area, both gravel roads and shoulder and potentially asphalt rock. So there's an unmodeled potential economic benefit there as well.

So you mentioned, uh, rock, not just sand and gravel that's on the surface. And we've done that at our current landfill site. There's kind of like a shelf that needs to be blasted and crushed. But there is value to that material.

There can be. This is modeled for use of quite a bit of that material for daily cover. So it affects the depth. So if you go deeper, you may have more surplus. We try to keep it at about a 17%. cover ratio, so there's adequate soils to cover the waste, and a lot of that is using crushed material for that.

So that, yeah, kind of real-time management of what's on site, what needs to be stored for future cover.

Yeah, we have the advantage there of starting out and modeling it so we don't have a great surplus of it and a big expense. If you can't move that material, it can get very costly, as we've found it not historically, but we've been able to recently. It can double your excavation costs. So also with the committee, similar to with Moon Pit back in 24, when the department came to the board. They had multiple recommendations, and the first recommendation was proceed with property acquisition and permitting of a new solid waste management facility at the Horse Ridge site. The second was negotiate purchase agreements for the two finalist sites to ensure a viable backup site is available if land acquisition and permitting becomes unattainable at the Horse Ridge site. in which case an additional SWAC meeting may be held to confirm support for the Rothy side as a backup. And this will include a final review of options and permitting risks given any new information. A third recommendation was work with stakeholders to develop and implement a robust and comprehensive mitigation strategy. exceeding regulatory minimums, which reflect community values to minimize impacts to area wildlife and recreation, and is funded through a host community agreement of up to a dollar per ton per ORS 459.284. And four is prioritize waste prevention and recovery and move as quickly as possible to implement those strategies to reduce the overall cost and greenhouse gas emissions of the new landfill. So that is the conclusion of our presentation on that. We posted for the public hearing about two weeks ago. We did receive one comment in opposition. I received it yesterday. Thank you for forwarding that on. And that's all we've heard so far. So I don't know if we want to open it up to public comment.

um any any questions or thoughts before we open up the public hearing um this is slightly tangential but we have been rezoning surface mine sites around the county quite a lot in the last few years and I do not have any sense of how much surface mining you know how many surface mining zoned properties there are in Deschutes County. It's hard to have a sense of how much are we shrinking our surface mining resources in recent years. This is more of a request for county staff than for the team, the siting team here. I'm wondering if, you know, CDD could just run a quick, you know, map and lists for us of, you know, surface mining zoned areas. And if it wasn't too hard, you know, it'd also be interesting to see, you know, how many surface mine zone sites have been rezoned to something else in the last five or 10 years.

Can I comment on that? Yeah. So when we did the appraisals for the current properties, one thing that was noted in the appraisal was the low value of the actual resource because of the prevalence of surface mines in the area. And again, the proximity of other mines. So that was noted in there. As far as the numbers specifically go, I'm not privy to that.

But that's helpful context. Thank you. Community development is watching, and they can still provide a response for the number of nice areas.

I think to do a quick query map and list shouldn't be too hard. Okay. Thank you. Anything else before we open the public hearing? All right, well, at this time, we will open the public hearing to gather testimony from anyone who is interested in giving oral comment today. And maybe we'll do this public hearing, and we can bring you back to answer any additional questions before we wrap up this item. Okay, so... The blue form request still applies. If there's anyone in the room who would like to provide testimony or public comment on this Solid Waste Advisory Committee recommendation, please fill out a blue form and bring it up to Brenda. And if there's anyone online who wants to provide comment or testimony, please raise your virtual hand. With that, Now let's bring up Amy Sabatini. Thank you for waiting.

No problem. Thank you, Commissioners, for having this hearing. This is one of the most important things we can do as a county. I would urge you to waste no time inciting this landfill. We need it to be operational as soon as possible as our current one is nearly at capacity and the population is increasing at a rate that the landfill is not designed to handle. I appreciate that the team did thorough research and has been doing thorough research for years now. It is sad that the moon pit didn't work out, but we can still pivot and move on. I like the idea that staff proposed of moving forward with two sites as far as land acquisition at the same time, because we don't know what will happen when it comes to the negotiations. I prefer Horse Ridge for all the reasons staff just suggested. described and I would ask that we help make this go over a little better with the public by making sure we include mitigation for those trails and natural resources that are near Horse Ridge that maybe the name Horse Ridge associates people with the trails themselves instead of the site that we're talking about here. There is a 1600 year old juniper tree, the oldest tree in the region in the area and some of people's favorite trails for winter mountain bike riding and hiking. So if there's any way to help the public understand that the landfill will not impact those sites nearby, I think that would do a lot to help the perception of this project. and I am fully in support of the work the county's been doing with especially the construction industry to minimize waste and reduce how much is going into our current landfill to make it last as long as possible so the site design for the new site can be done very well to protect all of our resources. Also, it wasn't brought up in the hearing, sorry, in the presentation, but the fossil fuels that would be used to transport to a 10 mile further site, that's 20 miles round trip, is enough, I think, to persuade me that the closer site makes more sense. And the graph showed it not being 100 years out before they evened out in price. The Climate change is urgent and a serious problem. I know that Republic has some electric trash trucks, but all electricity does require some generation. So there will be impacts. So the closer we can bring it, the better. Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for your.

I think I forgot to say my name, Amy Sabadini, and I live in Bend.

All right.

Is there anyone else in the room who would like to provide input or testimony? I'm seeing none. Kim, is there anyone online? Okay.

With that, I'm

Jeff and Ryan, would you like to come back up and give us a, you know, engage with us here as we deliberate on what the next steps are going to be? Or, I mean, first, I would ask, is there, you know, any, any, you know, thoughts or questions based on testimony and input we've received? We did receive one comment by email to the board yesterday or the day before. And I'm guessing that's the one that you just referenced, Jeff. And we just heard one verbal bit of public comment. So... Thoughts on whether we want to leave the hearing open and when we want to deliberate?

I'm comfortable proceeding at this time.

So option going to deliberations, you mean? Okay. And just so that anyone who's watching is aware, Commissioner Adair is not joining us today for this meeting, but she received this staff report. in draft form a couple of weeks ago and had the opportunity to discuss this with staff and the consultant team. So we're not just preceding the two of us today. We've had input from, or at least staff has had input from, the third commissioner as well. This is a very significant decision for us to make. We'll have profound consequences for waste management, for costs and expenditures for many years to come. I do feel like we've done very thorough work in analyzing potential sites and bringing forward this recommendation from the SWAC. I want to express appreciation to the SWAC for their work in kind of pre-processing all of this for us and making a recommendation. I'm a little hesitant to go right to deliberations right now, but I also – we didn't receive that much input for today's hearing. So maybe that means it's okay to keep moving ahead at this point. So I – Yeah, I'd be comfortable either extending a little bit longer or proceeding to deliberations now.

I'm ready to go.

Okay. Okay. With that, do you want to...

So, yeah, having a hearing, and so the hearing's closed at this time. Yes. Yeah. Sorry, I should have done that. Not a problem.

Formally.

I will move approvals of order number 2026-019. So then there's a few more comments, but that's starting the process.

All right. So to adopt the recommendations of the SWAC for the development of a new solid waste management facility in Deschutes County at the Horseridge site. I will second that motion.

Yeah, great. So thank you very much for attending today and the public comments we've received on it. It's been quite a journey to 2009 solid waste development. A plan was put in place setting this up. Some of the big items are miles for disposal, right? We've got our wonderful facility, the Bend facility, Redmond's transfer site, the other rural outdoor pickup sites. It's all about that distance. You know, we talk about the 10 miles difference between these two, but the other option is a couple hours away. And that's the big thing. When we had public hearing in this room lots of attendance years ago now, the conclusion is, oh, yeah, we need to take care of our own waste. And let's not send many trucks a day. hundred, two hundred miles away to other regional landfills. This is Central Oregon. We are a growing area, so it's very important that we have a system in place. It is the people's system. It's an enterprise fund. It's got its own income and expense. I always think of that $100 a ton tipping fee was that number that we've been below it for forever. We're just above it now and it's still going to go up. But we're cost effective like no other big urban areas, east and west coast, way past that $100 a ton tipping fee. And that $100 a ton is the one that breaks out into our bills, the commercial, and then our residential service. You know, you mentioned $43. That's the just kind of the cost of the waste at the landfill plus the overhead of the whole operation. So it's very exciting knowing that we are going down this path. We've been doing it for years. You know, we were walking, I thought, hand in hand with that moon pit site that just didn't come together. So now this is the next one. And it sure is a great opportunity. being able to get our local transfer trucks to that location. And when we talk about 100 years, 125 years, it may be the last one ever, you know, what we can do with the energy that's in that waste, the diversion, recycling, maybe who knows what the future looks like. But when we talk 100 years, it could be definitely many generations into the future. This order talks about publishing that plan in 2019, bringing in professional consulting, having our solid waste advisory committee, members of the community engage. We've had a lot of continuity there for many years also. And, you know, thank you to Parametrics and the professional analysis. We've taken the big picture look, absolutely, over the whole county. You know, where makes sense? What are the limits? Very professional analysis that's brought us to this point. Lots of community input. I think of when I'm on KBND radio, you know, every other month or so, I'll be on the radio for five minutes. And I've been mentioning this for years now, that it's important to finish this project up. And we're setting direction to it today by passing this order. It does commit to this site, and it does give us the opportunity and requirement to negotiate with the property owners. And there are multiple property owners, but that was this period of time where we're trying to make sure that we're founded, grounded in what we're doing and why we're doing it. We know that purchasing this property is still a little bit of a wild card because the zoning, the county zone, the impacts in the community. Also, it was mentioned, that last slide talks about the host community agreement of up to one ton per the ORS statute. So that's going to be a discussion item. And that's not in our tipping fee right now, correct? I mean, we don't have that. So that's a huge opportunity to have a great discussion, mitigate our impacts, do what we need to do there. But it's going to be a dollar right on top of our tipping fee, just adding right to it. Maybe less than a dollar. Let's not assume we had to do that whole dollar, but state law says maximum of a dollar.

Those are my comments. Thank you.

As I said, we are approaching monumental decisions. The reality is that there is no perfect site for this facility. I would have preferred one of the potential options that was closer to where the waste is generated and closer into the built environment. Those options were cut off by concerns about birds from landfills and landfill areas impacting air traffic. And so we are proceeding with our next best options. And If there is no perfect site and there will absolutely be some kinds of impacts, I feel very good about the commitment that the Solid Waste Advisory Committee is asking us to make to robust and comprehensive mitigation. I do – understanding some of the – You know, the site concerns about Horse Ridge, I do believe that the impacts that would be caused by landfill there are mitigatable. And so I feel comfortable proceeding with this order as well.

So just acknowledging the order. So proceed with negotiating horse ridge site. Negotiate purchase agreements. Work with stakeholders. Implement a robust and comprehensive mitigation strategy, which you just mentioned. Also prioritize waste prevention and recovery. So that's the order that we're passing today.

Yep.

Yeah. All four of those provisions are included in this order as sections one, two, three, and four. So with that, are you ready to vote? Okay. So calling for the vote, Commissioner DeBone? Yes. Chair votes yes. And I believe that is a decision.

And this is the second time we've done it, but we're going to land this one.

We are.

And if we don't, we have alternative options. Kim, do I need to read this order?

You do not. Okay.

All right. Well, with that, thank you so much for the work that you've done to get us to this point. And let's hope for a positive outcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Item number six, an emergency management performance grant application.

Huh. I'm sure they wanted to stay. They just have other places to go. Yeah.

They'll be happy about it when the next fire happens. Yes. Good morning. Good morning.

Ben, go ahead. Thank you. I'm Ben Duda, an emergency manager with Deschutes County Sheriff's Office, and I'm brought to the commission today. asking for authorization and approval, should we receive it, of funds through the Emergency Management Performance Grant. It's a grant from FEMA that's handed down through the Oregon Emergency Management. It provides personnel funds for our emergency coordinators. It is a matching grant, so it's a 50% match, and that budget is already included within the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office budget figures. And Those positions are really critical to our program. They help fund personnel that conduct all of our exercises, training, planning, coordination. Hopefully here in the next month or two, we'll be bringing the board a natural hazard mitigation plan that they've been working on, emergency operations plans, things of that nature, as well as assist during emergencies. They've been critical to support me and my office and the county in the evacuation and recovery of the community after the fires that we've had and prep for everything. anything bad that could happen to the county. It's not just fires. You know, we look at winter storms and we look at flood potentials and things like that. So I think you have a proposed motion in front of you. I should go back, I guess, a little bit this year. This is an annual grant request that comes around last year. I think we asked the board for approval of, it's an estimate. It was 88,000 and actually that bumped up based on the funds that the state ultimately gets. And it's divided around the counties. We just received $95,000 from FEMA and OEM. And then this year, the estimated amount is $101,000 towards the personnel cost to help support our emergency management program here in the county.

One question. What are the reporting requirements? I mean, how do you conclude this grant?

Yeah, there are quarterly reporting requirements that we send in, or quarterly reports we send to Oregon Emergency Management, and there's several points of performance that are outlined in there. the employees that are funded by this need to lead at least two exercises throughout the performance period, which is a year. There's also requirements for training and they show advancement in their certifications in different FEMA task books and roles like operations chief and planning section chiefs and things like that. We are working with the Oregon Sheriff's Association to develop all risk incident management type three teams that hopefully we'll be able to participate. Well, we are participating on and as those develop and start filling some of the needs around the state for some, for everyone. So, and they are actively participating in those roles. And there's also points, you know, like how, where are we at with reviewing our emergency operations plans and posting some of those documents in those quarterly reports.

Great. And we've been doing it for years.

Yeah.

But, yeah, it's always good to understand how do we close up a grant. And this traces back to our annual financial reviews, too. Sometimes if we do receive a grant and we're not closed up, it could be a ding in our financials organization-wide. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's been with the FEMA was shut down for a while, and it did delay some of that payment. I think we got it a little late, but working with our finance folks in the county downtown, I think they understood all that. And you're right, you're correct. And things seem to be moving along now.

Yeah, so both parties need to participate. All right, go ahead.

Um, I don't I don't have any questions about this grant application. It is if it's an annual request and it lands right in the middle of fire season every year, it seems like they could they could tinker with that to be a little bit more considerate to the emergency managers around the state. But that doesn't affect my support for this grant application. Ben, I do just want to say, um that uh this has been a very exciting fire season it's not over yet but it's been a very exciting fire season and i want to express appreciation for uh the work that you've done to um you know manage evacuations keep people safe uh you know keep information flowing um so that people can take care of themselves in these emergency situations i i know that uh I know that you worked many, many, many days straight during the Aqua Butte fire, and so thank you for your service to the community.

Thank you, sir. I really couldn't do it without that team that I've got behind me. I need to bring them before the board one of these days. Yeah, Ashley and Rochelle have been amazing support for myself and the county. Yeah, well, you can...

Let them know that they got a shout out at the board meeting today. Absolutely. Very good.

With that, I'll move to authorize the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office to apply for and accept, if awarded, an emergency management performance grant to support the county's comprehensive emergency management program.

Second. Any further discussion?

You mentioned the Type 3 stuff at the amateur radio team meeting on Saturday. They talked about it. So there's people already talking about that's ESF2 communications. But, yeah, maybe we'll communicate. You and I can talk about that. You know, what does that look like and what do tasks look like for volunteers? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Well, with that, we'll call for the vote. Commissioner DeBellin? Yes. Yes. Chair votes yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck with the grant application. All right. That concludes our regular agenda items. At this time, are there any other items?

I'd like to have a discussion about budget committee member reappointment before the end of the year. So it's not for today, but just bringing that up to either put on an agenda or however we want to proceed with that discussion.

Well, I... It makes sense to put that on the agenda because there is a budget committee member term expiring before the end of the year. I do hope that during that discussion we can discuss coordinating an appointment or reappointment requests with The additional appointments that are going to occur in 2027 by the new board because the budget committee will expand to five or the appointed budget committee member pool will expand to five. in January. And to me, it makes sense to just do three appointments in 2027, rather than do one this year. And then, you know, of someone who will not be serving with the two of the three commissioners that are making the appointment decision. But, well, Nick, I would ask, when do you think is an appropriate time to put this on the agenda for a discussion?

I didn't hear support from two commissioners to schedule it for this fall, or am I mistaken? You are supportive of scheduling it this fall prior to 2027. I'm just confirming that there are both of you, there are two commissioners that support scheduling it this fall.

Well, I think it's appropriate to discuss it. Okay. I'm not sure whether I, if the question is, do I support an appointment decision agenda item? I guess I would say I'm not sure.

And that's why I just said future discussion. I'm not going there yet. I'm just saying future discussion before the end of the year.

Does the board have a preference of when we schedule it? We can schedule it on short notice. We can schedule it for later in the calendar year. Whatever your preference is, as Commissioner Chang mentioned, the new board will appoint the new members of the Budget Committee because those terms won't begin until the commission is formally expanded to five members, which will occur on January 4th or 5th of 2027.

That's the next couple of weeks, you know, either next week or the week after. Okay. Put direction to it.

Okay. Well, I'm here next week, but the week after is that energy conference in Texas. So I will be, I could be available virtually for the Monday meeting that week, but I will not be available on the Wednesday of that week.

Yeah, work session Monday, type me, discussion is fine.

Okay, that would be September 21st, if I'm recalling.

And there's no rush either. I mean, I just want to get the topic out there. That's all I was doing.

Or we can aim for September 28th or 20th, September 28th or September 30th as well. I would prefer a little bit farther out.

Yeah.

Okay. So let's aim for September 28th or 30th for the budget discussion. And I'll make sure that our finance team is informed and ready to help with that discussion item.

Great.

Thank you. That's all I had. Okay. Okay.

In terms of additional other items, I would mention that there is going to be a ribbon-cutting event for the Nine Peaks Affordable Housing Project by Housing Works today on property that the county sold to Housing Works at appraised value. So not full market value, but you know, at a modest discount. So that'll be an exciting event at noon. And with that, if there's no other items, additional other items, we can proceed to executive session at this time. And we have one executive session item. Kim, do you want to read the notes?

The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners will now convene an executive session to ORS 192.660. The specific authorization for this executive session is ORS 192.660, subsection 2D, which allows the board to meet in order to discuss labor negotiations. Designated staff and the media are allowed to remain during the executive session. However, the media may only report that the board met in executive session the identified basis for meeting in executive session. Recording devices are not permitted. No final decisions will be made. And at the conclusion, we will open the doors and invite the audience back to the meeting.

Right. We are returning from executive session now, directing staff to proceed as discussed. And with that, we will adjourn this meeting. Thank you.