Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We'll call the meeting to order. First action item are public comments unrelated to anything on the agenda tonight. Is there anybody that would like to make a comment? This is for items that aren't on the agenda. Go ahead. State your name and address.

So, yeah, my name is Eric Garrity. I live in the city of Prineville and work in Bend. But for the purposes of my comment, I think the most important thing is the past five and a half years of work at the TSSA Juniper Ridge area as a service provider that helps run the Bend Equity Project.

Sorry, what's that?

Okay.

So, yeah.

For the past six years, I've been working there and the TSSA has been remarkably successful. As you can tell, I wasn't planning on coming here tonight since the planning committee generally functions on land use decisions. I was not expecting any discussion of the TSSA today at this forum, but I did want to emphasize that the TSSA is working at the hardest job of getting long-term chronically unhoused individuals into housing. The City of Bend has been providing data on that, and I want to emphasize that this is successful. I also want to highlight that if there is a land use decision for the TSSA, such as a change to Deschutes County Camping Code that is being considered, the statutory requirement for that is ORS 195-530. And it states that any city or county law that regulates the act of sitting, lying, sleeping, or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property that is open to the public must be objectively reasonable as to time, place, and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness. For purposes subsection two and three of this section, reasonableness shall be determined based on the totality of the circumstances, including but not limited to the impact of the law on persons experiencing homelessness. So my personal feeling is that Deschutes County is not in compliance with this law because continually displacing people is not objectively reasonable. That being said, the TSSA is working and we should allow that to continue. At the present moment, I also should mention that During prior sweeps at Hunnel Road in China Hat, I was involved as a party to litigation to block those sweeps and also to warn the government agencies that were performing those sweeps that I had serious concerns about due process rights for property violations. That's 100% of the sweeps that I've observed, and all of them had due process property violations. So I'll finally close that as a two-year law student. I am very aware of reporting done by Investigate West that was recently published about some concerns about due process rights at China Hat. And so I would just urge caution. Hopefully this is just an overreaction or a misunderstanding, but if there is any plan changes to the camping code for Deschutes County or the TSSA, that would constitute a land use decision under this committee's purview. I would urge caution in that regard. So thank you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

Copies of these with the secretary.

Unrelated to the agenda on the tonight? Okay.

My name is Chuck Hemingway. I'm a resident of Deschutes County, I'm also a person with personal and professional experience in addressing issues of homelessness locally, regionally, and nationally. Locally with my church, I'm a co-facilitator for our Open Door Ministries program, which assists people who are unhoused on the streets of Bend and in the county. Regionally, I'm a founding board member of two nonprofits, Central Oregon Open Villages and Central Oregon Homelessness Alliance. And I am both an individual member and an organizational member of the Central Oregon Homelessness Leadership Coalition. Nationally, I'm a member of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. But I also consider myself someone who is partial to a small government approach. That is, if government is already doing something, look with caution at government expanding into areas that are already adequately covered by the private sector. I was made, it was brought to my attention that there are Remarks that were provided by another member of the Planning Commission. that aren't a part of the agenda. And so that is the focus of my remarks, not the work plan that you'll be discussing. With due respect to Planning Commissioner, Commission Member Stockcamp's proposal to the county planning staff to expand the 2026 work plan regarding housing opportunities by adding the phrase and collect countywide citizen input for strategic actions to reduce homelessness in Deschutes County. I believe that his remarks or his proposal is unnecessary. First, homelessness is a topic, as I read the work plan, already included it. But second, it suggests adding county workload that's already being adequately addressed by the Central Oregon Homelessness Leadership Coalition and the Central Oregon Homelessness Alliance. Regarding the Central Oregon Homelessness Leadership Coalition, I know there was some expressed addressed concern expressed in the remarks that he provided about the HLC website that lacked important information on how to end homelessness. And because if you clicked on that link on how to end homelessness, it would come up with an error message saying, oops, this page cannot be found. As a member of the HLC, I've checked with HLC leadership about this and it turns out that this is a glitch that was left over from the revamp of the HLC website and the page is actually active. If below that oops message, you scroll down and click on any of those links, it takes you to them. Also on the HLC website, if you tab over to the what we do button and click on it, it takes you to our plan to end homelessness. I brought that technical glitch to the attention of the people at Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, who are the people that manage the website. And they're in the process of collecting that glitch. But thanks to Mr. Stockkamp for bringing it to our attention so we could get it corrected. We don't want anyone else to come away with the impression that the HLC has not provided information about ending homelessness. Also, I was a member of the planning committee for the Central Oregon Homelessness Alliance that put on a forum on solutions to ending homelessness this past March the 3rd, barely a month ago at Westside Church. That forum drew more than 300 community members and representatives of community organizations. It was the second annual forum that we had done, and it's an already existing forum and venue that is designed specifically to address strategic solutions to reduce or end homelessness in Deschutes County. It's a forum designed to collect countywide citizen input And we invite anyone on the Planning Commission or any interested citizen in providing citizen input to join us in planning our next program for the coming year instead of spending county staff time and county money on something that the private sector is already adequately doing and doing it effectively. I have cards here. And I'm happy to provide anyone to help get them involved with that process. Finally, I know that there was concern also expressed in his remarks about the total number of people experiencing homelessness in Central Oregon, showing an 89% increase over the past five years. Those are dramatic figures, but bare bones, those figures don't address the root cause or root issue. If you lay alongside that 89% figure, the increase in cost of housing in Central Oregon from 2020 to 2025, and go Google it, you'll find that the cost of housing in Central Oregon increased by 75%, which I believe correlates specifically to the 89% figure stated by Mr. Stockamp. I would commend for the Planning Commission and planning staff's consideration the book, Homelessness is a Housing Problem, and the book Poverty by America about the crisis in affordable housing that is driving the homelessness crisis in Deschutes County, in our region, in the state, and in the nation. That difference of 14% is still way too high. But in reviewing the work plan, which if you go to the third bullet at page three, it addresses housing opportunities by collaborating with cities, the Deschutes County property manager and other partners. And you couple this with item 12 on table two at page five that already requires planning staff to explore options and approaches to address homelessness. So that in my view, accordingly, the additional language suggested by Mr. Stopkamp is unnecessary because it is already adequately addressed in the private sector by the Central Oregon Homelessness Leadership Coalition and Central Oregon Homelessness Alliance. We as taxpayers should not have to see the expansion of government work and with it the expenditure of county money and county staff time to address something that is already effectively being done in the private sector.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. And I'd love to get one of your cards. So maybe leave them with Peter over here. Love to continue the conversation in a different venue. So is there anyone else? All right. Is there anybody online? All right. Well, the next action item we have is, oh, okay. All right. If you could elevate her and go ahead, Mandy.

Can you guys hear me okay?

Fairly.

Okay. I'll try to speak up. Thank you. My name is Mandy Bryant. I am the co-creator and program manager of SHIFT, Supporting Housing Integration for Future Transitions. I also spent seven and a half years unhoused in the Bend area. But before those years, I was a volunteer structure firefighter ready to sacrifice my life to save the lives and property of my neighbors. I felt compelled to speak today after reading a letter submitted regarding the county work plan. I was appalled at what I read as a resident and formerly unhoused person. I can tell you that what is being pitched, collecting residents input from those who have never experienced displacement will be a waste of time, resources, and money. I mean, you wouldn't go ask a lion on how to be a vegan, right? Um, Sorry. If you want ideas that are actually effective, you go to the source. You don't go to people who have referred to the homeless as creatures or suggested they all be rounded up and put on their own hell island. Despite what someone said to me not that long ago, the homeless cannot be grouped into three categories, mental illness, addiction, or freeloaders. I became homeless because there wasn't anywhere else for me to hide after leaving an abusive ex. It was my only option for safety. Yet the letter you received suggests that because of that misfortune, I am now nothing more than an eyesore that needs to be removed. The homeless are more than just a statistic, a monetary value, or a problem to be dealt with. They are people who are struggling. They didn't decide to make that their life just to bother you. There is no one way or single answer to end homelessness, but there are ways to address it and work towards the unhoused no longer being an inconvenience or a visual disturbance, but them being a neighbor. And I can tell you this, that solution is not found in that letter. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else online? If not, well, next item on the agenda is planning division work plan for the fiscal year 26-27. Thank you.

Will Groves. That's it. It's not on the slide presentation here. Okay.

We have minutes. Do we have minutes to approve?

Okay. They were in the mail. Thanks. Sorry. We were just discussing whether we had minutes on the agenda, which I don't see, so we'll...

I had wondered that myself. Tracy, who normally does some of the processing, was out unwell for some parts of this.

No problem. We can address them next meeting. Anyhow, you're up.

It's our draft work plan for fiscal 2026-27. And this is the public hearing on April 9th. I'm Will Groves, your planning manager. And, you know, just a little bit of background. The work plan is an annual review of the community development department's past year's efforts and proposals for the coming year. And it's an opportunity for the planning commission and citizens and the PC to give feedback on what you'd like to see staff undertake in the coming year. Of course, CDD is more than planning, and so we do coordinated services. We have our building division, on-site wastewater, code enforcement, and now joining us, natural resources. The work plan process from January to March, we developed the draft work plan based on a variety of inputs. And here we are at the, we had the Planning Commission work session in March, and here we are at the initial hearing. And following this, a Planning Commission recommendation will be made, and we'll take that to the Board of County Commissioners, get that by the Historic Landmarks Commission. The entire draft work plan is available at this website. And here we are at the hearing, and so this will be a public hearing. And what we'll have is a summary of the work plan, an opportunity for public testimony, planning commissioner questions, and the public hearings. So, key themes here for the CDD work plan, you know, of course, growth and development, we're seeing population growth, driving demand for services, legislative updates from Salem, every year impacting planning, building safety and code enforcement, and affordable housing and land use policies being key priorities. In terms of regulatory compliance, of course, you know, again, the legislative sessions and complex land use cases affecting us. And we're trying to improve our community engagement services through website and digital service improvements, ensuring that we're responding to public inquiries and collaborating with our partner agencies. Big issues out there, of course, groundwater protection, septic system updates, and sustainable land use planning, thinking also about the transportation system and wildlife mitigation efforts, as well as the digital tools that will help us with operating efficiency. In terms of the big picture of budget and operational issues, planning case volume was down slightly versus the prior year, and building permits also down slightly. Workforce and staffing, Board of County Commissioners completed a pay equity and market study in the process of some of that still, but those cost increases are anticipated in fiscal 27. We've got 57 FTE in the Community Development Department, and that's within the seven new staff So we have a couple new ones coming in as well, some resignations, new positions, and we're seeing some good veterancy building up here. 46% of staff have over five years with the department. That makes a big deal in terms of people's ability to effectively serve the community. Succession planning, 19% of staff are eligible for retirement in the next three to eight years, and a lot of our heavy hitters in the building are in that list. Thinking about recruitment, we're looking to hire an onboard key roles. We hired a building official and assistant building official, promoted a supervisor in the code enforcement department. We're in the process of recruitment for a natural resources supervisor, the community wildfire protection supervisor. And as I mentioned, administrative supervisor for code enforcement. So big operational issues, of course, we do a lot of things that don't generate fees, inquiries, board priorities, county initiatives, and they require research and detailed responses. We maintain our productivity through transition. So we're definitely seeing resignations, new staff, and trying to make sure that operations continue through those. New legislation we'll talk a little bit about from 2026, but there's a number of things that are going to require either procedural implementations or potential legislative actions to bring them online. And thinking a lot about process improvement to reduce timelines. We talked about this in the book session, but always looking for opportunities to help people get in and out of the building cheaper, faster, and easier. And we're definitely working on our website. We know that more and more people are looking to that as their primary engagement with us. And so working towards making sure that we're taking advantage of the best tools that are out there. So the annual report from the past year, again, maintaining our high service levels, expanding online service, working towards a completed acceptance practice to make sure that when people bring in applications that those are ready for us to process, and working on target process implementation, working driveway access permits, website resources, and staff cross-training. Performance measures. We keep a variety of performance measures, and they're all in the report. This is just a sampling, noting the time it takes us to turn around land use decisions, which we categorize those without prior notice. They tend to be non-discretionary ministerial actions and those with prior notice. You can see that those are currently looking real good against our 21 and 45 day targets for those turnarounds. We're in good shape. Those frequently bulge out during the summer as we see a lot of development activity during the summer. The planning division year review, of course, we, the planning commission, worked through the housekeeping amendments, clear and objective amendments, the comprehensive plan, and outdoor lighting amendments. And the board was busy for land use activity. 15 quasi-additional land use hearings, that's up from eight in 2024, and five LUBA appeals, down from seven in 2024. So looking into the future, the draft work plan. So of course, your engagement here is to review the draft program, conduct this public hearing, and to provide ranked recommendations. And so at your next meeting, we'll come back with, depending on the public, of course, you could continue this hearing and or keep the written record open in a way that would cause us to go to a future date. But the earliest that you could provide recommendations would be a deliberation on April 23. Let's see, what are we doing this year? So we're already monitoring the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, of course, off at the state courts. And we've initiated the Tumalo Community Plan and doing outreach, technical coordination, collaboration, lots of interactions with special districts. And we'll speak more to that in staff comments at the end of the evening. We had a really successful outreach for our initial Tumalo Community Plan outreach there in the cafeteria at the Tarabon School. I'm saying Tumalo. Brett KenCairn, Irvine we've got the sisters you GB amendment so city sisters is looking to expand the urban growth boundary which requires extensive coordination and will come to the planning mission. Brett KenCairn, and looking for comprehensive plan amendment updates to work on the 2025 lot lot large lot industrial study that was done by COC. You know, we look at resource stewardship and community resilience. We talked about groundwater protection and coordination with DEQ and all the issues that come with South County groundwater. We're in the process of updating the natural hazards mitigation plan. That happens primarily through a kind of a sheriff's office, but involves a huge number of stakeholders thinking about how we can best be ready for natural disasters. And we continue to participate with the Bureau of Land Management for sage grass issues. The city's huge list here of things that we do with the cities. I'll pick a couple big ones. City of Bend, we're coordinating with them on the growth management issues. There's an expansion under Senate Bill 1537 of the urban growth boundary. We worked with them on park space in Southeast Bend. of the Outback expansion. So the Saves Water Treatment Plant is scheduled for some upgrades and the existing zoning may not be sufficient for that and they may be looking to create a public facility zone or try to do development under the existing forest zone. So lots of coordination there in process. Lapine, thinking about a variety of interfaces there. One big one we've talked about previously is addressing coordination. Currently, we do addressing for Redmond, Sisters, and Lapine, and we're looking to hand those back to the cities for assigning addresses. It's surprising how important that is because all of our actions key off addresses. If you want to do a thing, a thing happens at an address. If you don't have an address, it's hard to do everything else. City of Redmond in process about to kick off an engagement for a joint management agreement. That's an intergovernmental agreement between the county and the city about how we do business in a variety of ways. And I mentioned that large lot industrial land update to that study that will be likely processed in the coming year. And sisters, I mentioned, of course, participating in that UGB expansion process. Kyle Collins is working on that on a daily basis at this point. zoning text amendments. So you remember in prior years that we brought you a relatively long list of these and tried to pare this down into things that seemed like the highest priority and things that looked like would be targeted for engagement. And there's a couple of new ones on here, of course, establishing procedures for private burial grounds. We found out that there are statutory obligations, that the planning commission is the body that decides how and when people can use their own private property for burials. And farm stores, we've talked about that, of course, the new legislative opportunity to include, to have more retail opportunities at certain types of farms. And we have Natural Resources joining us, and I've got Lauren Street here tonight. I'll invite her up for staff comments to say hi. She's a specialist with our Natural Resources Department, but they're engaged in all sorts of work, the amount of grant money that flows through them and turns into great community good in terms of cleaning up fire debris and trying to keep us all safe, and that happens through project wildfire neighborhood correlations. They also manage the noxious weed board. They do community wildfire protection plans, big updates coming there, and engage the public through a variety of meetings and presentations. And they also deliver mitigation support and grants for fuel reduction, spring sweat equity program. You may be familiar with that where bins are delivered to neighborhoods to take off, take away woody debris. And a similar project in the fall. So in terms of next steps, here we are at the Planning Commission public hearing. So following this, there'll be an opportunity for you to ask any questions that you may have of staff, and then we'll go on to take citizen comments. Typically at that point, if there's any Planning Commission comments or recommendations for additions, modifications, other things to the work plan, and then you'll make a choice about what to do with the written record or the hearing in the written record. You can choose tonight to leave both the oral and written record open, continuing the hearing to a date certain. You can leave just the written record open, or you could close both of them. And we would proceed at that case to deliberations on April 23rd. But we definitely have time for a longer period if you want to have more community engagement. So don't want to, that April 23rd shouldn't be stuck in your mind there as an absolute. And with that, I'm available for any questions you may have of staff and look forward to hearing from the public.

Any questions? Okay. We need to go through the script as far as opening the hearing.

Because this isn't a quasi-judicial hearing, we don't have the formal script associated with it. But I'll give a short version of it. So, of course, it's a public hearing. There's an opportunity for people to come up and speak if you're on Zoom. There'll be an opportunity, you'll be addressed second to raise your hand and present comments. We're of course expecting orderly public comments and respectful public comments. We haven't set a specific limit for comment time tonight, but typically public comments are in about the three minute range and can be entertained for longer by the planning commission chair, and especially that time typically if you're having back and forth conversations isn't counted against that, but we're not gonna be running a calendar this evening, but just ask everybody to be respectful of both other people in the room and their time. And it's important that as you come up, that you state your name and address for the record, that will cause you to become a party to this process and receive

uh future information about this and if you have any written materials we definitely appreciate those great thank you I'll open the hearing is there I have two blue sheets up here and I assume those are for the two gentlemen that already spoke so is there any public comment on the work plan is there anybody online Okay, I would next open it up to any of the commissioners who have any issues or topics that you'd like to see us address for the coming year. Commissioner Kelly.

Yes, thank you. I would like to prioritize, and this is just my personal opinion. I'm obviously open for discussion. I'd like to prioritize the child care, just as a woman who has struggled with finding child care. And I very much feel strongly that if both parents would like to work, that they would like those opportunities. And child care is often a big hurdle.

Is this an item on the proposed work plan or something you'd like added to the work plan?

On the proposed work plan.

Okay. Yeah.

Is this what I'm supposed to be discussing?

Well, we're going to have our deliberations at our next meeting, assuming we schedule. Oh, okay. I was encouraging anyone that wants to add something to the work plan. That isn't currently listed?

Sure.

Oh, excuse me.

I might be able to connect that a little bit. So the item on the work plan is a specific program to ensure that Deschutes County is taking, if it's elected by the Planning Commission for Recommendation and the Board for Prioritization, would be a specific project to look at statutory requirements. obligations and opportunities to make sure that child care is available in the zones that it should be available in and where there's options to the county to allow them in those zones to have those opportunities explored. So this would be this would be looking specifically at alignment with statutory priorities. You know, it may be that there's something beyond that that the commissioner is thinking about in terms of trying to trying to coordinate that better you know certainly you know we've done a variety of public outreaches at times you know we see you know for adus and other things like that we've done websites and news blasts and things like that so you know it may be that in addition that you may have ideas beyond certainly just getting in alignment with statutory priorities and thinking about more broadly what we might be able to do in the community and at the same time recognizing that you know we do have limits in the land use lane to do that so you We have a coordinating function, a citizen involvement function, and at least the item on the work plan is focused really on statutory alignment.

Yeah, thank you very much. Because, yeah, by all means, if your thoughts are a more generalized idea, by all means, you know, now is the time that I figured those of us that are close to the different topics in land use, if there's some specific areas that you have an interest in working on, for example, Dark Skies has come up with, came up year after year with the Planning Commission internally, and we finally moved it to the head of the line list last year. But yeah, I mean, if it's already on the work plan, then we'll be doing deliberations on it in their next meeting. But yeah, if you generally, if your thoughts are more general topic than what's specifically listed, then by all means.

No, no, it was just a more of a curiosity to hear more about that topic. And so I'm grateful that it's already on the work plan.

So is there anybody else? Oh, yeah. Excuse me. Commissioner Hofkamp. Thank you. Can you hear me okay?

Yep. Okay. Will, looking at the proposed work plan projects, it looks like there are some that fall under the category of natural resources. Forgive me if you mentioned this during your presentation. I look forward to uh, meeting, uh, and interacting with the, uh, the natural resources staff newly under, um, the umbrella here and wondering, um, when, uh, and in connection with which of those projects, uh, we might have that opportunity.

Yeah, certainly. So, um, you know, we're in the process of hiring a, the replacement for what was formerly the, uh, the county forester and moving towards a community wildfire protection specialist supervisor. And so when that person is seated, you know, we'll definitely bring them by to say hi. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, because they sit in CDD, they're part of our annual work plan. They're part of, you know, what CDD does. And at the same time, They sit adjacent some ways to what the Planning Commission does, which is primarily aligned in a land use arena. So definitely want you to be afforded opportunities to see connections there. You could see connections, for example, in our R327 efforts for fire hardening. You know, you're thinking about community wildfire issues. I think we're going to see some real connection here to the extent that we've talked about how that the state fire marshal is in the process of propagating defensible space codes. And those are being propagated in a voluntary way. And so this is coming up next week in front of the board on Wednesday. The state fire marshal is going to come and speak to the board about those rules. and we anticipate following that that the board will engage with staff to see what type of um what type of community response they're looking for if they're looking for us to you know get additional information from the community think about regulatory approaches in that space so there's some real opportunity there and this is an area obviously that we have limited experts expertise in with kyle collins being our our uh our most experience in that regard but having natural resources in-house and making sure that we're connected uh those uh resources is important you know some initial brainstorming thinking about that there are um that there are for example scenarios under which that you know people might undertake uh property cleanups and that, you know, we already have for through natural resources, a list of licensed contractors to do that work are pre-approved for that. So, you know, it's a question of, you know, could we coordinate some of the, some of the resources and expertise across that horizon? So, it's not so much that the planning commission would be, you know, in the role that you have with, of course, planning is that you provide recommendations to the board who ultimately decide what we're doing, and that there may be some, you know, in the work plan adjacent space to do that in natural resources, but they're They're an in-house partner rather than kind of a, you know, a little bit more like the building division in some ways too, you know, that we don't frequently ask you for input or for direction associated with how the building division does their work, you know. But because this is the CDD broader work plan, we've included everybody. I hope that gives a little bit of clarity to this.

It does somewhat well, thank you. And, you know, again, what I'm looking at, the fiscal year 2026-27 work plan projects underneath natural resources in the work plan. More than half of them are wildfire or wildfire connected for the reasons I think connected to what you just mentioned. I'm just curious, you know, why there aren't, I don't know, wildlife proposed items, water, other natural resource connected issues. And I guess I'm understanding that from your comments, your remarks that at this point, there isn't a plan to interact with the planning commission on any of those other potential natural resource issues in the coming fiscal year.

Oh, that's a great question and good for clarification. So that department, although they're known as natural resources, their mandate to date has been on community wildfire protection and also on the noxious weed front. But they, for example, you know, when you think of natural resources, you might think of a wide variety of things, including wildlife, habitat, water. And so that has not fallen in their lane. And currently, the job description that's being used to hire for the community wildfire supervisor is, again, wildfire focused. So to the extent that you've got concerns, thoughts, potential work plans that relate to you. Uh, other resources, and those things are land use adjacent, you know, that would involve zoning. Those would be the, uh, the planning commissions, uh, uh, space there. So you can imagine the mule deer inventory exploration that we did years ago. Uh, some of the, you know, the ways that these touch, you know, things like, and I was thinking about groundwater and differentially treating. properties is available for those based on groundwater and septic concerns. So when you think about those remaining resources, primarily you're going to be thinking about them in a zoning lane as a planning.

Okay. Thanks for that clarification, Will. I appreciate it.

No, thank you. Is there anyone else? Commissioner Stockcamp, did you want to address your thoughts on your suggestion to add some discussion on homelessness?

Sure. I'll just provide additional context since I think my letter was the courtesy of bringing in some additional comment tonight. Just looking at the work plan, and Peter distributed my comment around to everyone, I believe, earlier. It was just expanding on collecting countywide citizen input. So it wasn't me spreading a solution. It wasn't me criticizing anything. It was simply being the citizen input committee. So I think I technically achieved that tonight with getting a couple folks to come out and provide input, and I welcomed it. So I appreciate hearing Chuck Hemingway and Eric Garrity's responses. but i'm still interested in more i i'm with chuck hemingway with small government approach i'm not i'm not looking to spend a ton of taxpayer resources on a whole lot of things with the county planning department for me what i was proposing kind of what we've done with panels in the past maybe it's a panel on it and maybe chuck hemingway is one of the experts on it of homelessness because it's definitely a growing thing we're seeing in our community i listed A few bullet point examples of that. And I just listed data from Homeless Leadership Coalition's website. So sharing facts, just sharing something. We've got four county commissioner elections right now. Homelessness is one of the top campaign items. So I was just curious if it's something we can collect citizen input on. And one thing that does have me passionate about it is just with and it sounds like Eric Garrity is very focused on it, the Juniper Ridge TSSA. Looking back in the, what's the word? Was it referendum for it or the legal resolution? It was never intended to be a land use decision. So I feel like citizen input There could be additional collected there is planning commission where we get it as the citizen input committee. It was just a thought. So I just want to throw it out there because this is the time of year. We talk about thing to focus on if there's time in the schedule. Great. If not, we're going to focus on other important issues. So just want to present that to the planning commission. So. So that's my additional context. And I didn't write in any negative ill will or negative manner because kind of came across that way. But I just want to help be part of the solution. And I think part of that's by talking about it with community members. So the more we can strategize, the better.

Great. Thank you. And I also submitted a letter to Will and to Peter regarding transportation and trying to maybe see if it might be appropriate for the community to take the lead role in coordinating a regional transportation plan that There seems to be, at least in my outside view, and maybe it's already being done and maybe we'll be shown that it's unnecessary, but it seems like there seems to be a disconnect between the state, the county, and the city with regard to transportation planning and protecting connectors and the ability to travel from either through town or from rural lands through town to the state highways. And also, I have some concerns that some of the transportation planning within the city could be putting a lot of the citizens at risk with regard to evacuation routes and emergency planning. I could, in reading some of the reports from the disaster in Paradise, California, I can see some parallels between what's happening with some of the the restrictions in the streets to what created the tragedies there in people being trapped and unable to escape the fire. And we could easily have the similar situation come in from the west side of Bend and have people trapped. And so, like I say, I thought, well, maybe it might be something that might be appropriate for the Planning Commission to take a look at some of those issues.

Thank you.

So, anyone else? Okay, now... Since the hearing seems to be winding down, we have options. We can continue the hearing. We can close the oral portion and leave the written record open for a determined amount of time, or we could close the entire hearing and go into deliberations. What's your pleasure?

I would move to close and leave the written testimony open until end of day April 15, which would be next Wednesday.

Is there a second?

I'll second. OK.

It's been moved and seconded. Do you have any discussion?

The majority of the testimony we seem to get is written. And so after folks have had the opportunity to view this meeting, they can submit written testimony. And we've had the folks already provide oral testimony today. I think we've had enough time for the oral testimony.

Great. Thank you. Any other thoughts? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

All right, thank you. And just a little bit of housekeeping there. Any written comments can be directed to, I can receive those directly. My short version of my email is willg, W-I-L-L-G, at deschutes.org. And they can also be delivered to our office during regular business hours.

Great, thank you. And with that, we'll go into comments. So, Will, go ahead.

Well, I've got some, I want to want to lead off with some kind of exciting our guest stars here this evening. You know, I've got Lauren Street, who's with our natural resources department. I'd like to invite her to come up and introduce herself and talk a little bit about some of the big projects that are going through her department right now. And we'll move on from there.

Thanks, Will. I'm excited to be here. I'm Lauren Street, formerly with the Natural Resources Department, now with CDC in the Natural Resources Program. I've been with the county for about a year and a half now. And I just wanted to run through some of the projects, events, and larger items that we have coming up in the next calendar year. So through May and June, many of you may know about our Fire Free program. That's run through our Natural Resources Department in partnership with the landfill. And so that allows community members to dispose of fuels mitigation material for free on certain weekends, again, through the month of May and June. We also have our spring sweat equity bin rental program, which some of you are familiar with. We were just able to award 32 communities through that program. through service awards. And we saw a record number of applications come in for that program. And yeah, so we had about 68 applicants for that. And so that program, we provide the large 30 cubic yard bins. So we partner with Cascade Disposal as well as Republic Services to provide those bins through the month of May and June for communities to place them throughout their community so people can throw their fuels mitigation material right into the bin and then the disposal companies come and pick that up and so we cover the full cost of that through the month of may and june for communities so Out of those 68 applicants, we had 32 brand new communities apply who have not been awarded this program before. Every year we see an increase in applications, which is really exciting. It coincides with the increasing amount of Firewise communities that we're seeing in Deschutes County. And we use these programs, for lack of better words, as a carrot for communities to become Firewise. So we use that as a requirement saying, you know, you can have access to these programs, but we strongly encourage you to become Firewise to do so. So we're excited to do that. This is our third year of that program. The prior year we had 45 applications, so almost double. We also at the end of 2025 were awarded a community wildfire defense grant. It was an extremely competitive application. process through the forest service i think nationwide they had about 560 applications and they awarded 58 so we feel extremely excited and lucky to have been awarded that that will be focused on the greater lapine area those funds well it's just over 3.4 million dollars and it's a five-year grant life cycle that's going to go towards wildfire preparedness education and outreach on the ground fuels mitigation projects on Deschutes County-owned tax lots, which we have about 585 acres in the greater Lapine area. So we'll be trying to treat all of those. It also will go towards treating 100 miles of road right-of-ways on important ingress and egress evacuation routes. So we'll be working with the road department on that. We'll also be purchasing an air curtain burner that's arriving Monday. So we're excited to test that out on project sites and we'll also be standing up community projects and we'll be able to award several communities every year for large-scale fuels reduction projects in the Lapine area. We were also recently awarded the BLM Good Neighbor Authority. funds and we were awarded $275,000. $225,000 of that will go directly to community projects, three projects a year at $25,000 each. So over three years, that'll be nine projects for larger scale community projects. And then $50,000 of that will go towards treating Deschutes County-owned tax lots anywhere in the county. um uh will you mention this earlier but we have some exciting news with our community wildfire protection plans um currently we're the only county in the state that i'm aware of that has more than one community wildfire protection plan those have to be updated every five years so um that's quite a lot of administrative work trying to update those and they're all on different timelines So some years we have just one to update, some years we have two to update to keep that in track. And so this funding from OEM, Oregon Emergency Management, will combine all of those CWPPs into one living document that we can update at one time. But each... Individual area will still have their own action plan as well as action items to keep track of all the good work that's being done in each of those areas. We also are doing our Deschutes County wildfire preparedness fairs. So we just wrapped ours up in Sisters last night and we have one in Lapine this weekend and we'll do another one in Bend. and then one in Sun River before the end of May. And then, of course, we have our noxious weed cost share program. We're seeing those calls really ramp up. That's a 50-50 cost share that we do with private property owners to treat A and B listed species. And then last but not least, I got the updated Firewise numbers for Deschutes County yesterday, and we are at 101 active communities, Firewise communities. So that puts us at number one in the state and potentially number one in the nation, but definitely in top three. So that's a huge accomplishment. And We are very lucky to be in an amazing wildfire preparedness education group in Central Oregon where we're all pushing similar messages and putting the word out about firewise communities. I know some of you up here are working towards that status right now, and we're seeing that number grow, and we're seeing that represented in all the resources that we offer through the program. We're seeing... higher numbers of applications every year, uh, more acres treated every year. Um, and so again, that's 101 active communities and all together with all statuses, active pending applications, et cetera, we have 124. So yeah, that's end of report for me.

That's impressive. Quick question. Um, what's the status of Deschutes River Woods? Is that participating in any of those programs?

Absolutely. Yep. They're an active fireways community. Um, So we call them spark plugs, the folks that are kind of leading the charge in the community. That's what the fire educators call them. But it's like a singular person that's kind of leading the charge, you know, doing the application for Firewise, applying for our programs. That would be a guy named Gregory. He's out of Deschutes Riverwoods. And not only is he applying for our programs, he's also registered their Firewise community as a nonprofit so that they're able to compete with larger grants. And they were awarded an Oregon State Fire Marshal grant. Three years ago, they just wrapped it up. And they've also participated in our bin rental program as well as our fall fuel reduction grant program. So they're extremely active.

The reason for my question is I had a gentleman reach out to me concerned about ongoing regular burning in and around his house, concerned about both the fire risk and the constant smoke for a period of months in the spring. And I was just curious as to whether there was anything that he or someone he should contact specifically regarding there might be some options to his concerns.

Yeah, absolutely. And I meant to bring cards with me this afternoon, but any questions like that, I'm happy to take on and pass on. I have his contact information. He would be a great resource for fuels mitigation, but with pile burning, anything like that, we always direct people towards their fire district to make sure they've got the correct permits as well as what weather conditions to look for, what to burn with and when not to burn.

Sure. Thank you. Anything else, Will?

I was going to invite Nicole Mardella. Excellent.

Thank you.

This may be the last time we see her for a while.

It might be. Yes, we'll see. So just a couple updates for you. Update on the comprehensive plan. So we might have shared this at the last meeting, but a decision was expected last month. We heard from Luba that they're delayed. So we're expecting that on Tuesday, so April 14th. So we'll be excited to get a decision from Luba on that comp plan reconsideration. The Terrebonne plan, we held an open house on Tuesday. Great turnout. I think we had about 50 or so folks, including three kids, the youngest of which was five. So that was kind of great to see a little bit of variety in some of the audience there. But we also had tabling from the Sanitary District, the Water District, and ODOT and received a lot of great feedback from folks on just having resources in the room to understand a lot of the efforts that are going on in Terrebonne besides just the county project. We have an online open house, which has all the same content as what was presented at the in-person open house and the ability for folks to provide their feedback. That's open until April 30th, so you can view that at our website, deschutes.org slash TCP. And once that is closed, we'll compile all the feedback that we've received into an engagement summary, which Tanya will present to the Planning Commission, likely at one of your May meetings. After that, the next step in the process is to have a second open house. So really the kind of the goal of this project is to use the initial open house to collect as much feedback as possible on how the community of Terrebonne wants to grow and develop over time. And the second open house is essentially to repeat back what we heard and ask hey, did we get this right? And if there's any areas where the community disagrees on, say, type of housing or business development that they'd like to see, then we can use that second open house to kind of dig into more of the details there. So Tanya and Will will keep you up to speed on that process. And I just wanted to follow up as well on the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary Amendment process. So as Will mentioned, Kyle Collins is the case planner for that. We've been working with the city on hearing dates, and we're planning for a work session on May 14th and a hearing on May 28th. Due to state law requirements, the city will have their own hearing process through their planning commission at a similar time frame as when the county will have your public hearings as well. And just wanted to note that the city has let us know or kind of asked us to add a little bit of efficiency to this process as they're dependent on specific studies. for their UGB amendment process, which expire at the end of the year. So under Oregon State law, you have kind of a certain timeframe that your studies are good for this type of process. So hoping to have, again, those hearings in May, after which the Planning Commission will, of course, make a recommendation. And then we'll have a joint public hearing process with the City of Sister City Council and the Board of County Commissioners. So just wanted to give you a heads up on that. That's all I have.

Thank you.

And, you know, given that we did the work plan again this time, I really covered everything that's happening in the future. A lot of the important ones. So that was what I had on my agenda.

Hey, Stephanie, do you have anything? How much trouble are we in?

That's a technical legal term, by the way. Perfect. Stephanie Marshall, Senior Assistant Legal... Senior Assistant... Oh my goodness, I am so tired tonight. I apologize. Yes, just a couple of updates. First, Landwatch and Thousand Friends did submit a formal petition. to DLCD and LCDC combining their first two notices of intent to petition into one. And this petition asks for action regarding non-resource land amendments and also approval of non-farm dwellings. This afternoon, we got an email from Angie Brewer at DLCD. And what is going to happen next is the department is preparing to request a 60-day extension at the April meeting. They have time frames within which they have to ask. And the agenda is anticipated to be published today, although I have not seen it yet. The requesters in the county are the only parties that may provide comment at the Commission meeting on this item. The Department's intention is to take the petition forward more substantively at the June 25-26 Commission meeting. And once that day and time is confirmed, we'll get separate confirmation details. So that will be coming up. Nicole mentioned that we hopefully should soon get a decision from LUPA on the comprehensive plan appeal. And one more item, it's sort of related, just a little bit on the side. We have a federal lawsuit that we're defending from a person that wished to develop a residential facility in the Sun River area. community neighborhood zoning district. She had applied for that some time ago. And when we adopted housekeeping amendments in 2024, and have had first reading on our 2026 housekeeping amendments. Some of the changes that were made included aligning our code with state law. And state law requires that we treat residential homes and residential facilities in the same manner in which we treat single unit dwellings and multi-unit dwellings. And the CN district does not have either of those uses in that district. The county removed residential homes and facilities from that district as well as several others. And Will can answer some questions on that as well if you have any questions on that. But the lawsuit was filed almost two weeks ago. It also included a motion for a temporary restraining order. And we filed a response and that was that motion was denied. So I'm now currently working on a motion to dismiss, which is I'll just use a little bit of legal terms here. It's decided on the face of the pleadings. And so it's like, are there facts on the on the face of the complaint that could allow this to go forward? The complaint alleges fair housing act. violations, ADA and then also inconsistency with state law and includes a regulatory takings claim. It's a pro se plaintiff who has prepared a very, very, very thorough complaint that's, I believe it's 60 or 70 pages long. So, you know, whether or not she used AI, you know, we could be seeing more folks with a lot more resources at their fingertips. But so I've been working on that as well. Those are kind of the highlights of what I've been up to recently. And let me know if there are any questions or if you have any questions about the housekeeping amendments. Will and I are both here.

Sounds like an interesting case. We'll see if it goes to the Supreme Court, huh?

Yes. Yeah. Well, you never know. Yeah, that's Federal District Court. So it's in Eugene.

So thank you, Peter. You're welcome.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And for the record, Peter Gutowski, Community Development Director. Just a couple of announcements and just some accentuations. Wanted to let the Planning Commission know that on Monday, the Board of County Commissioners discussed the Redmond Terrible. vacancy and determined that they would like to which is allowed under our uh code for the planning commission to uh renew commissioner commissioner kiris for uh two more years and the basis for that was uh i think uh predicated on the fact that the tarabon community plan update is happening now and its lifespan will that process will uh you know take anywhere between 12 18 24 months so um there there were two candidates that that that did apply with the one month extension but it was unanimous by the board of county commissioners um it's on the consent calendar for wednesday to kind of perfect that but um i can say selfishly and on behalf of the department we're obviously very excited to have uh commissioner karis uh be retained for another two years just given her her knowledge her expertise and and familiarity with those issues so Commissioner Karis, thank you. I'm not sure that was anticipated, but we do appreciate your stamina as a planning commissioner. And then I just wanted to, I guess, three more comments. I just, obviously, there's been a recap of the Terrebonne community plan. I just wanted to highlight the staff, Will and Nicole, their staff collectively, including Anthony's, but hallie uh nicole kyle audrey will dania and tanya uh all were actively engaged i i appropriately was kind of the greeter at the front door of the of the of the school but just wanted to share with the planning commission how much pleasure i received to see my like their mind but your staff your staff engage with tremendous professionalism and range um engaging a a very uh well attended um meeting so uh we we're we're very fortunate to have an extraordinary staff and these types of meetings are are really enjoyable they're dynamic it was decentralized there were a number of different stations as articulated but i just wanted to call out our staff and the level of commitment they have for these types of processes it had been a little while since the tumalo process that we've done that so it was fun to see them in action but Just to highlight, again, this Wednesday, Defensible Space will be discussed with the board, with the state fire marshal. So we'll certainly give you a recap at your next meeting. But you're certainly welcome to watch that, you know, live or on video. And then I was also just struck with Lauren Street's just overview of natural resources. You know, the organization and the community development department, we evolve as new opportunities present themselves. We are learning very soon how we're going to be integrating the natural resources section in the Community Development Department. That will happen officially likely in July once the supervisors are hired. But just listening to Lauren's description of all the work that they are doing, which is an extension of the synergy that's been in place in this region for some time, the collaboration that is part of the spirit that I think makes Central Oregon so remarkable. But I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I think as... Natural Resources gets fully staffed. I think even though, as Will noted correctly, that Natural Resources largely operates autonomously from the rest of our department, which is, you know, dealing with development. But you can see the crossover. You can see the cross-pollinization. And this planning commission is the citizen involvement arm. We have representatives from all corners of the county. And so I think we can collectively figure out These updates, you know, whether they happen quarterly or when we, when it just seems so relevant to invite them to make these presentations, if nothing else. I think you as as kind of ambassadors to your region can carry it back, but also it's just another. opportunity with discretion to give this team a platform to articulate how they're interfacing with our neighborhoods in relationship to other programs. So I just shout out to Lauren for spending an evening with us and just recognizing that we're very attuned to try to figure out how to maximize that while not overwhelming any one planning commission agenda. So those are my comments, but appreciate the meeting this evening. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Commissioner Kiaras, congratulations. Thank you. Do you have any comments?

Yeah, sorry I couldn't be there today in person, but yeah, I mean, I'm happy to be here for another couple years. I'm, you know, I hope to one day pass the torch to... Yeah. But in any case, I'm really thankful for the opportunity, especially because, mostly because of you guys, and meaning everybody who's in the room, and Commissioner Hofkamp as well. Like, just... I just appreciate the civil discourse so much. And it just feels like this safe, warm place where we don't have to agree, but we still respect each other. And there's just not a lot of that going on at the moment. So that's why it's such a special opportunity. So I'm very thankful.

Great. Thank you. Commissioner Hofkamp.

Nothing for me tonight. Thank you.

Great. Commissioner Stockkamp.

Just appreciate citizen input tonight and looking forward to deliberations in a couple weeks. Thanks.

Thanks, Mr. Williams.

I would say to the public, if anyone is listening or when they do review this, that utilize Lauren Street. She is doing phenomenal things in our neighborhood, really helping us become firewise prepared and use the resources that we have. And great meeting everyone tonight. And whoever chose the vegetarian pizza, it was delicious.

Great. Thank you.

Commissioner Williams. Excuse me, Commissioner Kelly.

First of all, I apologize for getting ahead of myself. I've been thinking about this work plan, and I've been excited to discuss some of these issues for a couple days, and I came in pretty hot. So I will simmer for a couple weeks and then I look forward to deliberations. But I echo Peter's sentiment about our natural resources. I was just very impressed by all the things that you guys are doing. And I'm really excited to have the opportunity to learn more and to have you in our umbrella so that we have a little more exposure for that. So thank you very much. And congratulations, Jessica. You've been a mentor for me in this platform. And so I'm I'm selfishly like really excited that you're still around.

Thank you. Commissioner Altman.

I pretty much ditto everything that Commissioner Hilliard just said.

Great. Thank you. And I would just like to thank everybody. And especially, I had intended to go to the Turbon meeting. And you guys always do an awesome job with those kind of things. And Nicole, I've been to some of the ones that you've put on in the Sisters area. And you do a phenomenal job. And everybody does a good job, great job. And unfortunately, I was out of town and wasn't able to make it. But no, I appreciate everybody for all that you do for the county. And thank you. And with that, meeting's adjourned.