Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's Monday, September 14th, 2026, meeting of the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners. We'll now call the meeting to order. The order of business is approving the agenda required, making any additions, subtractions, or modifications that are needed.

Yeah, so today's the day. I'm glad we have this procedure here because it's going to be interesting here. I do support discussing a regional infrastructure fund letter of support request by the Tumalo Water... Terabon. Terabon, sorry. And then there's also a request to call up Landy's item. Now that the request is here, we can discuss it. So this is Thornburg Resort asking us to discuss. So just proposing if there's support to put it on the agenda since it just came in.

I haven't had a chance to read that. have I been granted agency so it is to say it's just a it just came in is it possible to can we do it on wednesday and that's fine too as i said i saw it i just i was able to print the page yeah well how about we yeah we i gave this a chance to read the uh tumblr that was there um

So how about we put it on the agenda just to share information because that yeah, we don't need to make a decision They have just came in already mentioned the words Does that that sound sounds fine So we may try to Run the Terrebonne water district item

agenda. Objection with legal counsel. Since we've had this option of modifying the agenda, we haven't actually done that. Is that procedurally the right way to do it? That's correct. Very good. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion?

What I would just acknowledge the value is that we're mentioning it up front because if somebody from the media or whoever wants to follow the topic, they could hear that we're going to talk about this.

Yeah, I mean, that's a general rule. It's better to give people a little bit more notice than this, but sometimes when things are very time sensitive, at least procedurally. Okay, so with that calling for the vote on the agenda, share the vote. Yes. Be sure to dare.

Yes.

And share votes yes. We will now move to citizens. Do we have commissioner announcements first? I know that will be after. We usually do announcements after. If you haven't already filled out a blue form, please find one in that little box there. And you can put that out and send it in to one of us. And if you are online and you'd like to provide a public comment today, please raise your virtual hand, and we'll go through people in the room, starting with these blue forms, and then go online. Okay, and so guidelines for our public comment, typically we provide people with up to three minutes And from me or may not have a timer that she can display on the, on the, on the screen or she'll at minimum can keep track and let you know when three minutes are up. And with that, I will ask Chuck Hemingway to come up. Then we'll have Donna Berkwell on deck and later on. Okay.

Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Chuck Kimigwe. I'm a county resident. I'm here with several members of the Central Oregon Homelessness Alliance. I'm in favor or we're in favor of the board of commissioners affirming the January the 20th vote by voting to approve county resolution number 2603. Right now, the costs of the TSSA are managed. We have a firm fixed cost of what it takes to operate the TSSA But dispersing 150-plus people from the TSSA and onto other city and county public property involves a potentially exponential increase in costs and potentially adverse consequences for the county. Right now, the bulk of the unsettled population in the county is concentrated in areas east of Redmond and in the TSSA. A managed camp has come into online in Redmond. that is playing a part in reducing the number of un-sanctioning encampments there. Closing the TSSA at this point, and not funding it through June the 30th, 2027, is going to result in pushing people out on the lands throughout the county. This is going to be an increased cost for the Sheriff's Department, an increased cost to the Deschutes County Rule of Fire Protection District 2, the district in the Pine, in the Sisters Camp Sherman area, and Clifford River Ranch. It's going to mean an increase in emergency medical services costs in all those locations, and it's going to lead to an increased cost for all public services across the board throughout the county. Right now, the people in the TSSA are living in a fire-safe area that was made fire-safe by the expenditure of county funds. Displacing all these people throughout the county means dispersing them into areas that are not yet fire-safe. This potentially increases the likelihood of a major fire event at one or more of those localities. It's also going to involve having all these public agencies having to devote more staff time to dealing with these dispersed populations and taking them away from more important duties. I believe the money appropriated thus far has been well spent, considering the time it takes to establish trust with a carnically homeless population and the fact that more than 70 people have been successfully relocated from the TSA thus far. Not providing the $125,000 now risk short-term savings at the expense of even larger potential costs to the county in the long term. We've got a buck and a quarter here on the table. And a stack of monopoly money that let's say represents $500,000 potentially as long-term costs to the county. Taking away that $35,000, spreads out the cost in the incoming years to a cost far greater than $125,000. So don't take that $125,000 off the table and cause it to be spread out throughout the cost of the next several years and match the city's $125,000 as proposed. Nice visualization.

Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Chuck.

Donna Burke- Good afternoon. My name is Donna Burke low and I in this meeting. I'm a citizen who has Donna Burke- Been resident and who has experience working with folks who have been experiencing houses for about Donna Burke- 17 years now. Donna Burke- I very much applaud Chuck and his data. Chuck is great that way, and I appreciate it very much. I'm here to speak to the heart of the matter, and that is that for so many years, I would look at folks who had come to Family Kitchen for a meal, who had been told over and over that they just needed to get a job, they just needed to do this, they just needed to do that, and then things would be all better. At the time, I couldn't look anybody in the eye and believe that or ask them to believe that. There was no shelter. There was no place for them to go next. There was not this continuum of housing that we are creating now. Truly, up until about six years ago, it was a very difficult conversation to have and have any belief in it. I now know of folks that I had seen for more than 10 years at Family Kitchen who are clean and sober. They've been through the treatment that's been available now. They have been through shelter that's been available now. They've gone through several layers of shelter and are now in stable housing. If we don't continue to have an area like the TSSA where we can reach people, where we can continue to find them, build trust, and let them know that it is different now, It wasn't this way before, we agree, but it is different now. And there are solutions, not enough, but there are solutions. That word is starting to spread. I've been in the TSSA volunteering with Central Oregon Villages and with Companion Animal Medical Project. I've watched people finally speak to a service provider who had been unwilling to speak with a service provider in the past because they start hearing, that this is working. They start hearing that there's possibility, that there's hope. And taking that away right now would be a tremendous detriment to the money you've spent already, but it'd also be a tremendous detriment to the hope that we've built and the trust that we've built over this time. I thank you for your time.

I'm Leonard Wyman. I'm a member of Central Oregon Homelessness Alliance, along with Chuck and a few other people here. I live in Bend. So my next-door neighbor moved to Bend about a year ago, and his plan was to move back after he finished a project here in Bend. But just last week, he visited Salem, and he's thinking he's not sure he wants to move back there because of all the homeless people that he sees on the streets. Schutz County has twice as many homeless people by population percentage as Marion County does. And the reason that he doesn't see as many people here is that they live in the TSSA. And if the TSSA is closed, there aren't shelter beds or housing where those people can go. Some of them will move to illegal housing illegal camps on county land or national forest where they've got 28 days and then it's illegal. But most of them will go to the only legal place they can go, which is on the streets of bed. And they won't be confined to a few areas because the rules are that they have to move every 24 hours. So they will be scattered all around town. So this county commission will be changing in a few months. And the current commission's making your last few decisions that you'll be remembered by. And it will be too bad if one of these last acts is to spread homelessness throughout all of our neighborhoods. Please vote to formalize the agreement to keep the TSSA.

Well, as soon as like new or my event this morning, I fill it out. Yes. Okay.

Commissioners, my name is Eliza Wilson. I'm the HLC chair. So the homeless leadership coalition chair, and also the executive director for homes. I've had the opportunity to work with each of you on this subject. And though we may not always agree on the tactic or the best course forward, I know just having the opportunity to work with each of you that you each care deeply about the citizens of this county, including those who are unhoused. We've all made amazing progress over these last couple years together, much in part because we've had officials like yourselves involved in making these decisions and allocating funds. I think we can agree that TSSA and the location, you know, I've heard, I've followed this. I know that, you know, those of you don't love the location of where it's at and we can all agree that there's better, probably better options that we could move folks to in the future. We just don't have the time. And I just want to urge you guys to continue to support TSSA. because really there's nowhere for folks to go. You guys have heard, I mean, I'm not going to, Chuck said it best, right, and those who came before me, but I really believe you guys care about the people of this county. And I've seen that you make decisions that show that you care about everyone. Just urge you to continue to support TSSA because I think that's the best we have right now for those out there until we can have additional resources for them. So thank you. Thank you all and Yeah, thanks.

Is that for testimony on the PSSA or any agenda?

This citizen input period at the beginning of the meeting is for anything you want to talk about.

Good afternoon, Commissioner. Cameron Gelashman, Thornburg Resort. So last Friday, Thornburg received two approvals, land use approvals, relatively minor approvals. One was a site plan for golf bathrooms, other golf-related facilities that are already a part of the approved golf course. And the second one was a modification to the Phase A1 plan, the largest thing WHICH WAS ALREADY APPROVED. THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING IN THAT IS TO DO SUB PHASING ON THE PLAN, BREAK IT DOWN INTO 10 INDIVIDUAL SUB PHASES. WE REALIZED SOME ROADS AND CHANGED THE DIMENSIONS AND AREA OF A FUTURE DEVELOPMENT TRACK AND SOME FACILITY LOTS. And those were both staff decisions. In public comments, there were some commenters that had requested a public hearing. Given the extensive nature of Thornburg over the last 20 years, we believe it's highly likely that that will be appealed. And we are requesting that you the board pull that up right now instead of waiting for the appeal period and the hearings officer, given your schedule in November and December of this year, other commitments and the holidays. So we're asking that we circumvent, don't go to a hearings officer and then to the board and instead just go straight to the board right now.

I think I'm tracking and what can you just kind of repeat what specifically may be going to a hearings officer or that you'd like to come to us directly?

So we believe both of those approvals will almost certainly be appealed, and both would go to a hearings officer. And then from the hearings officer, the standard, what's happened in the last 30 or so land use approvals that we've received is it's gone to a hearings officer and then to the board. And we're asking instead of wasting the county's time and our expense on the hearings officer, that we just go straight to the board and have a public hearing and a public process. And that is allowed under DCC 22.28.050. And the reason that I apologize for the short timeframe, this was just issued on Friday. And I'm sitting here before you today. The reason is the board has 12 days to do that. So the board only has that authority in the first 12 days. So we're asking you to consider that now. To schedule it to come directly to us or to actually do the. You have 12 days to pull it up and then to schedule it through the standard notice procedure. So I think you have 21 days for a hearing. So if you were to agree to pull it up correctly, then notice would go out. And I think it's a 21-day period on a hearing. So it could be scheduled for a hearing sometime in October or so, I believe. Yeah, the 12 days is not for you to get a hearing. It's simply you have a 12-day time period under 22.28050 to make the decision to pull it up.

And this is the background on the item that you asked. Yeah, it was just an email.

And I have a copy of that letter that I can put into the record and and i would ask that uh if you do pull it up and there is a hearing that that that letter and this testimony be included in that record thank you for that background and i guess we'll discuss this as item number four okay thank you um

It goes out as well. Thank you. Anyway, good afternoon. My name is Craig Gales. A lot of you know me in here and whatnot. So they just opened a new marriage camp east of the Ledman Airport, which I think is 34 or 36 places. They're just probably going to have to fill it up. It's full. We've been out there kind of helping Isaac a little bit, doing a few things and whatnot. When they closed down China Hat, we had the opportunity to help some people move out of there and moved a lot of them to Dirt World, some of them to north of the Bend Airport. And it just, they had to be out. So we had to move and we had to do something and that's what we did. My fear is, is that we're going to do the same thing. If they gotta be out, we'll find places for them to go, but we all know it's gonna be across the street or wherever they can figure out where they need to go. So I think TSA has done an amazing job in a lot of ways, but we got some more work to do. So to shut that down right now would be pretty detrimental. I know we've got a couple of months here, but I think it's gonna take a little longer than that. Of course, we're working on some stuff on our own. Hopefully comes about here down the road, but just wanted to put my two cents worth in and let you know, and we all know where it's going or where it would be going.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for sharing your experience from the closure of China. There are public commenters in the room. We can Now we can move to commissioner announcements.

Okay. So I had the privilege of seeing Tati's in the room, but a Fiji Clean system that has been put in the ground, you know, that's the one that's like 95% effective for the septic systems. And I'm wondering when can the county double that rebate to our residents that desperately need some help at 3750? When When can we get that done so that people can actually get help? But then also apparently CRAF 3 was not funded by the state. And maybe we can do a letter to ask the state of Oregon to look into that. Another way for there's 33 families right now. I've been told they see a similar situation where they need a new septic system and it's incredibly expensive. The good news is this system is the top of the top.

You said it was incredibly expensive.

Yeah, it was like $28,000. They had it, you know, 28,000. So if we can at least get them back, you know, 7,000, 7,500, that would be helpful. Um, these people had agitate, you know, so loans on their home and they told me that there's 33 other families. So this is the top system. It was really nice to know that we're finally using the very best that's available for technology. But, um, Craft III also wasn't funded this year. And I mentioned it to Representative E. Warner-Ruski to see what he could do.

I mean, on increasing the rebate that we offer, I think we are at this point down pretty low in the groundwater account. So some Newberry neighborhood land sales to be able to talk about increasing rebates or doing other things to address some groundwater wastewater infrastructure needs in South McHale.

Don't we have a sale that's still possibly going to happen? Has that been eliminated or is it still going forward?

We have that scheduled to discuss on Wednesday under an executive session.

Oh, great. Okay. So is that a smile? Or is that a neutral?

That's a sensitive session.

So we're going to get that. I mean, I just, you know, if we have a possibility, people need more help. But it's great to know that they're doing the Luigi systems.

Are there any other questions?

I was celebrating our Cascade Charity horse event that's at the fairgrounds, so my wife and I were able to go Friday night, and they had a wonderful 9-11 trip with horses, carriage, and Commissioner Adair and I crossed paths there to come honor people, a moment of respect. And then also Saturday morning, Southern Deschutes County community cleanup, about 17 people filled up the second 30-yard dumpster, cleaned up a couple camps, right off the edge of a end of dirt road. So the residents that live in that area really appreciate that. You know, there's there's these long term unsanctioned camping things just spread out upwards. So cleaned a couple of those up this weekend with 17 of my closest friends.

Great.

Thank you. Anything else?

No, I just, yeah, Commissioner Dubon and I were at the cutting event, and the dollar volume of horses at that, over 600 horses are at the fairgrounds. It was amazing. Even the RV park was full of horse trailers and trailers. Yeah, I've never seen it looking so amazing. All those people are coming from Oklahoma, Texas, California, Nevada, all over the place, and they bring a lot of income to our We are so blessed that Jody and her team have been putting this together for, what, eight years now?

There are no additional commissioning outputs. We can move on to the consent agenda. All right. We can move on to our action items. Item number one. Consideration of the joint resolution and amendment number one to her government agreement city event to memorialize extending the temporary safe state area through June 30th 2020. And provide additional resources.

And I share my screen here.

What's up for you to choose from the names of your

boston mass yes oh good i went online yeah well we're while we're waiting for just a moment there's another chair here just two oh there you go we can move it something about five minutes

I forgot there's one other thing. The health council had an allocation of funding, and I guess I was only a third of the vote on it. I only got to shoot 200,000 for public health. Holly knew I was working in a minority position, and then Crook and Jefferson are both going to get funding, too. So that funding should be coming to our public health department shortly. Okay, awesome.

And I use it prior we link.

And I use. The reason.

Well, we've got a minute. There's a lot of people here who all may be happy to know that in a few months, this wall is getting pushed out. So there will be a lot more room in here for people to sit when they want to comment and attend a Monday park session. Bear with us until then. We're almost there.

We're almost there.

I think you'll believe that I put up a whole plan to get more than 50%.

We have Chris Bode presented for us.

Well, it's going to stay in the region. And it is public health. We all work together. Yeah, we work together. Anyway, I was wanting a little bit more. Well, Holly was definitely wanting more. Anyway. But I'm very grateful. All right.

Perfect. Good afternoon, commissioners. For the record, Christy Bollinger, Deschutes County Property Management.

And I'm Eric Croft, Deputy County Administrator.

So commissioners, we're here today for your consideration to approve a first amendment to a... IGA that was executed between city of Bend and Deschutes County back in 2024 for the TSSA and also to adopt a joint resolution that would, in essence, extend the TSSA through June of 2027 and also commit additional funds for that. So we put together a pretty short presentation for you today just to kind of walk you through some of the items. So on the screen here, I put together a timeline. There's obviously a lot more events associated with the TSSA, but we tried to just grab some kind of pertinent ones. And then I also just start ones that I was going to just touch on today. So the TSSA, well, going back in time actually to March of 2023, that's when the county first received a code enforcement notice from Deschutes County Community Development Department. And so that's kind of what started us on this journey over, what, three and a half years later. The next start item is October of 2024. That's when the county and the city adopted a joint resolution to authorize the TSSA through December of 2026. And that's also when the city agreed to pay 50% of on-site services like porta-potties,

Let's see, porta potties, water, security, dumpsters, things like that.

Also in December 2024, that's when the county and the city executed an intergovernmental agreement to memorialize each agency's contributions around housing-focused case management. Moving into June of 2025, that's when the Forest Service closed Chinahat, and we put a slide together that shows you graphs of the influx of people that affected the TSSA. We best estimate that probably brought over 100 individuals to that area. January 26, that was our last joint meeting, I believe, with the City of Bend, and that's when our Board of County Commissioners and State Council discussed and agreed to extending the TSA through June of 27. At that time, the county and the city both pledged 125,000 each for additional case management services through June of 2027, and also 150,000 each for operational costs. March 26 through May of. 2026 of this year. Staff was directed to close sections wanted to have a map. We'll show you shortly, which basically, in essence. Took the from 150 acres down to roughly 75 acres. So that was successfully done. And then today's September here we are in September and then so this is in front of the board for consideration again to. adopt the joint resolution with the city and also to approve amendment number one to the 2020 for IGA. So this is a slide that basically shows, I'm sorry, the print's kind of tiny, but basically just tried to, so it goes going back in time when we first established the TSSA, our focus was really about remediating, you know, health and safety and also clean up abandoned encampments and burn down encampments, greening in potable water, providing toilets and whatnot to try to get into some sort of, based on looking and reviewing the code enforcement violation, what could we do differently to improve that area? So as far as numbers are concerned and occupants, our focus immediately was not on counting the number of occupants. We had to really work through the process of what that would look like. So as time goes on, we've been able to perfect that process quite a bit by working mostly with our security patrol partner, currently Gold Shield. So a few things to call out here. This orange line over here represents when Forest Service officially issued their notice that China Hat would be closing. So that was, I think, the beginning of March of 2025. And then you can see the red line represents when they actually closed China Hat. So you can see that the numbers out at the TSSA just skyrocketed at that point. So our highest, we believe, is around to between 220 to 230 individuals after China had closed. Another milestone, is in the middle of the screen, the kind of the purple line is just sections one and two were noticed to vacate or that those sections were gonna be closing March 1st of 2026. And so that word got out to the community and more people started actually moving into the TSSA. And then the blue line represents when the sections one and two were both closed. And so we've been stable, and then it's starting to come back down. You can see right now today we're at about 185 occupants. So this is just a map and kind of a snapshot in time. Just wanted to, again, kind of recap the closure of sections one and two. We went from 150 acres down to 75 acres. That was a very collaborative effort with the city of Bend and other community partners that really stepped up to help with that process. And then just reviewing the map here, anything in green is city owned and anything in blue is county owned. And then these are canals. If you're looking up at the screen, you can see my mouse. So those are off limits as well. So the next slide, I wanted to just provide a snapshot of the city of Bend maintains a really helpful and dynamic dashboard based on case management services provided by a number of our partners, including Neighbor Impact, Social Oregon Villages, Shepherds House Ministries, Reach, Companion, Animal Medical Project, and Mosaic. And we also have Amy Fraley here with the city in case the board has any questions specifically to the dashboard, how this information is accumulated. But you can see from the inception of when this dashboard basically first came online through November of 2025, there was 35 successful exits. And in cumulative back to February of 2025 through July of this year, there's been 68 successful exits. And then you can just see there's a lot of other data, including service hours, client engagements. So again, they've done a remarkable job working with providers to capture that information. And then the final slide just speaks to expenses and reimbursements. And so I tried to break this out by year, fiscal year. And what I did is just basically noted on-site services and operations, and this is specific to county expenses. So originally the city was paying 33%, and then when the county and the city entered into the joint resolution and IGA back in 2024, that went from 33% to 4%. to 50%. So I tried to capture, we tried to capture those reimbursements as well. We also had a small grant from COIC for 46,000 in fiscal year 2025. So just basically tried to outline for you what the onsite services and operations are by fiscal year, what reimbursements did we see in those timeframes? And then also on the right noted what we budgeted for this fiscal year and That takes into consideration if the board was to support going through keeping the TSSA open through June of 2027. And then also recapped on the right side, kind of bottom there. So fiscal year 2024 through fiscal year 2026 plus fiscal year 27 budgeted. It's county overall expenses is about 1.9 million. And after reimbursements, that nets out at about 1.552 million. And that covers about a 48-month period if we go through June of 2027. So with that, that is the end of our slides and we're happy to answer any questions. And again, we have Amy here if you have any questions specific to case management services.

Questions?

We're on 75 acres.

Yeah, total.

And I remember when I was talking about this a couple of years ago, we were hearing from the community and they're going, we have RV parks that are like very, you know, people come like our RV park and at the fairgrounds, everybody is there. And it's just like our managed camp that we've done with 36. And it's, I believe it's on five acres with 36 spots. And yet we still are using, we're using half the property now. Is that what you're saying? It went from 150 acres and we're still on 75 acres? Right. Doesn't that make it harder? And how many touches a week are they getting in? Because the examples that I was listening to out of EGA, which of course has the most homeless, whatever, for the nation, they said touches per week are really more impactful. The fact that we still have 186 people here. And I looked at the numbers, but It was like 18 less at one point in time. And now we're back up to 186. But then don't want some of these people to leave in the winter because usually some people do.

So for the record, Amy Greenlee, Senior Program Manager with the City of Bend. So I'm just looking at, for instance, the total service hours for the month that I was utilized up here. So that was 680. And if we divide it by 30, then we're looking at 22 hours. per week, 23 hours per week. So that was the first question.

Right, yeah. OK. But how many people are they actually talking to? I mean, if we have all these groups, how many times is someone actually being engaged? I mean, is it every two days? Is it once a week? I don't know if they're there for, are they working with somebody for an hour? Are they working with somebody for 15 minutes? Yeah, we need to get you this and this and this.

So what I will say is that service providers, they have different areas of expertise. They have different services that they're providing. Some are doing direct housing-focused case management. Some are doing housing-focused case management through veterinary care or behavioral health and medical care. And so you will see that providers are out there one or two days a week, sometimes as much as three. But we rely on those partners to set their schedule based on their budget and meet the need of the folks that are out there.

Okay. So there are some people out there that are working on art getting paid. I'm sorry. Are there people out there that are actually working out there and not getting paid and actually doing wonderful work?

Of course. Yes. I would say the Cobo is an example of who's out there on a consistent basis, but they did not apply for dollars through the health services grant program. And so they're not being paid by the city county grant. Okay. I think Ben Equity is out there as well. I think Peace Kitchen might be out there too.

And so, yeah, other groups are out there. So have you thought about like helping some of those people that are out there with some funding?

I mean, so we had a grant application that went through the city and we offered those dollars to people that applied for and it was allocated through that process. But that was like a couple of years ago.

Okay.

So we're not going to, we wouldn't redo it and see if there's, if, if there's any kind of a need for other people to be reimbursed.

So I would think at this point, we'd be looking for confirmation that that allocation was coming forward before we could talk about opening it up wider and right now we're looking to whether that 125 will be coming through the grant process.

Also, I think we are talking about a six-month extension. We're going to do this for another two years, so let's revisit the whole organization of the thing. There's probably a strong argument for six months if you've got a working formula not to mess with it.

Yeah, but it's, I think we could be, I think more people could be getting help. I know our Veterans Village has graduated over 51 people from that program. Now that's been a couple of years. That's a couple of year program, but it has been incredibly successful. So just like, is there something that we could redo here that we could become more successful?

I'm not sure. I think we are successful. People are moving on to shelter and permanent housing, fire, has been reduced both at the TSSA and the surrounding area.

But we did a lot of work out there. We spent $150 an acre cleaning with the burn bots. So, I mean, we had to do work in order to keep the city safe. And our intent is clearly necessary. This work. But then what about Bethlehem Inn, who does have standards? Have any of the people, Amy, do you know that have moved to Bethlehem Inn?

I'm sure there have. I haven't asked that specific question, but we have had folks that have moved into state parking across the shelter can take them. So I'm absolutely sure somebody's got the guy. Somebody. Does that mean like one family or a couple? Like I said, I'm not sure. We don't keep client level information at the city. Like we don't participate in HBIS. We rely on our community partners to do printing them.

Is there anyone in the room that knows that?

we would have to pull a report to get you that information out of HMIS and track it, right? We track households, but we'd have to track to see how many entrants, you know, how many books came from, that is likely something we should pull out of the system.

Well, I just think Bethlehem Inn does such a great job. And, you know, if we knew that 10% of the people actually moved out to Bethlehem Inn, that would make me feel like, oh my gosh, you know, we're actually, you know, the more people we can help to get on a higher level, I think it's important.

I think a higher level is anything out of the TSSA. And so when you're moving through shelter and it's, it's a continuum. And so we will see people that are going into lower shelter initially, and then transitioning out to higher barrier shelter. like whether it's Veterans Village or whether it's VI or whether it's some kind of sorority-based living. And so it is a spectrum, and sometimes it takes all of those steps to get people into permanent housing.

Well, I was just at the Veterans Village most recently, and they actually had some vacancies for veterans. And so I got ahold of all the people that I knew that might have somebody that would qualify to move in there. But yeah, it was, you know. And there are veterans at the TSSA right now.

Okay.

so they would need to meet some screening requirements exactly we're going to be able to train to be ready for a high barrier program and very often that takes a lower barrier shelter in order to get through those steps and qualify if i could speak to kind of the the the footprint that the acreage um we absolutely have a And I'm sure that makes it a lot easier to do security patrols and deliver services, but it also cost us several hundred thousand dollars of grading and fencing to develop that. And so it's, since this is always been called a temporary safe state area, unless we were to make the decision that we wanted And so then we're stuck with the topography that's there and people are going to be dispersed. I think that actually is a very useful way to think about things to encourage us to, if the managed camp is successful, Redmond. Also, we're still pretty early in that process. So, you know, I'm very hopeful and optimistic, but we don't have the proof to say that the managed camp is a success.

But I want to thank Mr. Gales for his patience. I believe he has nine acres that he's been working on for, what is it, three years at least? Oh, four years. Anyway, yeah, thanks, Craig, for coming and and being part of this discussion.

Additional questions or thoughts? Yes, I would say I'm very grateful to all of the people who came to provide public comment today. you know, emphasize some key considerations for us. This is not the ideal place, but it is a pretty good place for the purposes of a temporary safe state area. It has been effective at moving many, many people through. I mean, you look at those numbers and, you know, if it's 220 people at one point and 185 people at another point, Those 185 people weren't all there when we counted 220 people. There's a substantially larger number of people moving out than the aggregate number suggests. This is absolutely a place that is containing unsheltered homelessness. so that it is not everywhere in our community. And there would be much greater costs spread across public safety organizations, emergency response organizations, and medical organizations in our community if these people were in this location receiving coordinated services know they can find them on a regular basis. So I would say that we can always hope for more in terms of more people transitioning more quickly out of homelessness, but the TSSA has provided a very important function in our community for quite a while now. So I this program for another six months uh and i am concerned that there is there are not other places established for people to go um if we were to close the temporary safety area then december we we will have more places for people to go in the future but um we you know some of those things are going to take a little bit more time you know as Mr. Mayor, thank Mr. Gales for what he's trying to do out on the east side of Bend. Those are the places that we are placing our long-term hopes right now, but we have not been, you know, in part because our land use, the county's own land use planning system only proceeds at give people a good alternative place to go from the TSSA if we wanted to close it down right now. So there are a lot of very good reasons to consider extending this program for six months.

I thought we'd already extended it. It seems to be kind of like we haven't extended the funding for it so that it has to go together.

We decided in January with our colleagues from the Penn City Council, but we didn't do the paperwork and formalize that agreement until now.

So nine months later, we're formalizing.

We need to get through budgets, Commissioner Adair, and understand how that would work with the managed camp.

There was a lot to look at, so we waited until we got through the budget, so we're through. You mean the budget in May? The budget that was adopted at the end of June, yeah.

And the other two pieces that, as I understand correctly, the city of Bend adopted the resolution many months ago and is scheduled to review and potentially approve the IGA this Wednesday. Okay. That's correct.

And then the city also set aside $1.7 million in one-time land use proceeds to fill some other gaps.

Okay.

I mean, you know, just to recall back to January, it was a very good discussion with our colleagues from the Nancy Council. And, you know, two of the things in particular that, you know, I've come up today that, you know, it's good to remember how those decisions were made were, number one, that we would shrink the footprint of the TSSA. So you can see on this map that once upon a time, there were people in sections one and two on this map. And at this point, we have compressed to the point where we've got people, basically there's no encampments on the east side of Canaan. East side of the pipe. We also we used to have people in that little patched area down in the in the corner um on on the county property and now that's closed down as well. So that was one of the agreements that you know what it was made with the bed city council and that we have staff has delivered. That was

Mr. Chair, I also want to point out that there was expectation from both the city and the board that after a certain date that we would not allow new people to enter the TSSA.

That was June of this year. And we've been working with the city and delivering on that as well. So we work with our security firm. And when new people, if new people arrive, we tell them they need to leave immediately. Mr. Chair, I believe that was that was your or one of your concerns.

In order to be successful when you're meeting with people, if you keep adding more people, it makes the work much harder. Honestly, I was really hoping that we would have been more successful with more people at this point, because it looks like, okay, so we went up a couple people after that day, and it's taken a while to get down from the two-quarter team. I just know the more times people are helped and the more times you have long-term relationships going, you can just be accomplishing what we want. We need to accomplish. People need help. They need to find their way back.

I will just add with the closure of the area, which was very important in order to start scaling back, that we were able to have a by name list, Neighbor Impact and a security company. And so the number had fluctuated because many people work during the day. And so it was just difficult. Our kids were in school or people were in school or getting services in town. So you'll see that the number bounced around a little bit. And once we had the by name list in place, we were able to really track people. and track those transitions better. What day was that, Amy? So that was June 1st. And so we do notice people when they come in that they have to leave almost immediately or be trespassed from the area or removed. And so that's been in place since June, though it took a little bit of time to work out some kinks. Like if somebody had left and they came back or if there's a family member that's coming or returning. And so we've just been trying to and figure that out a little bit. So they kept finding people perhaps that were new people that they thought were other people because of job schedules and things like that. So we're really confident with the number now and it is finding list.

Yeah, and I want to thank Chuck for sharing some of the families that have moved. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Fabulous work for your team for doing that and getting those children into real homes. So That was really great to hear.

Any further questions or comments or thoughts or emotions? No.

Commissioner Chang, did you want to make that a motion then?

Like me to make a motion? I could make a motion.

Well, we could work together, so yeah.

Okay. Move approval of joint resolution number 2026-003 with the city of Bend. Further move approval to authorize the county administrator to sign document number 2026-003 governmental agreement with the city of Bend to extend the temporary safe state area through June 30th, 2027, and to provide additional resources.

Okay, so I can second that. And even though we will have new commissioners as of 1st of January, it's okay that we allocate that funding at this point in time legally? We can.

And it's included in the budget that has already been approved. So it's in our 2026-27 budget. So it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion?

So it's a shame. We have this land use system. We put people in the cities and keep the rural rural. 50 years later, after Senate Bill 100, there's this appeal process for letting anything happen outside of the city. But the overflow happens in the rural. They have a code enforcement case. And we're dealing with breaking the law for the land use that's so sacred in the state of Oregon, one issue. And we don't have funding for this. Counties don't have reoccurring revenue for managing, keep writing checks for this. It's a real shame that, you know, I mean, I love people and I want to help people, but we don't have a structure for how to do this. When we extend, we just keep opening up and it's like, well, let's just do it a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Government, public, private, nonprofit, right? So private makes money, government sets the foundation for common services for everybody, and nonprofit provides these services. So now government's doing nonprofit work and funding nonprofit work, and it's just getting a little messy. The whole state of Oregon, from the governor's office and the legislature, needs to re-look at this. Driving into Salem, walking on the side streets, it bends sometimes. It's very, very awkward when there's people sleeping at the edge of the road here. So The whole thing is kind of a rough situation and a lot of passion. Let's go do good work. But to come in here and say, the county has to go write more checks and do more things and extend the time, I won't be supportive.

Anything else? I would just like to know that some people are actually going on to they're realizing that they have to follow rules and they have, they're getting that help so that they can't go onto Bethlehem. And actually, I just feel like that's such a positive program in our, I mean, I know there are other programs. I know we have the safe parking, which apparently we're still having an event, but the program in Redmond has really been decimated. Yes. And then of course we've got 75 cottages being built in Redmond. So, Yeah. I'd just like to hear that more families are aging care.

Short of doing like an exhaustive study or, you know, like a, you know, kind of survey, it would be awesome to have if staff could touch base with a couple of these staff of shelter or transitional housing providers and just ask them, do you have a story you could share with

We collect narratives. So I'd be happy to put that together as part of people's monthly reports. And so we can definitely pull those. And we've been putting together some legislative material as well. So we do have a collection of stories that involve the TSSA successfully through the system. So I can get those to you by the end of the week.

That would be great to have, you know, like that strand, you know, those strands of the story to kind of flesh out the numbers. Okay. Fantastic. Ready for a vote? Okay, well, who do I ask first?

Just ask either. It doesn't matter.

Mr. Deere? Yes. Mr. DeVoe? No. And Chair votes yes. Great. Thank you. Item number two on our agenda is continued discussion of a model of the festival space car. I was getting set up. Go ahead.

So I said, hey, I want some pictures of that. But yeah, it was something that we've been working on. Are you ready? Yeah.

For the record, Kyle Collins, Senior Planner. I'll point out I have a few other colleagues in the room with me. Alvoren Streep, our Community Wildfire Protection Supervisor, and some other members of CDD staff sort of scattered around. I don't have a presentation or anything to give you here. This is truly just an informational check-in, just as a reminder of how we got to this point. So back in April, the Oregon State Fire Marshal adopted available for local government jurisdictions to adopt. At that point in time, or just before they actually released the final version of that model code, we had some staff from the fire marshal's office. They sort of explained the general process by which the model code came into being, answered some generic questions around, was there any funding attached to this? What do the rules allow and disallow? But at that point, it was very high level. And since that time, it was directed to us as So in your packet today, we've attempted to cover really as broad a possible scope as we could. It covers everything from administration questions, possible funding questions down to the integrity of what do you do with vegetative material after it's actually properties for us county. So there's a lot of different issues to touch. We can go through one by one if you'd like, or it can just be an open-ended conversation

So the code is a couple pages, right? I mean, that's what we're talking about is this. Pre-brief. That could be put into our Deschutes County Code saying these are the defensible space standards as published by the state of Oregon, adopted into Deschutes County Code. Correct. And then after that, we walk out with the clipboards every year and make sure somebody's compliance with the code. That's kind of the big

One is the model code really is intended as like a ground for level of what a regulatory environment might look like. So this is the base model. Local governments can amend it to a certain extent so they can go above and beyond what those requirements are.

Well, so that difference between, so adopting it, implementing it. Correct. Are you referring to changing it, making it more restrictive when you say that? Potentially. Yeah, so that would be a policy choice. So I'm thinking implement, you know, whatever it is, Implementing is going to be key.

Yeah. So the second big piece there, which is also important, is in terms of how it's implemented, how it's enforced ultimately, the option there? And then in terms of when you're actually performing, if inspections are ultimately required, when you perform those inspections, how often are you performing them? And then who has the legal authority to do those? It's also undue.

And then it's already implied or expected that enforcement and compliance is required here? Because adopting and saying, this is the best standards, go do it if you'd like, is different than Here's the best standards. You shall do this or else. Here's a ticket. You're going to have an open enforcement case. You're not going to get out of it until you comply. So I mean, just there's maybe different standards. And this is for us. I'm not attacking you. I'm just thinking through what we're doing. I mean, I don't think it would be code if it wasn't a requirement.

So ultimately, yes, if you are adopting this particular model code, it does appear to come with regulatory teeth of some kind. form or fashion. The actual implementation of that and what that looks like on the ground is much more available. But the short answer to your question is it is a code, and yes, it would presumably have some needed enforcement that would come along with it.

And when you started enforcing it, that's where some of the gray area of opt to code and not have enforcement take effect for X period of time, which would reduce the lighting coordinates. Basically to give society time to catch up and people to plan for how they would implement. I mean, I do want to say that not doing this is basically continuing the status quo. And the status quo is we do a lot of really good education for people. And we do a lot of really good technical assistance and cost share assistance to the extent that we can scrunch up federal resources or other resources, state resources to improve them. Once a few are off, they all go. But where that puts us is that we are ahead of probably most counties in the state in terms of implementation of defensible space on people's property. The challenge is that technical assistance and cost share assistance and education has gotten us farther than other places, other communities, but it has not gotten us to a place where we are measurably safer than we would otherwise be. When you've done the work, And that's the ongoing struggle. And we hear reports back. We heard so many reports back during the flat fire last year. Oh, the houses that had done the work, it was so much easier to protect them. And we could just put some minimal effort in there, and then we could run on to the next house. And that results in tactical decisions that are not good for the community. I mean, if you have to be providing fire house to house instead of doing direct attack on a fire, if you could be using your resources to do that instead, I'm not saying that I'm ready to adopt a requirement, a code today or this year, but I'm saying that there are really important reasons for us to consider how we could get there.

Okay. So there's a scenario here where a private property owner shall be required to do this defensible space. And it's the same in the lighting workings too. And previous agenda item, government shall provide resources to somebody who's not gonna be able to take care of themselves. So I'm just pointing out the dichotomy of that situation here. We can put more rules and regulations for private property owners, expectations, hard expectations, but TSSA is going to be extended because we don't want to have conflict and through that.

It's an interesting dynamic. Yeah, asking people to take care of their property so that their house...

Requiring them to take care of their property, not ask, it's a requirement.

Yeah, so... I mean, sugarcoating the way you use your words. I would say we're asking them to take care of their property so that their own house doesn't burn down. And requiring them to take care of their property so that they don't burn their neighbor's house down.

And I'm just pointing out, we're putting people in different buckets by doing different choices. Which is a shame. Congratulations, you own property, you shall do this.

Well, if you want to keep your insurance, you shall do it. because the insurance companies are all over this now. And honestly, Kyle, I brought this up before, and I think the requirement in Sun River is like 20 or 30 feet. I touched it somewhere in Sun River for people to see, but that 301-2, that five-foot combustible space, to me that is just so, it needs to be bigger. It's got to actually, you're going to tell people to do something, tell them to do something that's actually going to make their, their residents safer. So I know, I think it's 20 or 30 feet in Sun River.

And I couldn't speak to Sun River's standards specifically. So again, I'll just...

I mean, I know they can always have more, but if we're actually going to do something that's helping people be fire safe... Yeah, my understanding, I mean, I'm not a firefighter, I'll...

That five-foot noncombustible space standard, I think, has largely been in agreement of that's a good place to start, basically, and everything else that you can add on top of that might help you be more successful. There's also still requirements for vegetation management outside of that five-foot space. So you go out to what happens within 30 feet, that's all listed in the code as well. And then, again, just to reiterate,

local jurisdictions could consider like maybe that non-combustible space they want to make it 20 feet or 30 feet but whatever stacking your firewood five feet away from your house is not going to help you at all it's going to blow up and then you know the fire truck is just going to drive by so so we were to adopt a if we were to adopt this model we could consider adding to them in um bringing up some river actually Sun River basically has their own code. They have a requirement. Under a homeowner's association, they have a requirement. And they charge their residents and they do some of the work for them. Sisters at this point is at least going to adopt this requirement for new construction. And was not my radar. I try to keep in touch with the different fire districts, but we have this continuum of interest from fire districts. You have the Redmond Fire District, you got Sisters Camp Sherman Fire District, who are really pretty enthusiastic about this model of defensible space code. And then you have Deschutes Fire Protection District number two, who saying, we just want to keep doing taxable assistance and cost share assistance and see what we can accomplish with that. So, A, if we don't want a patchwork of different environments across the landscape, we need to be talking with city government homeowners confusing developers um yeah that's something that that needs to be dealt with um I do you know kind of follow that thought I think it would be really valuable to present just the information with the staff report to to the fire districts and so I was going to ask whether know that many of the fire districts participate in project wildfire for example um have we has there been any uh any discussion about this model events while spaceport there there has been discussion about it but this has not specifically been presented i think it would be i

There are several of them that attend, kind of in and out.

More than half, by the way. I think it would be great to have, I think they also have a fire chief's association.

They do, yeah.

So either there or Project Wildfire, it would be great to have a discussion with them about this. And then that question of consistency. to have different stuff um and you know are the fire districts that are feeling more wary you know are they hearing from the redmond fire that they're very ready to go um you can't do this stuff without uh without everyone being if not on the same page Just this same information, I think it would be great to deliver to the fire districts.

Yeah, I think we can pass that along pretty easily. I will say there's background conversations between us and some fire protection district staff, as well as some staff from some of the other communities. The city of Bend, for example, is having very similar conversations to you right now. I believe next week they're actually going to city councils. It is important probably to double underline what you just pointed out, which is the model code says that local governments can adopt this particular language. And local governments is pretty broad. It includes everybody from the county to the city to the fire protection districts. So Justin shoots. Redmond Fire has specifically already tried. They have submitted a request to adopt this locally. What that looks like in terms of their jurisdiction, how they're planning on enforcing all that, I don't know the answers to those questions, but I can tell you that there are at least movers that have pushed in that direction. The city of Sisters Reference, obviously, sort of preemptively adopted defensible space code, and now they're it's the board ultimately wants something in this vein, I think it's probably helpful to consider something like a working group between all the intergovernmental agencies, what that looks like, the fire protection districts, the cities themselves. Because the examples that we do have of places where something like this works, it usually happens under a big collective agreement between a bunch of different entities. It's usually not in a piecemeal approach. That's not to say that it couldn't ultimately be pushed in that direction, but It generally functions under, we know we all have different priorities, but for this particular issue of getting together, we have some joint management agreement between all of us and that guides where money is being directed, which projects are being prioritized, who actually has authority for inspections, of course.

The Marin and Boulder County examples were both really interesting. something that Mr. Adair mentioned, insurance. Do we have any idea whether in these places where they have gotten organized, are requiring defensible space, or they have come up with a funding stream to support the work, do insurers care? you know, are they are they more favorably inclined to continue to offer policies in that county? Are the rates better than they are in a neighboring county that you know the a community to consider taking these kinds of steps you know you would hope that people would just not want their own house to burn down that they would care about their neighbor's house but you know sometimes you know things don't become drivers to someone until it gets their pocketbook and you know being able to manage the

rapidly escalating insurance brand meetups in this community, I think that could be a pretty strong selling point. I don't know the answer to that question specifically for those communities. We could certainly reach out and try to get at least some anecdotal evidence from people working specifically in Boulder and Marin. I can say anecdotally we have heard from people in Project Wildfire from the sort of insurance actuary community of that. Implementation of the codes is ultimately in some sense a driver towards reducing agreements for these areas, because they can point towards specific actions. Now, what the actual, what that shakes out to in terms of cost, I don't know. Yeah, I mean.

Yeah, the legislature was for a while old neighborhoods or chunks of homes, all doing the work, getting a kind of certificate or a stamp, and then being able to show that to insurers and then requiring the insurers to give a discount. But I mean, the legislature can't put a number on that because the industry could just then say like, well, we'll give you your 5% discount. raise the premium 5% in the first place and then give you your 5% discounts. But yeah, discounts are a hard thing to get. But yeah, I mean, if there's anecdotal evidence from some of these places or from Sun River or the city of Cisberg, so they made this decision, are they doing favorable things for insurers. It's great to understand whether this industry that has all these actors, it's hard because it's a competitive industry with a lot of different insurers, whether this industry is responsive to communities doing stuff that physically make homes safer or not. Those are sort of my two of my first big thoughts. I guess the other thing I would say is kind of the potential first step of requiring defensible space for new homes. You know, just a few months ago, we decided to require our 327 uh wildfire resilient building materials for new homes um so it would actually seem silly to me not to do this to uh not to not to pair those two things um you know it is uh again for the county we don't have nearly the volume of uh new home construction permits at you know city of requiring that um it doesn't make a lot of sense to me not to require them to also do uh you know design their landscape to be wildfire resilient in the first place at least you know if they start off on the right foot then um if they're maintaining their their yard that it'll stay wildfire resilient but you guys we have to go back and think about the

how the wind speed, you know, September 7th of 2020, when that wind was 80 miles an hour in the northeast. And really, Boulder's fire was 105 miles an hour. And remember, those houses were all so close together. There are things that you need to do if you have a home. If you've got Christians outside, that's going to be another combustible thing. I mean, when you have that kind of wind, you have to be so prepared in order to save your home. And Do you remember seeing that on TV? It was the end of December of 21, where it just flipped through Boulder. And I'm like, you know, over a thousand homes lost. But you've got to, you know, if the house right next door is burning and you are so close, you've got all that heat. And, you know, it was a really big nightmare. And then our own 2020 with that email on our wind, who was really ready for that in order to Make sure that all the things that are outside of your place shouldn't be there. And I'm talking about like wood furniture and all that, because all of that is so combustible. And it's really, it's a challenging issue.

So for the new construction concept there, I think there's a big difference between a manufactured home coming on site or a stick-built home. Because I've seen a manufactured home single wide home or whatever you're multiple sections even they just want to sneak it in the trees a lot different than when you're flip you're building it on site and there's equipment going around and dropping up bringing up joists and stuff uh so you know it's just one of the things i've seen on the ground is the fact that sometimes a manufactured home after it's put in and he's like well let's not touch any of the trees around it which i don't also want the defense whole space maybe to point out

me of the concept. Ultimately, the board is able to do it. So the concept that Commissioner Chang has referred to, we're tying these things to new development, which is something very similar to what the City of Sisters obviously is proposing as well. That's obviously something that the SCDD have a decent amount of experience with, with some big caveats. And the big caveats are we are not firefighters. We have people like Lauren, at this point, soon to be three. So there is training and expertise, knowledge that has to be involved in actually doing whatever these inspections look like prior presumably to issuing something like a certificate of occupancy. And then even if that does happen with just new construction, there's an embedded ongoing condition of approval associated with that, which basically says like you have to maintain this particular set of standards in place over time And it's not clear when that might happen. Is there a re-inspection cycle? Is it purely based on code enforcement complaints, which is how a lot of our programs that deal with these ongoing conditions are not even related to wildfire happen. And so, again, it's just the universe of different ways that this might play out is helpful to keep in mind.

No, I mean, just having a construction requirement It doesn't get us anywhere near where we need to go. But on the other side, allowing somebody to build a new home and put in a death trap landscape around it also doesn't make a lot of sense. So I would think of it as a start, just one of many things, one small thing that we can do. relatively low-hanging fruit. And also because we adopted R-23-27, it doesn't make sense to me to approve a new home, require them to make it wildfire resilient,

What does it look like from your point of view for the work plan? Because there's an annual work plan. We probably said, hey, go figure this out. Now you're back in front of us. We're going in different directions here. I don't know that we're going to get a lot of direction action today.

Right now, it's kind of at the board's discretion what they want us to do. I mean, obviously, I mentioned different things that you can consider. I mean, you don't have to take any action, ultimately, if you don't want to.

I do see this as an umbrella countywide effort, a big partnership, obviously. Project Wildfire's got a lot of history there, but we should be sitting down with all the jurisdictions, make sure fire agencies understand what we're talking about here, and either say, oh yeah, the code works for us, or because we're in the high desert on the east side of the Cascades, maybe if there's a proposal, we should all acknowledge it up front as much as we can. So I really like that umbrella effort. And thinking about countywide, it does talk about No matter what direction you turn, there's dollars involved here. That's just for the community to start digesting. Because, you know, there's going to be a homeless fee someday so we can help fund all the things we're spending money on. But this is going to be a reoccurring inspection system of some sort. And obviously, we're in Boulder County here. And California has already done this, too. To bring the dollars in so we can have the folks that are out there. doing those inspections, and as I say, the enforcement and the citations and things, that really gives me heartburn, but that's going to be part of this thing. Also, material disposal. 10, 15 years ago, there was a lot of pride in stopping the discussion about a biomass plant. What a shame. The state of Oregon, Department of Forestry, everybody wants money. But if we could do anything for that beneficial combustion, forest waste, combined heat and power, optimal. Obviously, you know, 12 sets out the back door is what's been, wholesale has been what's been mentioned in the past. Prideville's trying to do that now. But they can take truckloads of this stuff every day. You know, we're not going to go back to the 150 years ago, lightning strike fire. They should just walk across the whole forest floor and clean up naturally. We're not going to do that anymore because there's too many people here. But we should definitely lean into biomass. And that's just for us to all hear about or talk about.

So, Lauren, what's the number? I know when I started, we had 35 firewise communities.

Are we at like 105, 104? We're at 124. And that's with, and I can give you the breakdown between the pending applications and the active. I'm happy to send that over to you. But I think we're at 124.

That is really positive. I noticed I was driving into Aspen Lakes the other day. They had their fireways, and I don't think they'd been there originally. So, yeah, we've definitely tripled them. So, good job.

So, Commissioner Chang, were you referring to biomass as not economically viable? Biomass power plant is not economically viable. Yeah, so there's a lot of things we subsidize in our community, and when you do a project, you need to say, okay, I need a power purchase contract, and I need to be able to get it funded for 20 years. So how much does it cost to buy that down? So it is viable. Energy is very important. Ancient oil out of the ground is what world wars are for. We've got hundreds-year-old fuel all around us that's threatening us that we could be burning. There's probably some value in subsidizing that, making a long-term commitment. So writing it off as not economically viable is just a way to do it, but maybe the social value of burning is very valuable. especially as smoke in the summertime, when we have to stand here and choke on smoke, and we can have a biomass plant with a bag plant, no particulate matter coming out, clean CO2 combustion, there's a lot of value in that.

You want to charge people more on their electricity bill every month?

Go for it. We just subsidized homeless by a million dollars for the last few years. What is a million dollars going to do for that? You're just cutting it off at the knees by saying that. What does subsidizing it look like, and how can the numbers be read? What subsidies need to be in place to get it to a 6, 8, 10 cent kilowatt hour dollars?

Yeah, I'm more interested in more commercially viable biomass solutions.

Well, that's what I just want to promote it. That's what I'm promoting.

No things that are more commercially viable than trying to make a lot of biomass pump.

Sorry. Okay. Well, like, like carbon, like, but that's federal and state subsidized carbon market. You have to pay extra to have your carbon sequestered. That's subsidized also too. So no matter which way you turn, it's going to be some kind of a scenario. I mean, you've said, let's do carbon sequestration, corporate carbon credits. Same thing.

It's not the same thing, but that's all right. What do you want to do about this? Just share my words. I'm using words here. If you don't want to do anything, just talk it out a little. If you don't want to do anything about this, we can wait until 2021. This is a very valuable compilation of, you know, like a survey of other communities and, you know, constraints, limitations, challenges, all summarized very well for a future board to consider.

Well, I support doing an outreach and figuring out what an umbrella effort looks like countywide. I mean, there's no reason to sit on this for four, five, six months. I mean, if there's support from this board, just say, okay, you know, this is it. Does Deschutes County take the leadership role or not? That's a question. I'm not answering that today. But getting everybody that wants to raise their hand, figuring out who needs to be at the table that hasn't raised their hands, I think that's a good effort, right?

lean a little bit on either Peter or Will or both collectively, but if the board did want to add something to the board plan specifically towards I don't know if it goes quite as far as developing an intergovernmental agreement at this point in time, but at the very least, searching what that might look like, coordinating all the different entities that might be involved.

If there isn't bandwidth, this isn't a high priority item. I'm just thinking, how do we put a little direction to it?

And the record you're planning manager will grow. So, you know, the discussion you're having today, I've thought about a lot of it. You know, there's lots of different ways through this and a lot of different ways you could keep going as you go through this. It's always seemed to me that a first step would be, and I think you already stumbled on it appropriately, is talking to our partner jurisdictions, talking to our fire chiefs, talking to Project Firewise. I think it's a relatively modest ask. You know, ultimately, when you look at other jurisdictions who do this, they generally don't It sits as a standalone organization where, you know, a community development department might enclose new housing regulations and, you know, a different organization might bring funding and another so on and so on. But this initial part that really is just, I think, is getting people moving in the same direction, at least finding if they're willing to. And so in that space, you know, a relatively modest ask, I think, is to have Kyle in this function, you know, go to Project Wildfire and say, hey, I was in front of the board on date. And they were interested to learn more about how you and your organizations think about this issue and what types of coordination you'd like. Are there models you'd like? Do you love Marin? Do you love Boulder County? Do you love Los Angeles County? Do you think none of them could work in Oregon? And, you know, I think that those are probably, you know, attending a meeting or two. And then coming back at some point in the future with sort of a report, hey, we talked to our partners. Here's what people are excited about to do in this space. I think one of the things you're going to find out about this is a lot of what functions in California comes from the legislative level. So there are requirements at the California state legislative level that says if your community does X, then the insurance company must offer discounts. And to your point, discounts can evaporate pretty quickly. But there's discounts offered per project for being a firewise community. There's discounts offered for creating other things. So that insurance component could be in there. But I think there's a relatively, I think if you were going to go very robustly towards this or try to take a very modest approach, either way, the first step is talking to our partners and seeing where they stand. I think that's a valuable step and it's a small ask and it doesn't require us to knock aside major parts of our work plan and we can come back to the board after that and say, hey, where do you want to see us go with this information? So I think that's probably the easiest thing to do in the interim to keep this moving without committing a lot of resources or committing to a particular path.

Well, and this memo lays out a lot of good information. So just even sharing this memo with other fire district boards and city councils or whatever, kind of the outreach umbrella there.

Yeah, happy to.

which gives you a chance to highlight the forward thinking work that, you know, some jurisdictions are already doing. You know, in Sun River, owner's association is not even a, you know, sort of like a city council, basically, but it's not. And, you know, it's like, look, you live in Sun River, you live just outside Sun River, You've got requirements, you've got no requirements. You live in Sisters, you live just outside Sisters. And give the Redmond Fire District a chance to tell their colleagues why they're pushing. I think that that would be a very valuable discussion.

Of course. So I hear that maybe this isn't a CPD leadership function either, right? I mean, how much of this does underseat their community development effort at the county? So, Lauren, congratulations. Maybe there's something that's coming your way.

And actually, I promised her on this front just to acknowledge that she's there for, you know, I think in some ways, you know, if this program is going to open 10 years from now, there's going to be a program There's money, there's programs, there's coordination to go with it. You know, and I'm not advocating that we go in that direction. It's just that, you know, these things start with one, you know, having somebody who's thinking about this all the time and bringing it together. And, you know, right now our bodies are full and in particular CDD, you know, directly and create community engagement. And at the same time, we anticipate the board has historic, they probably will in the next year, have a lot of interest in our existing resources for projects. So if this was to be a largely CED incubated project, it would display some other resources that might be allocated in other ways beyond this sort of So we want to bring back to an award plan session, which would be, hey, do you want to commit these resources, which will be. Unavailable for other things for a period of time to achieve this effect.

So, anybody else in the state doing this at this time.

County level, not that I know of. Yeah, I couldn't comment to that directly. I'm sure there are conversations. And other jurisdictions that are happening, but. Nobody's kind of made the news about the discussion. In large part, you are certainly the only jurisdictions that I'm aware of that have specifically invited the State Fire Marshal's Office to come and speak to this at length.

In terms of the mechanics, I'm still I'm still So we added the R3-27 requirement. That means that there are building inspectors who have to do more stuff than they used to do. Are we, has, have we added to do dwelling application fees to cover that additional work?

Sir chairman, members of the commission, Peter Gutowski, community development director, you know, our fees are based on valuation. So to the extent that fire hardening obligations offer a small delta to the overall cost of the construction, that's kind of baked in to that. I can tell you, Krista Appleby, our building official and her staff, I think they're very working their way through the engagement with the design professionals. A lot, some of them are looking for alternative methods. I'm just giving you more context. Invariably, bad information is going to get out there. Design professionals are going to be educated. They're going to know how to apply R327 over time. But there's a bit of a learning curve and then to the theme of collaboration and consistency. Our team is working with the city of Bend to make sure that the interpretation of these alternative methods are consistent across jurisdictions. So it's a good comparison. I think R327 is a good comparison. As you said, we're Deschutes County with Lawrence leadership, the history of Project Wildfire, disaster and hazard mitigation plan, all the community WPPs, and on and on. This region has separated itself for quite some time. The collaboration we have with other entities throughout the levels of government is just another example. The municipal space is just much more complicated, as Kyle's detailed memo dictates. I would just offer one of the, you know, the engagement that can occur to listen to our partners to understand from one another. One of the outcomes could be that through those listening sessions with the understanding of kind of what the requisite elements need to be to implement defensible space at a, I'll call it a region-wide scale, there could be a white paper that comes out and identifies these kind of critical factors that need to be in place in Deschutes County. And that's shared with elected officials, potentially the state, which allows those individuals who have direct connections with with leadership across Oregon to talk about, you want defensible space to occur, you need to have these requisite elements. And I think this is a natural process to begin identifying what resources, what collaboration, et cetera, need to occur. I don't think this, I think the state fire marshal is really looking to Deschutes County to lead because that's what we do. That's what the three of you do. That's what your partners across the region do on a daily basis. That's what separates us. And at the same time, I think that there's tremendous opportunities to educate everyone about what could work, how it work, what elements do you need in place. So I just leave that as a placeholder. It starts with a conversation, and you have a tremendous leadership team, specifically to Lauren and her colleagues. So I offer that for your thoughts as we begin robust conversations about defensible space and all the requisite elements that are noted in Kyle's memory.

I don't want to sign anyone up to project wildfire the fire chiefs Association it's a good first step um and people are like we would love to all work together with the county to think about what this and you know how we can do this and we can proceed um but otherwise they you know you know what

So as you were talking, I was just thinking through, and I may have said this in the past a little bit, but in the 90s when I got introduced to this place, my wife's grandma, she told me, don't you touch any of those trees out there. Because I wanted to open it up. Naturally, I was out there trying to help. And she's like, don't touch those trees. But that was 40 years ago, and they're just all long spindly jackpies. It's northern clement, in fact. And, but that is the window of time we're talking about 50 and 100 years because before that was that natural lightning strike cut fire walking across the forest floor not those little ones weren't out we're out here. So it is an interesting scenario that we put ourselves in what's natural what what should it look like. I think we're seeing a lot of residences some of the crossroads off of neighborhood southern to shoots county. The road district figured out, oh, we need to open up our right-of-ways so the sun can get in and take the snow off. Residents were very upset about that. Hey, that's my tree. No, it's in the right-of-way. And it just grew up in the last 20 years from the small ones. But I think we are seeing a lot of people come to that conclusion. Oh, yeah, we need to open this up a little bit. Defensible space. You know, everybody's heard about it. Not everybody's acted. We do have... property owners that don't live in the area. There's two specific parcels like around the corner from my house that people always mention. Why don't they clean up their property? They never come here. There's just two parcels that are probably one or two acres that are just not maintained. But I think we're turning the corner a little bit too. People know that this discussion's happening.

Anything else on this?

I think I've got some good direction. I can certainly, I'll start coordinating those conversations with the fire districts. Let the commissioners know whenever those are ultimately going to happen. And most of it's going to be basically putting this same information in front of them that you just had today.

Maybe giving them like a full presentation. I read the statement a little bit. I don't know what their expectations are in therapy. Sure. So

I mentioned this in Project Wildfire about two months ago or whatever it was that we had talked about it three months ago now. And those are advocates, engaged neighborhood association members, some fire district people, city event. So there's a cross-section there, naturally. Absolutely.

And I think, yeah, we're all together.

See, I'd like to know, what did Boulder do? They had that terrible wind. Did they actually allow those homes to be built so close together again? You know, it would be, you know, look at what happened in Oregon. We burned down 4,000 homes in that fire, in those fires. And, yeah, so, I mean, my house was, as I said earlier, it was built 21 years ago. It was, you know, people knew that's what you needed to do. So we seem like we're catching up. And because of that weather pattern, you know, I don't think you can ignore it. Because when the wind is blowing, Mother Nature is completely in charge. Before you got here, Lauren, somebody from the Weather Bureau gave a talk and said, oh, we're going to have that kind of weather more. So that's been a few years.

Yes, but it happens again. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you. And check the numbers. It's 123 and 19 of those applications are pending for filing.

Okay, 123 and 19. Thank you.

um water districts that's always the time so lauren that was wonderful yes i can take it is that this and i certainly will thank you commissioner uh this morning um and uh dan bruce with the tumblewood domestic uh water district general manager is uh online as well if he can be if there are questions for him or if he has any comments at the board's discretion um called me this morning and asked me if the board was scheduled to consider the letter of support for a grant application this afternoon on the regional infrastructure fund for their water system improvement project. And I replied that I had not seen it. And it was in my, I'm sorry to say it was in my junk folder and it never came on my radar. So we coordinated quickly. He had sent me the draft letter already. I forwarded this to the board. THIS MORNING, THIS IS A COPY OF THE DRAFT LETTER BEFORE YOU THAT HE PREPARED, AND THANKS TO JEN PATTERSON, AS ALWAYS, FOR PUTTING THE DRAFT BACK AHEAD OF THE BOARD, BUT IN THE EVENT THAT THE BOARD WISHED TO SUPPORT THIS LETTER, ON BOARD LETTER HEAD. THE APPLICATION IS FOR APPROXIMATELY $1.5 MILLION TOWARD for the project. Is that correct, Jen?

The total project is $1.5 million. The funding available, which they don't apply for specific funding, is a minimum of $100,000 up to $1 million. So they would fall anywhere in that if they got approved for funding.

Perfect. Thank you. And as Dan mentioned this morning, their hope is to submit this application by the end of the day. Today, I understand the application might not be due for another couple days, but may still aim to apply for this this afternoon. I'm happy to answer any questions. Chris Doty is also, he was online. It does not appear that he is now a road department director. He's been coordinating on a number of topics, projects, et cetera, in Terrebonne as well. And I think I said Terrebonne about three times today as well. I started it. I'm getting the tongue twister going. But it is Terrebonne.

i mean i'd be supportive of signing a letter uh we could mention something about our transportation partnership uh investments by deschutes county to implement the lower bridge project just to put a sense of place around it and also the partnership for the core area sewer project which is expanding to the area i know that uh dan you and i've been together up there we talked to some of the board members and there's you know kind of push and pull on the the wellhead and the right-of-way for the sewer district, but let's all just be partners and move forward in all of this. And if there's ever anything we need to discuss, let's make sure that we're doing that together. Because I know that there's been media coverage and all kinds of stuff on the sewer district expansions. So Dan's been admitted. Are you there anymore, Dan? I admit that I'm on mute.

There we go. Sorry, I thought I was unmuted. Yes, I'm here.

Okay.

Considering this, yes.

So as I say, since a place would be that transportation investment in partnership with the state, and then we have leaned into, we can say for commercial purposes, the core area, because now it's expanding, but that's not where we started as board of commissioners. We'll just put a little bit of information in a letter like that.

What was the second one? I got the transportation investment.

The sewer investment. Just making Helping them lean into getting a phase of their sewer started.

Do you need to say water twice in that? I mean, is that the wording? I can't remember that. Okay. I just, I was like water, district water system. I was just like, okay, all right. Anyway, no, of course, all four are helping Terra Bond continue.

Okay. um i i would say another thing to mention in the letter would be the tarabon community planning process that's happening because you know if the letter is expressing concern about about coming growth and accommodating growth then um we we want to emphasize that the county is helping to plan for the growth in tarabon um and that uh future growth that's going to come with road improvements, with the development of a wastewater district, and the completion of that plan.

But with that, I mean, I'll move support of a letter for the Terrebonne Domestic Water District to Business Oregon Regional Infrastructure Fund.

I'll second it.

With the discussion we had. And I do have a couple of more things I'd like to say. So I am absolutely supportive of the water infrastructure needs in Yitiravan, the need to upgrade these systems. I would like, there has been substantial discussion between the Water District and you know around wellhead protection about source water protection about right of ways about uh county roads i you know i feel pretty uh comfortable with the uh county roads explanation that the the kinds of source water protection with the county supporting the water district in whatever ways it can, but with the water district recognizing what the county can and can't do. So I just want to, while I'm very much supportive of this letter, I just wanted to say that in terms of the bigger picture of all trying to work together, to support the most modern and adequate and efficient infrastructure for the Terrebonne community. I hope that we can kind of proceed with those kinds of understandings. So maybe share that with the board, his board.

Yeah, we will definitely do that. And we're actually working with that. It sounds like... kind of a separate note, our council's been kind of working with your council and looks like there's, we're getting close to come to an agreement. So yeah, we appreciate all you guys' help and we're working to try and get this all resolved. So thank you very much. And, you know, kind of piggybacking on everything you guys discussed a little bit about the fire protection, One of the biggest things that this infrastructure upgrade is going to do is going to provide, I think it's an additional nine hydrants to an area that's never had fire protection since our founding in 1936. It's going to provide a lot of fire protection to a lot of homes that have never had it. So that is a big plus side to this project that we're doing.

Great. Good. Okay. So calling for the votes. Commissioner Derrick, did we make a motion?

No, Devon did. I seconded it.

um calling for the vote mission vote yes be sure there yes and chair votes yes thanks for joining us dear right um all right so item number four we're gonna get some background on this um thornburg uh quest uh i think we got a substantial significant amount in the first Staff is prepared to give us some background on this item, if you'd like.

Okay. Well, we started off, the letter just came. Commissioner Nair said maybe she'll schedule it for Wednesday. And now you are able to provide more content. We heard from the applicant there also.

Yeah, I still am not in a position to make a decision today on this. But I'm happy to hear more background.

Yeah, certainly. So this is a, I'll let Hallie speak a little bit to the filing question, just to give you sort of the context. We haven't done this in a while. The board is afforded the possibility through our Title 22 of calling up administrative approvals. And this is an administrative approval in that case. Typically, what would happen is in this 12-day appeal period, if no one appealed the decision, which is an approval for the facilities described, It would be approved and final. If someone did appeal it, it would typically be routed to the hearings officer and we'd conduct a hearings officer hearing and it would go on through there through the normal processes. But the board is afforded the opportunity to choose to call this up for, you know, it doesn't specify for what reasons, just because you'd like to. And that has to happen during the 12-day period that other people that would be afforded the appeal option. That appeal period closes out on 4 p.m. Wednesday, September 23rd. we have some time here so we could bring this back to you on either wednesday or monday as a uh as an item um additional context you know a kind of a full presentation so you could make a decision about it um certainly if it was your pleasure to direct us to um to move forward with that call up today, we could bring back an ordinance ready, or maybe in either circumstance, we bring back an ordinance ready that you could, or sorry, an order ready that you could either thumbs up or thumbs down with regard to a call up. And, but again, we're lucky that we're very early. Frequently when we do this, you know, there's a- We're on the last second of the last day. We're on the last second of the last day. And so we're early here and we have a procedure. And this is a process that the board cannot can engage in. And it's no urgency that be undertaken today, although certainly we're available for that.

So if we do this on Wednesday, but what if somebody files something tomorrow? Do they take precedent over if we made the decision on Wednesday?

They would still be an appellant to this matter, so they would have a legal status associated with it, but the board will have made a choice that it was processed via a board process rather than a hearings officer process. And no matter if it came in before or after in that 12-day period, the route would go directly to a board of commissioners. That's correct. And you can recall that there can be some confusing moments in that. So if there was a scenario, I think, years ago under which someone had appealed something and the board didn't call it up and that person withdrew their appeal and the board lost their opportunity to hear something. And so obviously you would be subject to that same risk here. If you were calling it up, it was decisively going to be in front of the board and you'd have that opportunity. But we can definitely present in more detail. You know, it's going to be important. I think we did fine today, but of course, to the extent that this is before you, you know, this is a quasi-judicial proceeding. We'll be careful about ex parte contacts. And that's where I started just acknowledging that we got this request.

Chair, can I just ask a question? Thanks to Kim, I didn't see the letter until the meeting, after this meeting had started. Peter had let me know that this topic may come up today or Wednesday right before this meeting, so I hadn't looked into it whatsoever. My question for planning staff is going to be, BASED ON THE REASONS THAT WERE GIVEN THAT THE BOARD SHOULD CALL US UP TO HEAR IT, HOW MANY MORE CASES COULD THIS HAPPEN TO IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS FOR THE EXACT SAME REASONS THAT THEN, YOU KNOW, AND THE BOARD MAY WISH TO HEAR THEM, AND THAT'S GREAT. THAT'S YOUR CALL. WE JUST NEED TO PLAN AND SCHEDULE AND ADJUST ACCORDINGLY. AND WHAT DOES IT DO TO PLANNING STAFF'S CAPACITY OVER THAT TIME? BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND THAT THERE'S UP TO 22 ITEMS THAT MAY BE COMING BEFORE THE BOARD. THIS ONE IS PROBABLY 23. THIS ISN'T ONE OF THOSE 22. This is an incredibly rare circumstance. The only time I'm aware of this happening in the past were with the marijuana hearings that we had many years ago, which was a board priority. And so we issued those decisions. I was the community development director at the time, and that was the process and procedure that the board established at the time for those applications. I'm not aware that this has happened since where an applicant has come directly to you in a public meeting and asked for you to initiate that review. So I'm just, if you're... I'm sorry for raising all this here on the fly. I normally wouldn't do this, but I'm just learning about this as it's occurring. I'm thinking about the board's calendar and the precedent it may establish.

Well, yeah, I mean, in light of that, what kind of a scenario is this? Calling out means public hearing, means open record, means decision. I don't have a feel for it. All I did is just bring it up here today.

So of the 22 items that... that if it went through its normal path and Thornburg, things have been, to Cam's point, have been relentlessly appealed. And we would be anticipated, there's no reason to believe that this wouldn't. And at the same time, not everything's appealed. So we had anticipated as we were looking at kind of very preliminary board end of the year workflow patterns, that there's a possibility that this would be in your aerospace already. If it went through a hearings officer, it would show up later. You know, there are the advantages of hearings officers certainly are that, you know, issues are vetted. You know, attorneys have a chance to go through things. You know, there weren't staff approved this application. There weren't significant, you know, the reason why we would deny something is someone says there's a rule, this person doesn't meet it, and they have a credible reason. And there was, you know, relatively low participation and not focused participation at the staff level. And frequently, opposition will withhold some of their heavy hitters until later points in the process. This is pretty typical. So we have a staff approval at this time. It may or may not be appealed. The advantage of a board calling it up is it shortens the total time that the applicants in front of Deschutes County, to the extent they're on their way to Luba, and it gives the board a chance to engage directly with it. The counterpoints or the things that are difficult about this is that it is during a time when the board's time will be very constrained. CDD is likely, you know, going to be using up a lot of your calendar. And this, this will bring that, you know, that this will bring it in without the benefit of a hearings officer having done that legal review, cleaning it up a little bit narrowing the issues. But neither of these are impossible, impossible to surmount. They're just things of relative balance.

two, whatever that means. I'd still like to, again, I think I saw something in my email box, but I had not had a chance to read it. This is to vote on that today. And I'm not either. I'm saying let's bring it back to a meeting. Oh, I thought you were saying you wanted to do the administrative call. Okay.

And we should either bring it back for Wednesday or Monday, whatever.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to.

Thank you for stepping up today. That's really appreciated.

Yeah, glad to help out.

Yeah, no.

I didn't bring my calendar with me. On Wednesday, Brenda was kind enough to sort of get us set up for a short meeting, you know, a little heavier today, so that some of us could go to the fan luncheon. Is there... We still don't have time, though. I think so. Plus the executive session. Is it okay to add this?

Your, and it's great that we have CDD here. Your 935A, your last item that's scheduled on the agenda before executive session is the second reading of ordinance. Right, so five minutes. So that's a five, and excuse me, that's Cambria County Ambulance. I'm sorry, that's not CDD. That's another coding member. So right, that's five minutes. And then the executive session, even if that takes up to an hour, that would take you to it. 1030. But if it could, I don't think there are a couple of the comments. Yeah. But no, no, I don't know that they would. Thank you. So I think I think you'll be good to add this. And that's what you pretend to then you just did. So we'll, we'll see you on Wednesday.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I need a motion to add that to do.

Right. So do you have executive now? No, you can go to that other item.

There are many other

Are there, at this time, are there any other items? Seeing none, this meeting is adjourned.