City Council - workshop

Yeah, and then just out of an abundance of caution, I'm just going to declare a potential conflict. My employer is Hayden Homes. It could have a potential impact on my employer, some of these items, but I'm so allowed to engage in discussion. I intend to do that. Thanks. Thanks. Go ahead, Chris.

All right. Good afternoon, Council. Matt Stewart of Real Estate Facilities Housing, joined by Chris Ogren, the City Manager's Office, and Rachel Baker in the Housing Department. We're also joined by our Chair and Vice Chair, Sarah and Carly, who will come up and speak around the recommendations of the Home Committee. So tonight, we just want to discuss and review the findings and recommendations of the Home Committee's work over the past year. We'll kind of do a preview of the Council goals or review the Council goals. We'll walk through what the committee did over the last 12 months, kind of the roadmap. We'll talk about all the programs that they considered over that 12 month period and then walk through how we went about the recommendation process, how we engaged the committee and how they kind of came to their final recommendations. We'll ask Sarah and Carly to come up and kind of speak to those, some background of how the committee came to those recommendations. And then we'll open it up for council discussion and then provide some next steps that staff will work on as a result of that direction tonight. Kind of the main things that we are looking for some direction tonight from council is around the prioritization. Does council agree with home committee's recommendations and identifying those specific programs and revenue priorities? Second thing will be, we'll address kind of the next steps with the housing work plan. So taking these recommendations and direction and implementing that into kind of a three to five year work plan that we will utilize as we approach budget discussion and council goal setting over the next six to nine months. And then lastly, just kind of want to review potential opportunities for public input so one of the recommendations you'll hear tonight is around a bond or some sort of significant revenue funding so looking at maybe some opportunities to explore that along with some additional public input around what that might entail So just a reminder, our Council goal was to create a Housing Production Strategies Committee, which is the home committee that we put forth, that was identified to look at different funding tools that could help increase the supply and that kind of missing middle housing component that was highlighted in the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. And here, I'll hand it over to Chris.

So when we put together the home committee, In the first meeting, we kind of explained to committee members that really the goal of the group was to come together, was to review a series of programs and revenue generating mechanisms that had been predetermined or predefined in the council resolution, spend a year going through those, vetting them, and ultimately coming to council with recommendations on which to implement and which not to spur housing development in Bend. And so here's a bit of a roadmap or timeline of kind of where we've been over the course of the past year. So we kicked off our first meeting this time last year in August. We had nine home committee members. We met three times in 2025. We returned to you in December with some recommendations on programs that could be implemented a little bit more quickly. Some of those quick wins. And then we reconvened the group in the first half of 2026. We realized we needed to kind of pick up the pace. 12 topics within three meetings between February and May. And then in our last two meetings in June and July, we reserved just a bunch of time for discussion, kind of winnowing down from the total. I think we started with 12. It ended up being like around 20, 18 programs, I think, that the group vetted. We spent time in June and July kind of winnowing down from that 18 to the recommendations that we have to share with you all today. I'm not going to go through all the topics that we discussed line by line, but we really tried to split the topics that were determined both through the Council resolution and that came up in discussion into kind of two main categories. Programs, ways that we could spend funds to incentivize housing development, and then revenue generating mechanisms, ways that we could bring in additional revenues to support programs. Some of these revenue generating mechanisms also have impacts on the housing market as well. And then I wanted to talk a little bit about the process that we took to get here. It was really important that we did this transparently. We brought the community along the way and that folks kind of knew all the material that was going into the decisions that were being made. We knew that we had a lot of information to cover in a pretty short amount of time. And so it was important to to us to make sure that everybody, all the committee members, when they attended the meetings, they were all kind of coming to the table with the same baseline level of understanding so that we were able to make informed decisions in a quick amount of time. And so that looked like we provided information packets on each of the topics we discussed in advance of the meetings. We sent out pre-meeting surveys so the committee members were able to ask questions and we passed those questions along to presenters so that we were able to have informed discussions and there weren't any kind of like gotcha questions that we had to follow up on. We hired a neutral facilitator, Jen Rusk, to support all of the meetings. And then the meetings were three hours long. So they were, They were heavy, and we tried to build in time in each of them to discuss the topics that we considered. But as I mentioned as well, we built in, we had two explicit meetings, June and July, just to spend not learning any new information, just to spend kind of talking through the process that we've been on. We rounded, we kind of concluded the process by using a rank choice vote. So folks were able to go through, rank every single topic that we'd covered over the course of the year. We used that process to kind of winnow down into the programs and revenue generating mechanisms that committee members felt were the most impactful. And from there, we spent time getting into the specifics about how a program should or shouldn't be implemented or revenue generating mechanism, just to make sure that we uh we had the desired effect and we um we had a unanimous vote in the July 9th meeting to um make the recommendations to you all so I want to invite um Sarah odendall and Carly Colgan our chair and vice chair up to share the results of the process with you okay hello

Good evening, Mayor, Council. Thank you, Chris and Matt and Rachel. Thanks for the opportunity to be here tonight and to sum up what I can't believe it's been a year, a year's worth of work. There's a lot of topics that we covered. So before getting into the recommendations up there, I just wanted to add a few points around the process because I think it was really intentional and done with a lot of care, which is something it's a testament, I think, to the process. So, you know, the committee was intentionally diverse. We had nonprofit builders and developers. We had market rate developers. We had lenders. We had housing industry experts. We had business voices all at the table. And we didn't come in kind of with the same shared understanding. We knew what our task was. We knew what the committee charter was, but we didn't come on. We came in with different perspectives and different constituencies that we were representing. But over the course of the past year, we worked through all of those issues, all 20 plus topics, and really came up with a thorough recommendation for you tonight. So I do want to give a special shout out to the staff because I think you said that you prepared informational packets and speakers, but the level of detail and work that you all put into the process is truly remarkable. And so it really helped us go through as committee members very dense and detail-oriented information in like a really short period of time. So just special thank you to that. But really what this process did was it helped us move away from those individual preferences and those perspectives that we brought into it and helped us crystallize around a common set of questions. So what programs will have the greatest impact? What's feasible? What requires revenue? What are the risks and the legal liabilities? And most importantly, who will be served by each one of these tools? and so we started out the very first conversation talking about the city's owner goals and how that was really truly like our north star moving into this um we wanted to make sure production targets served as that that end point and so what a lot what emerged was strong alignment around two key things one that bend needs tools that actually can produce housing units and that the city needs enough flexibility to respond as market conditions change because we know that they will So one area that we talked about, and we'll get into it a little bit more, was a prioritization around middle income households, around 60 to 120% of AMI. This was the kind of the sweet spot that we tried to land most of our programs in. It's an important part of our workforce housing gap and a segment that needs more of these tools we're going to talk about. And from the Chamber's perspective, our members, we see housing as economic infrastructure. Our employers can create good jobs, they can increase wages, they can recruit talented people, but if those people can't afford to live in Bend, then we really don't have economic infrastructure. So the committee also recognized something that's very practical through this process. We spent the first part of the year talking about all the the tools, the incentives, what can we do? And then we realized, well, we need money to make those happen. And so that's when the hard conversation started, right? So I'm going to speak very briefly about the revenue generating mechanisms and then turn over to Carly that can speak more articulately about the different programs. So the first of which we are recommending is an affordable housing bond. So the committee is recommending that the city explore a bond in the range of 50 million to 100 million to support housing tools, programs, and incentives. We recognize this would be a significant local investment in an important statement by the community about supporting housing with a sustainable revenue source. The committee did not take that lightly in our discussions. At the same time, we recognize the scale of Ben's housing challenge. What is in front of us? If we want to meaningfully increase production, we need resources that can help projects move from concept to actual units. And a local bond can also help improve Ben's ability to leverage state lift funds and other outside funding, allowing the impact of the local investment to extend beyond the bond dollars themselves. And Carly can speak much more articulately about that if you have specific questions. The committee also discussed the importance of coordinating with other taxing districts that may be seeking bond measures in the near future. We feel that that timing and alignment is going to be imperative from the start of any conversation we had. The second revenue generating tool is the MERL, Moderate Income Revolving Loan Fund. This is one that we recommended to you, I think we talked about a little bit in December. So this recommendation is particularly important as it reaches further into that middle income housing market, potentially supporting housing up to 120% of AMI. This concept, as you've heard, is a tax increment financing style program in which state provided loans can help pay for infrastructure associated with the housing development. We understand that the program comes with challenges, including administrative complexity for the city, but even so, the committee continued to support it because there are significant state dollars, approximately $75 million, that have capitalized this fund and are ready to be deployed. Given the scale of infrastructure costs and their impact on housing feasibility, we believe this is an opportunity worth continuing to pursue and potentially reshaping via advocacy in the 2027 session. And then the third of the revenue generating mechanisms is a little bit different. This is a rental registration fee and rental registry. So this is different from the first two because it's not about primarily financing new construction. It's about giving the city better information and data around its existing rental market. So this creates a resource for both renters and for landlords. A rental registry can help Bend better understand the inventory and improve upon the data that we use you all use to make housing policy decisions. The registration fee would support the administration of the program and associated resources. And if we're going to make significant investments in housing, we also need that good information and that data so we understand the full scope of what our community has in terms of inventory. And that helps us to make better decisions over time. so taken together these are three very unique but complementary recommendations that serve different purposes the bond provides significant local investment a revolving loan fund can help unlock housing by addressing infrastructure and the rental registry can give the city of better information and an ongoing mechanism to support that work So together they reflect the broader thinking of the committee, really looking at all the different slice and dice parts of the owner recommendations. If we want housing programs to succeed, we need to both the tools to produce the housing and the resources to make those tools happen. So I'm going to turn over to Carly and she's going to talk about the programs. And I think the staff is going to get deeper in the weeds, but we're happy to answer any questions. And we certainly look forward to the implementation phase of this. and continuing the home committee conversations that we've had thus far.

Thanks, Sarah. So I'm going to highlight the five programmatic tools that the committee is recommending today. They work in different ways. So some are going to reduce the actual cost of development, some are going to provide lower cost capital, and others are going to really improve the long-term economics of a project. I'll also give you some context of where these tools are particularly relevant to organizations like Habitat. So the first is SDC exemptions, which are really critical to Habitat because they reduce the development costs of an affordable home. Unlike financing tools, an exemption removes the cost rather than financing the cost over time. So that's going to allow limited public and philanthropic subsidies to support more homes over the over the course of the project. The committee had a really good discussion about whether exemptions above 80% AMI were necessary for rental housing, particularly as rents and at those income levels are really getting close to market rate. Homeownership presents a different challenge. So even at 80% AMI, there can be a significant gap between what a household can afford to borrow and the cost of a house. So, for example, a family of four earning 100% AMI could comfortably support a mortgage of around $483,000. The median home price in Bend last month was $780,000. So there's a $300,000 gap there. So for that reason, the committee discussed tiered SDC exemptions up to 100% AMI. So a partial exemption at a higher AMI level could reduce the subsidy that's needed per home while still targeting the greatest benefit to the lower income households. We also discussed a sunset or evaluation mechanism to review the need for above 80% AMI STCs, depending on market conditions as things move forward. At the same time, the committee wanted to really ensure that any expansion of STCs don't reduce or weaken the full exemption that's currently in place for below 80% AMI STCs. The committee also recommended support for Community land trust models, which is particularly relevant to habitat from a public investment standpoint. The important piece is that the subsidy stays with the property so rather than one household. then helping one household purchase a home, then losing that affordability when the home is sold, the same investment can support multiple homeowners over time. City support could take several forms, including funding, access to publicly owned land, infrastructure assistance, fee reductions, or acquisition opportunities. So if the city's investing public dollars, we should look for opportunities to preserve that investment and the affordability that it creates over the long term. The committee also discussed an infrastructure revolving loan fund to address significant infrastructure costs that often occur early in development. So water, sewer, transportation, and other improvements that can require substantial capital well before a project is generating any revenue. A revolving or bridge loan provides low-cost capital during that period and allows repayment later in the development cycle. So that can reduce carrying costs and solve a timing problem that might otherwise make a viable project, prevent a viable project from moving forward. For Habitat, however, the program, as currently described, would really have limited value because the principal ultimately still has to be repaid. So it doesn't reduce the cost to develop. For deeply affordable homeownership, when the sales price is already significantly below the cost to build that home, the repayment ultimately just adds into the financing gap in the long way. um the committee did discuss a tiff style approach where future property tax revenue generated by new development could offset some infrastructure costs that could provide a deeper subsidy because it actually removes a portion of the infrastructure costs from the pro forma but ultimately the committee moved forward with the bridge loan concept as the recommended tool The committee also is recommending a rate buy down program. So this is something, a tool that Habitat would likely not use because our financing model is different, but would have a lot of value for larger multifamily or mixed use developments. And the objective is really to keep the lower cost capital. It's a lower effective interest rate that increases how much debt a project can support and reduces the financing gap. that has to be filled by equity or public subsidy in the long run. And then the final tool is property tax exemptions, which are important for affordable multifamily rental developments. So Home First Development provided a really helpful example here where affordable rents are capped based on AMI while operating expenses, insurance, utilities, property management, continue to increase over time. So affordable housing developers can't increase rents to offset those costs that are continuing to increase. And then property tax exemptions will reduce those ongoing expenses, which improves the project's ability to service debt and it increases its borrowing capacity. That's in turn going to again reduce the amount of public subsidy or gap financing needed. In this case, Home First was able to kind of look at that and say, with a property tax exemption, they can create anywhere from $3 to $5 million in additional debt capacity, depending on the project and the jurisdiction with something like that. Taking all together, these programs really look at different parts of the financing challenge, and there isn't one tool that solves the affordability gap, which is why having a range of tools is so important.

Thank you so much. Before Sarah and Carly, yeah, I wanted to offer an opportunity for questions.

Just to clarify, so are these, they're numbered up there, and as I understand it, that's the order of priority, right? They were presented a little bit differently in the memo that we got. So just to confirm, that's the order of priority what's up on the screen? Yes. Yeah.

We did rank choice voting in December for those preliminary recommendations, and then those actually, interestingly enough, kind of fed into the overall recommendations, which are right here.

Yeah, and in the packet that was provided, the final two attachments, I think E and F, show the results of the ranking for revenue generating mechanisms and programs.

Steve? Sarah and Carl, thank you very much, and Chris, for your time. As one of the liaisons, I heard many of these discussions. the bond is a heavy lift and you understand that. Can you characterize some of the discussions that I heard, but that the public would like to hear better about options that were considered for generating revenue regarding either business tax or builder tax and kind of how that impacts the affordability of the homes that we might produce?

I can speak globally and then if you want to take the details. I think when we started out the revenue side of the conversation in January, we started slow and we started with tools that are existing already. The construction excise tax or business license taxes, things you just mentioned. And I think the feedback from the committee members that are working in this space was that that is just going to continue to add prices and drive cost to the ultimate development and the cost to the home they're able to deliver because it's targeted at the very industry that's building those homes. And so after looking at those options, we took a look at is there a more sustainable I guess equitable is the wrong word, but like a shared community value that we have towards housing in our, in our community, what that means. And the bond really emerged as, as a, as a potential tool that we could look at as we define what our community value is in supporting housing moving forward.

i don't know do you have any yeah i i think the only other thing i would add is that the bond the scale of the of the amount of revenue generation for the bond was significantly more than any other revenue generating mechanism we looked at as well thank you other questions yeah well just to go back to the three scenarios that were in the memo uh i think scenario three is what was what was preferred

But that focused on the 80 to 120% AMI. And so I'm just curious if you could share a little bit more about looking at our Oregon Housing Needs Assessment goals, for example. We've done a lot of incentivizing in the 80 to 120%, but we haven't done comparatively as much in the certainly not zero to 30 or 30 to 60. So why scenario three and what would be the plan for some of these other

lower quintiles well scenario three is actually 60 to 100. so it's a little different yeah so it's kind of right um so we looked at you know scenario one was 80 to 120. so that is what you would think of as like the missing middle workforce edging towards market rate scenario two was the 80 and under deeply affordable and then scenario three was middle income and so that's a little bit different than i think we've talked about those income brackets and other settings perhaps

And let me just correct, too, that you're right to point that out. Thank you. It's the 80 to 120 that we have incentivized a significant amount, mostly through BRRA. So 60 to 80 has not really been incentivized much, and not 30 to 60 and not zero to 30. So thank you for that correction.

I think one of the things we also talked about was the lower the AMI, the higher the amount of subsidy you need. And so it was also a matter of like how much, if we're looking at 50 to 100 million in a bond, like how many units, how much production is that going to get for different AMI levels? And I think there's still an opportunity in that 60 to 100. For an organization like Habitat, we're right now, you know, utilizing primarily state lift funds and are averaging 55 to 60% AMI. And so having the ability to pull in bond funding from the city to go with that pushes us down even further. So I do think like naturally there will be some below 60 in doing something like that.

Thank you. Yeah. Is the idea that in terms of the five programs that one project can you could utilize more than one program? Did you guys discuss that at all? Or is it like one project is to use one program? Or did you kind of piece together?

No, I think you could piece together.

Yeah. We didn't explicitly discuss that. But I think the intention was, are there tools that you can help stack depending on the needs of the individual project?

Yeah. Council President, I don't know if you can put her and Megan on the side, but I can see it on my computer. Maybe you guys have the cameras on. Council President, go ahead.

Thank you. I was curious that I'm looking at the section on the vacancy fee, and I was wondering if the committee had objections to that other than what the staff said. in terms of being a staff-intensive kind of a program.

My recollection to it was that it was staff-intensive for not a very clear or smaller amount of revenue to return on that. You can correct.

Yeah, no, I think 1 of the interesting things about the vacancy tax discussion was, it was 1 of the more polarizing 1. so some of the programs and revenue generating mechanisms that rose to the top. If you look at the, like, I think it's the last or the 2nd to last attachment in the report that went to council. It shows how everybody. Prioritize each of the programs, and you'll notice on the ones that there's consensus that were the highest ranked. They were consistently ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, but the vacancy tax was 1 where I think it was really polarizing. There were, I think a few folks on the committee who were felt very strongly about the vacancy tax and that they wanted it and they thought it would have an effect. And then there were also folks on the committee who felt like, I think there was a.

quote from one of the meetings that was like this is proven to never work like it was i think there was a really high um there was some disagreement about that one so it wasn't as um hunky-dory as all the others yeah and one of the other things counselor was um you know when we were trying to look at different tools we were really trying to to target different tools to different amis and with the vacancy tax that that wasn't necessarily a clearly lined population target that we could attribute to a tax like that.

Yeah, I mean, I'm keenly interested in it. And so I was curious if you guys talked about Berkeley, because Berkeley does have this, and they call it a fee, and it's just a flat fee. And it's a low number in the first year, and then it goes up a little bit higher.

yeah I think also if you want to table that for just Council discussion that's coming up about amongst ourselves, what we want to prioritize. I think good question to the committee on where they landed with that and I recall that as well that that was one of the more polarizing sessions, but if you want to bring that information and just the minute when we get to Council discussion great. Any other questions for our committee members? Yeah.

So one is on the program and one's on the revenue side. So the revenue side first. Is the committee suggesting that we do not pursue revenue bonds, the 501c3 revenue bonds, or that's one of the different mechanisms if I understand it right? And if so, why?

My recollection was that that is going to be primarily for rental and multifamily. And so I think that the, the geo bond provides more flexibility in what the funds can be used for.

well in the the revenue bonds um like that it's something that a a non-profit or a developer would take out on their own uh and so there is my understanding and so uh it's there's limited ways that the city could support besides um like it's like the city wouldn't allocate the funds the the developer would go out and like i was talking to um Clayton Krauherst, who did it in Sisters, and he was explaining that they had to go out and get raided as an agency, then offer their own debt, basically, that they say that they'll repay based on managing a building over time. So it's not, that program, while it was included, wasn't really one that the city had that much control over, if that makes sense. And I'll Is that right, Matt?

Correct. So they can go out and get their own bonding. The example that's typically we see in Portland is that it's stacked with the housing bond that we see from there. So it's part of the funding stack, but they don't need the city and we don't have to set aside revenue to back it. They go kind of get it on their own because they're a nonprofit. Typically we get involved around the covenant and just kind of some of the operations stuff if we're involved kind of that. It doesn't impact any of our kind of revenue or funding mechanisms. So it's still on the table. If someone's able to do it, we're going to put an assist wherever we can.

And then on the program side, what was the reason the committee didn't support the need restricted purchase program?

That's the veil indeed program came up with, I think, trying to remember that conversation.

Well, the way it was, I can't speak to exactly why committee members chose not to prioritize it. But I remember that the way it was presented was a little bit We heard from Vail, Colorado, right? And Jason Deeds explained that the way that they've implemented the program is more like taking existing homes and buying the deed restriction to make sure that, you know, if somebody sells it in the future, it's the affordability is maintained. And ultimately, the committee discussed like that wouldn't actually increase unit production and bend. It would just shift units from maybe market rate to affordable. And so with the goal, right? Like when we created the committee, we told them the goal was to increase housing development. And so I think maybe that was one of the trade-offs that committee members considered. And I'll ask Rachel.

Vail, Colorado had a $20 million investment for that program. And so it was very expensive. And the committee decided that was too expensive.

Yeah, I think just in comparison to the number of units.

Yeah, the return on investment from what that would look like in the complex.

Yeah.

Okay, other questions for the committee members before we move forward.

Yeah, go ahead for new residential construction excise tax. Our current program is a third of one percent for the expected evaluation of all residential developments. Was there any consideration given to you?

Or I don't even know if we can show this to the construction. Actually excise taxes, commercial or affordable housing is residential residential, right?

Yeah, but this would be just looking at the residential side. I don't know if this is allowed, but can we do a more targeted tax and either say new homes above a certain size or above a certain expected valuation, over 3,500 square feet or over $2 million or something like that?

we specifically talked about targeting i think it was more around the juice versus the squeeze of the amount of money that could be raised something like that that could be impactful for programs and there was a good discussion around our current affordable housing fee and how we got to that with some grandfathering under state law that if we touch it then we're going to open this kind of can of worms yeah yeah the big question was a big thing for the committee was like whoa whoa whoa let's not you know mess with what we have right now um and then i think on the construction excise tax that separate thing there was some discussion around again putting putting the revenue generating on the back of the housing we're trying to build. Where's the right balance for that? But there was not a discussion about the different levels. So that's maybe something we can talk about. Yeah. All right. Are there any other questions? Thank you for being here and all your work. This is really a great memo and a great starting place for us.

Let's invite Matt and Rachel back up to move through the rest of the presentation.

I wanted to give you kind of a housing funding outlook. Currently, our affordable housing fee is holding pretty steady. And what that means is we generate about a million dollars a year that we can put back out into the community for affordable housing development. That's great if we want to maintain the standard 100 units a year that we produce in affordable housing. But if we wanted to increase that to meet those owner targets, we will definitely need more resources for that. The Community Development Block Grant Fund is on a downward trajectory from the federal government at the moment. And There are limitations now that kind of exist on those funds that haven't existed before. And so we're seeing less of that invested in affordable housing development and invested in more community development ways that don't impact our community members.

I have a question about that, Rachel. In that 21st Century Road to Housing Act, does that make any changes to CDBG being allowed for building housing or open that up flexibility? Or do we know yet? I know it's a big bill.

I think we're waiting for the rules to come out first. And that's probably good two years away.

Good to know.

And then commercial and industrial construction tax fund only offers recesses when there are large developments like Costco. So when Costco was built, we had about $800,000 that we could put back out into the community. But until that happens again, we're piecemealing kind of collecting that fund at about maybe $20,000 a year. So until we have some large commercial developments, that fund is not really generating as much revenue as we had hoped. And then our pro-housing one-time funding We had 5 million. We've spent most of it down. We'll be putting out another RFP for about $300,000 that remains. And then we have applied for more pro-housing funding. So as long as the federal government continues to offer that, we will continue to apply for that one-time funding. But we will see how it regards us for those applications.

I do want to highlight because Rachel's not going to do it, but as she mentioned, we usually do about 1.5 to 2 million a year. So doing somewhere around 100 units that we're able to support. I think it's important to remind that with the DEQ grant, the pro housing grant over the last 18 months, this team has put out over 10 million at the community supporting projects. So that we're on a very fast ramp up pace to get that money out. And now we're kind of coming back to the reality of where we were pre all those things. So part of this work at the home community is going, how do we sort of pick back up from that dip and try to put more money out there to the community? So as we look at our work plan and what we're doing, it's reframing around there, what we have today, and then what can we build as a foundation for the future to take advantage of what comes.

Along those same lines, we are very nimble housing staff. So any programs that you want to add, we will need more staff to support.

Okay, and so, as we open it up for council discussion and direction, just kind of coming back to those, those 3 key things that Matt shared before. We're really interested in council. Like, are you in agreement with the home committee recommendations and priorities? Do you have things you'd like to tweak? Under the housing work plan header, are there any additional programs that aren't included in the committee recommendations that you'd like to see? Do you want to remove any? Do you want to move the prioritization around? Or do you have feedback on the order in which things are implemented? And then do you have input on whether or not staff should explore including questions in the community survey that goes out later this year regarding support for a large scale funding mechanism?

Great. Thank you. So Council, what I would like to do, I want to hear from everyone on this. We have about 20-ish minutes planned for this discussion. I might want folks to just kind of maybe go down the line and just identify where you're at with this without going into a lot of detail, and then we can kind of circle back to if a lot of people are interested in one thing or we need to discuss a certain program, we can do that. So, Councilor Mendez, maybe to start with you, just a general question about your agreement with these recommendations, anything you would want to change? And we're kind of thinking about those three revenue generators in that list of programs. Is there anything you would want to change? You generally feel okay with it? Or what do you have on your mind to start?

Yeah, thank you. I think this is really hard because I was concerned about the lack of support in the lower AMI quintiles. And the easiest way to address that is with an affordable housing bond. I'm going to generate the most amount of revenue and it would be flexible it would be uh it would have a big impact uh however i think that um i have concerns about since i have mixed feelings about asking voters about an affordable housing bond at this time i don't know that that's something that i'm prepared to go and ask our community to support um So I understand the rationale behind it. I'm not sure that I'm quite ready to throw my support behind it. Yes to items two and three, in particular three. I'm concerned about the additional staff resources necessary to support a program like that. I know it's under the revenue generating side of things, but additional staff is also, you know, it has to be paid for somehow. I think I would also support the rental registration fee because of its eventual potential use for a second home vacancy tax. I mean, in some cases, it might even be more than second home. It might be third or fourth. I don't know. But that would be down the road. So there's a little bit of a short-term and long-term side to it. In terms of the programs, I think I had initially been very supportive of the rate buy down program, but having learned more about it, I'm willing to push that to the bottom. I want to see us support a lot of smaller scale developments and that program doesn't really help us with that very much. Other than that, I think I would be supportive of all of them. I mean, some of these we already do. Yeah. To be frank, we're very successful. I mean, if anything, this whole process is telling us that, yes, we have some additional tools to consider, but in the context of what we are accomplishing, it's pretty extraordinary. So I'm generally supportive of this direction with the exception of the bond.

Got it. Okay. That's right.

I'm generally supportive. I have a couple of concerns and things I'd like to make sure we spend more time understanding going forward in the work plan process. I think the affordable housing bond thing is a difficult thing because it's going to be something we have to persuade the community of its value in the investment. I think there's no question, though, that an additional source of revenue is critical to achieving the goals. And we heard that very clearly from the chairs, the co-chairs of the committee. And so I don't see the way around having a thorough and robust community conversation about how we're going to do that. and how we're going to generate that new revenue. It does seem to me like it perhaps is one that we can act on the most quickly and generates a significant amount of money to really show some results. But that's going to require a lot of community engagement and it's going to require not just the council, it's going to require people from the community as volunteers. And I put myself in that category because this will happen when I'm no longer on the council of somebody who would be willing to work and to support a campaign to persuade voters to take action like that. The federal government and state government aren't coming to help us on this stuff. I would say that one of my personal qualifications about this is that I think a portion of this has to also be devoted to supporting the houseless part of our community. I would say that for me to support something like that when it comes time to vote on it, there's gotta be like 20%. to support the capital needs of infrastructure we need for house business that problem is not going away and it's very clear that the money is rapidly disappearing from other sources of government and we will be required to match those dollars and so this is one way to do that at least on the capital side a couple other things that i am pretty concerned about impacts on sdc revenue and it has been brought up a couple different places um and i think if we're going to look at sdc exemptions and changing that we at the same time have to look at well What does that mean for the needed infrastructure in the community? How are we going to pay for it? And what does that mean to the timeline for making that happen? The reality of the transportation bond measure we passed a while ago, which was almost $200 million, was we were fixing a lot of stuff that we didn't pay for in the past when we didn't charge full SDC amounts. Replicating that in the future just sets the community up for difficult conversations down the road. So it's sort of a whack-a-mole problem. so I want to make sure we look carefully at what that means um I didn't see risk uh really evaluated discreetly in the tables that we saw risk to the city on some of these programs and I just want to make sure that that is thoroughly evaluated and we're going very clear-eyed about what the risks are on some of these programs especially um the rate buy down um the revolving loan funds Merle those three in particular are the ones we need to be concerned about um and then um I think those are the 3 things I think I generally agree with Councilor Mendez about making sure that. The suite of programs we're using here are really getting at. The parts of the spectrum and the owner goals that are sort of hardest for us to accomplish, especially on the revenue side. Um. And where we've had the least amount of success, these tools should be focused in getting us improvements in those.

okay thanks council norris um yeah so i just um i'm generally in support i i think that some of these own targets are going to be really tough to meet and so i'm really supportive of a lot of the discussion um around staffing i think we're going to need a pretty robust stuff if we want to hit some of these targets um i also would like to consider i mean continuation of the committee because i just i think that if we want to keep this going and if we're really serious about meeting these targets, I just think that we're going to need this to continue. I think that the bond is I think it's important. I think it's going to be a heavy lift, like a lot of my fellow counselors are saying. So I would be really interested in having it be part of the survey just to kind of gauge and see what the community input is. I would really want to hear the feedback from from community on that. I think that the rental registration, I think, is something really important. We've been talking about that, wanting to get feedback on the community. And I think it's, I mean, for lack of a better word, low-hanging fruit, I think it'd be really easy feedback to get. I think it will be important to get a lot of engagement from landlords on that just to make sure that there's communication and expectations from that group. Kelsey O' And in terms of the programs, I think that you know, most of those are pretty robust like like other counselors said, some of them are already doing. Kelsey O' I think that the infrastructure, one is most important, I think that we've been seeing been discussing a lot that infrastructure is really some of the blockade to some of the development of big and small happening, so I think that one is probably one that sticks out to me the most important.

Okay, great.

Thanks. We set our council goals in the beginning of 2025. I pounded the table and kind of spilled my milk about having the owner goals being our North Star. And then I sort of really pushed hard for that same thing to be part of the home committee recommendations. And so I really believe that is my North Star for this production. And like counselor Mendez what I feel as though is that these in my mind are targeted, not where I would target them necessarily in terms of where these thousand production is going to be most effective. I want to hit 80 and below. We've done a good job of above 80%. So when I see things like the SDZ exemptions going higher, I understand the effect of that. I also feel very strongly, as Councilor Riley suggests, that that is a bill for our future folks, that we're going to have to, that infrastructure needs to get built. And we're all going to have to pay for that going down there, going down the range. So I'm not particularly excited about kicking that can down the road. I'm also not excited about asking our voters to spread across the community for this property tax that's going to be part of a bond, that's going to generate this, that's going to be targeted to certain sectors of the community it's it's hard for me to explain that to community i understand it's a social good i understand it's a it is a community value it is also i i i would like to focus it i would like to focus it towards the folks that are going to be most benefiting from this and so for me i would like to consider other revenue sources that would include some kind of economic activity and some kind of building associated as well because the builders are also benefiting from these programs as well it's targeted right at them so i guess that's where i'm sitting on these and And I would definitely put the rate buy down at the end because of the capital that we have to tie up to make that happen. Thanks.

Councillor Perkins.

Hi, can you hear me OK? OK, great. Yeah, I mean, the bond is that's the hardest piece of all of this, right? And I don't want to give up on it because I know it's something that's been talked about for years. I think that it's worth at least going a little bit farther and seeing if we can find a way to talk about it with the public, ask the public what they would think. I also think that it has to be something like the transportation bond that is very targeted and has very specific saying, we are going to do the following things with this, not just give me some of your money for a bond. So I don't want to give up on it yet, but I do want to take some more time to think about it and think about how we can communicate that to the public. As far as the MERL, I'm skeptical, but I'm really hopeful that it can work. I have been asking for rental registration for years, and I'm really excited that it's on here. I share concerns with Councillor Mendes about, you know, sure, it's revenue generating, but it's not revenue generating to landlords and tenants, right? would want to make sure that we do that as revenue neutral as possible for particularly for our renters in our community. I am very, very interested in adding a vacancy tax to this list. I think that it's something that we should do and can do and is something that um that you know our community could really get behind um as far as the programs go um i would i would put the infrastructure revolving loan fund at the top and i would put the rate by down at the bottom but um i i think they're great programs and um um yeah that's it thanks all right counselor thanks can you hear me okay yep sorry my

my video is like coming in and out so I apologize thank you um I I have the same feeling about um as everybody else with the the housing bond um I actually didn't want it on the list for the committee to look at um of course we need this level of funding um but I just don't think it's going to be palatable to voters and I think it just kind of goes against the whole point of what we're trying to do here which is help to make our city more affordable to the folks who work in our community. So I think there are some alternatives that I'd be interested in talking with the rest of council about when we have time. The city of Portland implemented gross receipts Tanya Kessler- panics on extremely large businesses so like businesses that gross over a billion dollars a year corporate wide. Tanya Kessler- And that's generated far more money than the city can possibly spend, so I think that's a better option for us to look at it and informal conversations with other elected officials and people in the Community it's it's received more positively and. I think the MERL, yes, let's do it. If the state's made the money available, please move forward as quickly as possible with it. As far as the rental registry, I'm a little bit concerned that As everyone said, there's going to be a fee that's just going to be passed on to renters. And also, it feels a little bit like it's going to be a make work project for staff. In number three, I'd really rather see the vacancy fee. I've seen numbers that there's about 3,000 second, third, fourth homes in Bend. If just half of those paid a $5,000 a year fee, that would be $7.5 million a year. That would go a long way to all the programs that we want to do. And as far as the programs, interesting, I feel like we're all super consistent. I'm not really in favor of more SDC exemptions. And I do agree that I feel like it's the below the 80% line that we need to support both in terms of supportive housing and home ownership. So I'm glad to see the city support for land trust. We can continue to do that if we have a source of funding. With the infrastructure revolving loan fund, I just want to highlight what Carly said that seems to have been not included in the recommendation, but that the loan is paid back basically with the property taxes. So property taxes that are collected on the home basically go to pay back the loan as opposed to going into the general fund. So I think that is a really great idea because the housing isn't happening. If it's a tool that we can use to help make the housing happening, it's tax income that the city's not getting right now anyway. And so we're kind of getting our housing goals without having to pay because it's being paid for by the property tax, if that makes sense. It's almost like a property assessed, you know, um, So the rate buy down, I'm super supportive of the rate buy down, especially because interest rates are extraordinarily high right now and the city's got credit rating that it can use. So if we had a funding source that we could tie up, I think that could also go a long way to help get projects out of the gate. I know it's something that even nonprofits can benefit from if nonprofits are taking out construction loans. They're affected by high interest rates right now as well. The property tax exemptions, i'm not quite on board with that one either um and what was the last thing i was going to say uh i just say oh i know um i you know i think one of the barriers that our community is facing and they're looking to us as a council to help address um is housing affordability um and so the other component of that is yes it's getting the houses out of the ground but it's also empowering the buyers And down payments on houses, even affordable ones, are still a huge barrier. And so I think that's something that we need to keep in play as one of the programs. So I think that covers the list. Thanks.

um okay so i um will chime in with the rest of council around the the affordable housing bond and just the difficulty that you have to overcome anytime you're asking the voters to approve a money measure like this and i don't think that it's insurmountable but i do think um i agree with council perkins we we need to explore it a bit further maybe not give up on it totally but we do need to ask some questions about when when and why and how this would be viable for our community. I do want to say that there is a common good in getting people housed in our community, able to live here and afford to be here and not lose the workforce that runs the city. And there are people in the city that can afford to pay more. into a pot that helps those that are less well off than they are. One of the problems with a bond like this is it is applied across the community to every person, whether you are struggling to make your mortgage payment or you are just fine with your second home. And that is a problem that I would love to be able to solve on how do we ask those that have more to pay a little more. And those that have less are hardly anything to feel secure that they're not going to be taxed further. And so I think that's a thorny question, but I would, as, as Councilor Norris said, I support, I think we should ask in our survey in December. Just a general question about this, just to get some gauge, some community. um sentiment on it you know we hear from some folks in our emails but the the committee members all saw the value in this and their organizations see the value right so there may be folks aligned with that view as well i think we need to kind of get a temperature check on that um i support the other two revenue generating mechanisms i think the registration fee and i think our our staff is supportive because it gives us the data that's the base for maybe some other policies we could do um including the vacancy tax which i also agree we need to explore i would i would say let's get through the conversation initially about this housing bond and let's get these programs going and then come for the HAB-Masyn Moyer- Maybe the vacancy taxes, the next step, but I would be supportive of exploring that because I knew I do know that it's a little bit easier for our Community to understand that one right. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And on the program side I think i'll echo a couple of people I would do prioritize. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Expanding SEC exemptions right now and the rate buy down for the reasons that were were stated, I think the rest of these are good, I think the property tax exemptions carly's point about how that helps with ongoing costs which. affordable housing developers cannot raise rents to meet like a market developer would is pretty important and I think what that means is as some of the work we've been doing with our special districts just to get into a programmatic method of understanding when those are going to be available for developers and reliable so that they're not you know worried about unreliability of whether those are going to be approved so I support moving forward with that I heard so just taking notes a lot of people on the same page around the bond HAB-Juliette Boone, Moral and mental registration enough support, I think that we heard for her to go forward with that. HAB-Juliette Boone, Land trust the ir left the property tax exemption thing I think junior the only one who is sort of opposed to that everyone else seemed okay with those. HAB-Juliette Boone, And then a little more hesitance on the SEC and the rate buy down as a priority and then for those who didn't get a chance to weigh in around the vacancy tax what other people think about.

don't know if we're adding it right now but putting that in the mix maybe even though our committee had mixed feelings about it do we want to add that to a list of things that might come as part of this work plan later i think my comments revolved when i was speaking revolved about the the regressive nature of the the the bond and so this is a more progressive way from a taxation standpoint to that which is which which really uh resonates with me so i'm supportive okay

Yeah, I'd be willing to explore. Okay, and it'd be not supportive of maybe looking at that as part of this work plan. I'd be okay with that.

Okay, I mean, I think I think if there's and maybe maybe it's worth even asking the questions. There's something else that could be done that has not been explored so far that generates some revenue that should be on the table. But I do think the registration fee is part of setting ourselves up to be able to more effectively use some of those other tools. So that's why it's one of the first steps up here.

I mean, one of the things that I was really excited about on the revenue side was the land value tax, which is a way to get some revenue from folks who are sitting on underdeveloped or undeveloped land. the landscape kind of at the state statutory level isn't great for that. So we're going to need some movement. And I think that's why that one kind of fell to the bottom, even though it's a good idea. It's pretty technically difficult to do right now. So I think there's opportunity to come back to some of those things maybe in the future, but It sounds like we've got some consensus around sort of moving forward. And as folks have said, we're going to have a work plan. We're going to be able to dive into some more details. I think talk about some more of the risks that may be coming with some of these programs and how they're exactly going to be built out and implemented. Just want to check with Megan and Gina, any other comments from you before we sort of move on to the timeline and then move to our next topic. Okay.

Good. Okay, great. Are we gonna have like a maybe a phase one in the phase 2 to the work plan? And then maybe also, like, what are we? What's the advocacy stuff that comes out of this? If the land value tax is one of mine.

Yeah, I think I'm fine. Lvt is not on this list, and it's my dream for the future, right? So I think we can stick with what we kind of came up with today. And Chris, maybe you can take us to the sort of what the timeline is for next steps here. We've got it on the screen there. Yeah.

Yeah, so so basically, based on this discussion we just had, we'll work with staff to come up with an implementation plan. It would probably take, you know, 3 to 5 years to get through most of these. That'll hopefully come later this year. We'll continue program development on the infrastructure revolving loan fund. Maybe pause on the right by now.

I think maybe pause on the right by now and focus on the Merle.

And then yeah, we'll pick up some steam on Merle. have the work plan prepared uh in advance of the council goal setting process for 27 to 29 so you guys will be able to implement some of that into the goal setting process um and then we'll also hopefully use that to work on some budget development as we mentioned we will probably need more staff if we're going to be ramping up programs as well so that'll come into the conversation yeah i was going to ask was there any program prioritization i kind of heard

uh infrastructure rising to the top there that's right so I just want to make sure that's kind of like what's first on all of your lists yeah infrastructure revolving loan fund three was land trusts and then uh felt like land trust yes we we do that already let's just push it further but yes I think we can further refine that prioritization and bring it back to work plan yeah I wish yeah I would assume that would be a work session in probably November ish time frame

That would be great. So we can kind of really nail that down before we'll setting. Um, there was consensus here, I think, to ask a question in the survey around the housing bonds back on those questions also in November, too.

So yeah, we can work plan.

Let's go out in December and then Council Norris has suggested this committee. Sort of continuing. I don't know if maybe staff, if you could noodle on that, how can this committee be helpful in the future as part of this work plan? If there are places that they could help with program implementation, or I don't know. Maybe you can bring us some ideas because I think we put a really good group together and I like that point of let's keep them engaged. So I think that's it. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments and reading the whole memo. It was a long one.

Sorry.

No, it was a lot of work that you did. All right. Next, we are switching over topics to our water supply update.

slide.

Okay. Ready to go? Yeah. All right. Good evening, Mayor, counselors. Good to see you. Been a while. For the record, Mike Bittner, Public Works Director. Sitting next to Jillian Ochner, our Senior Policy Analyst from the Water Services Department, and Brittany Barker, Principal Engineer in our Engineering Department. We're here tonight to provide a water supply update. But if you didn't notice, I did bring some additional subject matter experts and some additional horsepower in the room here. So depending on where our conversation goes, I do have Rod Mingus, our Water Operations Manager over here to my left. We have Drexel Barnes, who knows his way around the watershed after a couple of decades of looking at our gauging stations. We also have Owen McMurtry, our Water Rights Analyst that works for GSI Water Solutions, our hired vendor. And then we also extended an invitation to Chris Schall, General Manager for Tumalo Irrigation District. Chris is back here somewhere. And then Jeremy Giffen, Deschutes Basin Water Master for the Water Resource Department. We know you all have questions. We do too. We'll try and have some answers for you here today. But really our update is informational, but we know it's going to spur a discussion. And so we hope to leave here with a healthy discussion and a general idea of what else you want to know about. There's a lot. We're going to share some information about what we have been working on, but we know there's more and we know that you have more questions. We've broken our update into really 4 chunks. I'll do a quick statewide water outlook and share a couple of slides about the current state of conditions. Spoiler alert, it's not good. We'll quickly pivot and focus on City of Bend's water supplies, really how our system toggles between surface water and groundwater. I'll share a graph that I think might be helpful for reference. And then Jillian will speak specifically about surface water, groundwater, conservation, and really how we're planning for the future. How we factor in climate change into that is one of the bigger topics that we're trying to grapple with. And we're interested to hear your thoughts on that tonight. And all of this is really about water system resiliency. So we'll end with a update on the Outback facility project, our ongoing efforts to expand that and add to the city's water system resiliency. Brittany Barker will cover a couple of key milestones that are on the horizon here that you should be aware of. Okay. So, as we get through our presentation, I want you to be thinking about this question. We're going to come back when we kick off our council discussion and focus on a question like this. But it's really, what else do you think we should be asking about water supply and climate change? We do this all day. This is what we do. We study this stuff. This is why you've hired us. But we're interested in really what you're hearing from the public, what you're hearing as counselors, and what else should we be focused on that we can help answer in the future. So with that, I'll dive into a statewide water outlook and Jeremy and Chris, sorry, this might be hard to watch. The short answer is this is a pretty challenging conditions across the state. This is a snapshot from the U.S. Drought Monitor. We get these in our inbox every couple of weeks. This is the latest one that we shared. I'll just add some data to this. 90% of the state is in some sort of abnormally dry or drought condition. That big red swath across the middle of the state there that largely covers Deschutes County. That's about 24% of the state that's in some form of extreme or exceptional drought. That's a high percentage for this time of year. 1 of the things of note in the water conditions report is we notice is just how quickly things have changed over the last few weeks. You probably noticed it. We've noticed it. We expect these colorful diagrams to get worse over the next few weeks and into September. It isn't until October that we start to really see some relief. So statewide conditions are tough. If you're a water master, if you're an irrigation district, if you're a water provider, if you're a water customer, if you're a farmer or a fish or a wildland firefighter, this is a really, really difficult, historically challenging year. Okay. Focus more specifically on the Deschutes Basin. This is a graph I share. I know you can't read the small text in there. That's for the fly fishermen and the fishermen that opened this up on the weekends and want to know the flows of certain parts of the basin. What I wanted to just focus on is the tea kettles. This is a tea kettle diagram that the US Bureau of Reclamation provides. And it provides a quick snapshot, sort of a temperature check of how irrigation districts are doing. When you see those tea kettles half filled at this time of the year, or Crescent Lake in the far left corner, 16% filled, that's storage for irrigation districts that are barely making it through the year. I think every irrigation district, correct me if I'm wrong here, Jeremy, every irrigation district in the basin is either cutting back from a percentage standpoint, is entered into some sort of a rotation like Tumul Irrigation District have, or is already off. Am I wrong in any of that, Jeremy? That's correct. Okay. So tough conditions across the basin. So, you know, focusing specifically on city of Bend water use, what does that mean for our surface and groundwater supplies? Jillian's going to dive into some of those constraints, some of those known constraints that we have that we plan around the things like the 18.2 but also some of the unknown constraints that are evolving, climate change, groundwater level declines that are more and more of a concern. But if we dive into that conversation, I just wanted to share this graph with you and share really three things. First, when you take a step back and first look at this, you see the peak seasonal increase in water use that we have here in Bend. That's something that we've been dealing with for the last several decades. I'm happy to report that that is actually getting better. Um, last year in 2025, you can see that we peaked at just under 25M gallons in our maximum day. Um, the year before that, that was right around 25 to 26. 2 years before that it was 2728 about 10 or 15 years ago. We were in that 2829 and even a 30M gallon per rate per per day range. So, what that tells me is that how we operate the system, the leak detection things that we have in place, the public facing conservation programs, all of those things are helping sort of reduce or arrest. the increasing peak seasonal water use. So we're doing a good job there. Now we need to keep those programs going, keep moving that water use from thirsty lawn and landscape to, you know, somebody using it indoors somewhere else. So we're doing some good. So that's one thing I wanted to just acknowledge about this graph. The other one is really the difference between the surface water and groundwater systems. So you see we have those distinguished between two different colors. The surface water system, if I go over to the left-hand side, January, February, March, we're at that 6 million gallons per day range. That's how our systems operated for about 100 years. Actually, exactly 100 years, right? And then it isn't until you get to May that water demands start to increase, that we start to use more surface water, and then we supplement with groundwater to meet that peak day, peak seasonal demand. So that flat line there of surface water, that's the 18.2 or just below it. And Rod, I was thinking from a million gallon standpoint, I think that's like 11, 11.7 million gallons per day or in that range. I should have the number off the top of my head, but we're just over 10 million gallons per day of surface water through the growing season. And then we stop because we're at that peak. So that's the other thing. The last thing I just wanted to mention with this is you see a couple of interesting anomalies like around March of 2025. That's really the redundancy and sort of some of the resilient aspects of this system. So while we're cranking along using surface water, In those winter months, January, February, it was late February, we got a rain event in the watershed. It was a really, really intense event that created a turbidity event across the Tumalo watershed into Bridge Creek. And it was neat, Brittany actually pulled the operator notes for that day. And you could see 4.30 a.m. our staff start to notice turbidity increasing. You see the other operator notes about how we're adjusting our treatment process throughout the day. By 9 p.m. we threw in the towel and said, you know, we're working the system too hard. We're going to switch to complete groundwater. We had that option, right? And the point I'm trying to drive home is that during these off-peak seasons or off-peak times, we have options. If we lose surface water, we can go to groundwater. If we lose groundwater, we can go to surface water. But when we get into those peak seasonal months, June, July, and August, that's where we have really limited options. If we use our surface water system, we cannot meet our water demands alone with just the groundwater system. And you can see here where we're peaked or where we're constrained on the surface water system if we were to lose groundwater during June, July, or August. That would elicit a pretty serious curtailment alert. We would pull in Terry Carl, our emergency management person, and we would really go to town on driving down non-essential water use across town. So I wanted to just deliver those sort of three perspectives. This chart's really helpful for me and how we explain how the water system operates. So as we get into some of these scenarios, the what ifs, what if we lose all of this or all of this source, you know, be thinking in the background, like this is how we use water and how we have to toggle between the two sources. Of course, conservation brings all of this down and makes it all a little bit more tolerable. But I wanted to have this frame of reference as we dive into the rest of the slides, okay?

Just am I remembering the previous version of these slides had cut out around the July that was just an error in slide. Is that right?

No, you saw an old version that was from 2021. and that was actually another example we were going to call out. It was actually a chlorine gas shortage supply. We're halfway through the year and we actually went through a conservation curtailment exercise. rationed our surface water supply, increased groundwater production, so the impact to the community was minimal. You heard us asking for conservation to make it all better, but we didn't need to go tell people to shut off your water use. We could make some adjustments, but yeah, good catch. Thanks. Okay, so we're there. If there aren't any other questions, I'll turn it over to Jillian to talk a little bit more about water supplies, surface water, groundwater, and more.

Yeah, so we talked about our water supply as sort of a portfolio, right? Surface water, groundwater, and our conserved water. And remember that we're serving about 75% of Bend and private water providers serve the rest. So as we begin here, you heard from Mike that surface water is our primary source of water. And you heard Lori present to you earlier this year about the history of the Bend water system and when the city took over providing water from Bend Power, Light, and Water. energy company and power power water and light company in 1926 we transitioned from relying on deschutes river to establishing that bend municipal watershed and um securing water rights on bridge creek a tributary of tumulo creek to provide high quality of water for our drinking water and over time the city built out a portfolio of water leading to this 36 cubic feet per second And that is not usable all the time. Only six CFS, six cubic feet per second is unrestricted. The rest of it is subject to restrictions like seasonal restrictions, as well as volume restrictions throughout the year. And we also have the 18.2 cubic foot per second limit on our surface water, which we're gonna talk about in a minute. But first I wanna just take a moment and talk a little bit more about the way we try to optimize the use of our system with surface water as the primary source, about 60% of our surface or of our water use is surface water and 40% groundwater on average throughout the year. And as you saw from the graph that Mike showed, the water is largely surface water when we have a lot of surface water available in the wintertime. And then we add that groundwater to help supplement in our peak season. And I think that To maximize our energy efficiency, we try to keep that balance because it costs about 75% more per million gallon to produce groundwater than surface water. And that cost has a ramification in affordability for our customers. It has a ramification for our carbon footprint. The council established a climate action policy back in 2016, which directed carbon reduction goals for our city facilities and operations. And so that's part of this too. We also look at balancing these two and considering how we can protect the ecological health of our creek. And leaving water in stream when there are lower flows in the summertime helps Tumalo Creek health. And the city has an agreement with Tumalo Irrigation District for co-management of that creek and assuring that in-stream flow requirements are met. And it's also important for us to be judicious with our groundwater as It's important to recognize that surface water and groundwater systems are connected and groundwater is a source of cold water for spring fed creeks that are important to fish habitat, et cetera. I think it's important. I should also note, however, that groundwater pumping attributable to cities in the Deschutes Basin is really only 2% of the total groundwater pumping. So our effect on the total springs is difficult to quantify. at times. So we'll talk more about groundwater in a minute, but let's move on now to the 18.2 restriction. So the city's surface water rights are restricted to this maximum diversion rate of 18.2, which was established in 2013 and related to limiting the potential surface water improvement project impacts at that time and evaluated as part of the environmental assessment conducted for the Forest Service Special Use Permit. The limitation is enforced in the following way. So seasonal availability, we just talked about. There are certain combinations of the city's water rights that could, in theory, allow the city to divert more than 18.2 cubic feet per second at any single time. However, the city's water rights impose multiple other limitations on the city's ability to divert more than that. And particularly during the irrigation season, the relative seniority of the city's water rights portfolio is not really sufficient to reliably authorize a diversion greater than 18.2 cubic feet per second. Water is only legally available under the City's 1913 and 1983 water rights if downstream senior water rights holders' demands are satisfied. So, the second piece is the Forest Service Decision Notice, and this is at the end of the environmental assessment process The Forest Service issued a decision of finding of no significant impact, and that came out of the National Environmental Policy Act analysis, the NEPA analysis that was conducted. And there was a statement made in that decision notice that states, finally and most importantly, before the city could convey more than 18.2 cubic feet per second through the pipeline, it must first apply for and be granted a new special use permit from the Forest Service. And this request for a new special use permit would trigger a new NEPA analysis, including new temperature and habitat modeling and assessment of the anticipated restoration of flows on the river by other users such as irrigation districts, the temperature and flow requirements, et cetera. And for this new special use permit, the Forest Service must also take into account any changes in new listing under the Endangered Species Act. It must also consider the Forest Service policy, such as in fish, as well as any issues arising under the Clean Water Act. it is simply not possible that any future request by the city to amend or replace the current requested special use permit in order to increase the amount of water conveyed through the pipeline will escape a new round of environmental review by the forest service that is a long passage but i thought it was important to share because it made it very very crystal clear what the obligations are Then the special use permit was issued in 2017. It expires in 2037. And in the special use permit, we're obligated to maintain an operation and maintenance plan, which was first issued in 2017 and updated, I think, annually every other year. I can't remember off the top of my head. We've provided the 2017 and the 2024 versions of those two, I believe. And in that operations and maintenance plan, it also states that we'll monitor water diversion rates continuously and we'll control those diversions to limit to that 18.2. And it also talks about not exceeding the maximum hourly average flow diversion rate And for municipal demand, what that means is the city will only take what it needs and limit up to 18.2. And with the surface water improvement project, we were able to modify our trick intake and our diversion of water to meet only what we need. So that's why we can modulate in the wintertime to that 6 CFS. And then finally, the city council in 2013 issued a resolution or passed a resolution 2933 that also talked about the limit to the demand for municipal use and up to maximum of 18.2. And that was then a few months later codified in an ordinance amending the Bend Code to establish the surface water withdrawals passage that, again, instantaneous rate allowed from Bridge Creek point of diversion shall be limited. There are infrastructure constraints as well that Brittany will talk about a little bit later in the presentation. So with that, I'm going to turn over to groundwater now. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes, I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to charge your head.

So what happens if we were in a scenario where We're having trouble meeting the in-stream water rights. What happens in that situation? How does that get managed in terms of, well, somebody's going to have to, some user's going to have to adjust its flow? I'm thinking kind of out into the future. I mean, something like that might happen. What's involved? What's the regulatory process? I mean, I understand it sort of starts cooperatively between us and TOD, right? But then if we can't work it out, then what

Well, we would work it out, or the water master, Jeremy, over here would work it out for us. Chris, myself, Rod, and our staff gather, meet every April to really look back at the winter that we've had or just experienced in the water year ahead. And at that time, we look ahead and really try and estimate what is the in-stream water right going to be and how is that going to change over the growing season and how are we going to meet it. It changes every couple of weeks. It's not one steady amount that's there the entire time. So over the course of that April meeting, we look ahead and we talk to Chris to get an understanding of where we feel like his deliveries might start and how he's going to utilize Tumalo Creek and when he might switch over to stored water. And then at some point, Hal Hallstein, Jill usually July like that becomes a struggle to just barely meet the in stream water right, and so, at that point. Hal Hallstein, counselor if if we can't meet that or we need to make a reduction it's usually Chris that makes the reduction to allow additional water to meet the in stream right. Hal Hallstein, it's not the city of Ben typically we're using about 18.2 CFS from that area, Chris is using between 100 and 170 and 200 CFS so we just stopped there Chris did I say anything incorrect there no you're fine all right. But if we couldn't, if we were at odds or had a poor relationship, which has happened over the course of, Ben's history with tunnel irrigation district. Jeremy will step in and say the in-stream water rights not being met. I don't care between which of you, you know, somebody's going to decrease water until we meet that. That's how it would work.

And if we had to decrease our water, would we pull more from groundwater? Would we have the ability during that peak season in the summertime to do that?

Possibly, yeah. I mean, we could. I think that would come also with a request for conservation. There's a reason why we'd be asking for we would be making that switch. And so But theoretically, if the reduction that we had to make were small enough, four CFS, five CFS, yes, we would increase groundwater production.

Cllr Rachel Gilliland, That's tremendous. Did you have a question?

Uh, yeah, on the Forest Service special use permit it. I'm not aware of any plans to revisit that and and request additional water rights usage. But if someone were concerned about that, it's not the kind of thing that you could just decide on a very short time period to say, Oh, now the city is going to go out for this uh amended use permit. what would we what would that process entail like in other words what would someone want to look for in terms of the city's process if if they were concerned about that and they wanted to see well is the city revisiting this idea because i i feel like we've heard from some in the community that they want reassurance on this and i would just like to hear if there's uh anything you can share about that's not the kind of thing that you just do quickly or

No, correct. As you saw from the graph at the beginning that Mike shared, there isn't a need for us to do that today. If suddenly we had constraints on our groundwater that precipitated a need to increase our surface water, we might consider something along those lines. But I don't have, right now, any information that would suggest we would do that, A. B, you're correct. this permitting process is extensive, to expand it as stated in the finding of no significant impact, it would trigger a huge review of conditions and environmental impact that we would have to assess under a full NEPA analysis. So it would not be quick and it would be very publicly facing.

And we also do master planning efforts every 10 years. So 2021 was the last time we went through that effort where we evaluated population growth as well as demand and conservation efforts. And during that process, we evaluate 20 years out and they did not see the need for increased uh water production or having to increase that 18.2 flow rate so that's just another element that goes into the planning exercise to forecast based on uh existing and projected conditions thank you all right council princess do you have a question i do have a question yeah um

My question is, you know, we share our water resources with neighboring jurisdictions, with the tribe. And I think a lot of folks in the community, I know a lot of folks in the community are very worried about water conservation in terms of, you know, preserving the health of our water resources for recreation, for fisheries, the environment, broader environment. So I guess my question is, are we what are our what do our partners say you do these negotiations with our partners about our water use um and so i'm curious what our partners are saying um and um you know if there has been an ask of the city to even reduce its um its surface water or groundwater below what it is today

Sure, I can jump in and try and answer that, counselor. I think our basin partners are worried as well. We interact regularly with other water agencies, municipal water providers, irrigation districts. And as you mentioned, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, we've had pretty extensive conversations with about their concerns with Tumalo Creek, the localized impacts of our activities in the watershed and outback and really how those impact downstream. I think there's a lot of shared interest around the concerns. What's the actionable vehicle we're all going to use to move us forward? To date, that's been the Deschutes Basin Water Collaborative, and we still hope to develop a plan that sort of develops some consensus around conservation and some of those next tools and resources that we can all advance as a basin. We still hope that that plan comes together and is out here before the end of the calendar year. But yeah, I think that we're always being asked to conserve more, Councilor Franzosa. That's really the only safe source of supply right now. Surface water has been fully allocated and is being really, really challenged from climate and groundwater level declines are something that we're just getting an understanding of just how dire the situation is as canal lining and piping occurs across the basin. We deal with climate change as well as exempt water users. There's no safe answer out there outside of, you know, invest in conservation and make sure you're getting a good return on your investment. So I think that maybe is the best I can answer right now.

Okay, thanks. And we're a little behind, Jillian, if you can move through the next few a little bit quickly so we can get to the plan for the future.

Sounds good. Okay. So very briefly, we have eight groundwater production sites, 20 wells, and that is, as you know, supplements for summer water usage. Our groundwater rights fall into two categories. Those that were acquired before about the end of the 1990s and does not require mitigation and that those water rights that were acquired after the Deschutes Groundwater Mitigation Program was established in 2001. So there are limits to the city's use of that Tier 2 because we haven't acquired all the mitigation required to use that portion of the groundwater rights. The Disuse Groundwater Mitigation Program, just as a preview, that program is set to sunset in January of 2029. So in the 2027 legislative session, there's a concept to extend that program for another 10 years. And we'll loop back with you on that as you set legislative priorities. Water conservation is another key piece of our total water portfolio. As you know, you heard from Dan earlier this spring about water waste mitigation and trying to be very careful about how we're controlling leaks, both on our side of our distribution system and the customer side, and then the code enforcement of our water use. for, you know, even an odd day watering, time of day watering and not allowing overflow of watering onto the street. And we're continually looking at how to improve our conservation measures in terms of our rebates and our incentives. We're going through a water management and conservation plan update right now and reviewing all of that. And another tool in water conservation is that rate structure that's in your council goal right now and will come back to you in the coming biennium to look at rate modernization. And it's working. This graph is to demonstrate that, yes, over the last two decades, water production has remained relatively stable as population has increased. So that's the success story of the effort that has been the commitment of our city to conservation over time. So let's transition now into planning for the future. And what are the city's risks from growth and climate change and how we're trying to consider what To do about that and with respect to water availability and our understanding of the information and data that are out there so we're looking at climate projections for impacts on precipitation patterns temperature increases and. corresponding drought stream flow fluctuations and precipitation events, as well as groundwater level declines. So what challenges are we facing? Summer temperature increases, absolutely. Fire risk and danger of fire in our watershed. Drought cycles, extreme precipitation, rain events, and how that looks in terms of the precipitation changing from snowpack to rain. So how extreme are these likely to be? Well, drought is a natural part of life in Central Oregon. And over the past 100 years, records show that the Shoes Basin tends to experience drought about once every 10 years. So we already, as you've heard, are co-managing with Tumulam Irrigation District to protect in-stream flows through those cycles of drought over time. And looking ahead, scientists expect those droughts to potentially become more frequent and more intense, particularly in the 2020s, which is interesting. And then looking further out, the concern over losing snowpack in the mountains obviously plays a role in water supply at the statewide level, mostly on the western side of those cascades. On the eastern side of the cascades, we have unique geology that allows precipitation in whatever form it falls in to infiltrate into the groundwater and serve to replenish the springs that are the source for our surface water in the basin. So where our source springs are pretty resilient to the kind of the longer term climate impacts that are forecast in the modeling today. So How do we do scenario planning? We are planning for a variety of risks that we face all the time at different levels. But you heard from Brittany on we're doing master planning. We consider it in our master planning. We are looking at climate risks in the way we consider how much investment we make in conservation and looking at the more immediate threats. And the biggest risk to our water supply is fire in the watershed. And there are other risks to water supply, such as water quality concerns, power outages, and other risks that we do scenario planning around, like natural disasters, cybersecurity, physical risks. And the water system-wide service water, groundwater treatment distribution, we're doing risk management assessments on an annual basis. And we're evaluating our preparedness for worst case scenario. Our dual source supply, along with the city's strong focus on water conservation, really help ensure we can meet the needs of homes and businesses and industries now and into the future. And it's also critical in the event of a fire that we lose access to one of those supplies. pieces of our supply for a period of time. So with respect to climate change on a precipitation pattern and flow regime shift level, we're already working collaboratively as we've said a few times, and we're looking at how we can protect in-stream water rates in the drought years and modulate our surface water intake has greatly enhanced our ability to do that. And in the last 10 years or so, in-stream flow requirements have consistently been met or exceeded in Tumalo Creek. I think that's an important thing as we look at our hydrograph over time is the benefits of the investments we've made to date. So what else are we considering in the long term water supply planning? That's this list. You've already heard about our conservation program improvement rate modernization. collaborative management. And then there are these kind of three pieces of innovation that you may have heard about at the statewide level. And here locally in the Deschutes Basin, there was legislation passed in 2025 around water banking and a pilot water bank with the Deschutes River Conservancy. We're talking about aquifer recharge now and ways in which we can potentially slow the declines that are exacerbated both by climate change and piping of the canals, and then water reuse and how we can incorporate that more broadly at a statewide level and consider it here locally. And then this is our transition point to the Outback facility and infrastructure master planning for climate resiliency.

Go ahead. The longer report I think that you all sent out this week that talked about the climate change and the shift from the snow to the liquid water and how those percentages were the same was astonishing to me. I was really surprised by that. And I just want to emphasize the point that you said. If it changes from snow to water, our surface flows are going to be relatively constant, assuming that percentages hold through. That is my understanding, and that's how I read that report. My concern was, I thought you just said that the aquifer recharge would also continue with with liquid water falling on the mountains. But I had always understood that it needed to be that slower melt water that would recharge, percolate down through the aquifer. So that was surprising to me. So can you clarify that point, please?

Yeah. So to the extent of my knowledge, and I am not a climatologist, to be very clear, we have Owen McMurtry here who might have a little more insight because he studied at a deeper level but my understanding is that that is correct with pretty porous soils in the mountain range that allow that water to percolate through and that the timing of it will affect the hydrograph so yes if you read the Oregon climate assessment they talk a little bit about it and I think I also shared the whiteboard report it shifts it but in terms of magnitude it shouldn't My understanding is it isn't anticipated to have a huge reduction in flow out of those.

See, just so you know, the aquifer recharge that we're talking about is sort of artificial aquifer recharge. Yes, I've used both terms. Yeah. I was just going to add. Which is if we have excess flow somewhere else in the system, we can convert them into a place that would help recharge the aquifer. So that may be worse if the confusion is.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate your clarification, Mayor Keebler. And I think that's important to remember is when they're, There's natural recharge occurring. And then this is artificial recharge that I might be versus that kind of thing.

Got it. Thank you.

Okay. Moving right along.

We're a little short on time, so.

I will.

No, no, no, that's fine.

Great question. Absolutely. Housing and water tonight.

Yeah, if you want to go maybe right to like the town site update that that might. Okay.

Um, we have had a lot of stakeholder engagement since 2023 on what we are intending on doing to expand our land adjacent to our water filtration facility. We are in the process of acquiring 48. 48 acres of Forest Service land adjacent and we went through a NEPA process. That process was completed in June with a finding of no significant impact. We have received a draft version of the purchase and sale agreement that is under review right now by the Forest Service. Um, at their office of general councils, and that was sent over last week after we had the initial review, we're expecting about 30 to 60 days timeline for them to review that concurrently with all of these things happening. We also had an appraisal that came in at 250,000 dollars for that 48 acres. Um. We also have done extensive discussions with land use and rezoning. So, over the course of the last year or so we developed a public facility zone for that 48 acre expansion area. You'll see in the red that is the rural residential 10. That's what our existing site already is under the green area to the south is forest use 1. that's the 48 acre expansion area. So we have a split zone right now. We were trying to figure out a way to be able to permit our uses outright by creating a new public facility zone. But with concerns from stakeholders, we explore some other options because they didn't think that the wildlife. Uh, exception was going to be robust enough given that that path. So we've had a number of conversations with Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development along with Deschutes County. We continue to have those conversations. Our current plan is we're exploring an umbrella conditional use permit right now with Deschutes County, which is essentially like a smaller master plan for the next two years or so for pretreatment and then kind of a hydro. We can put together one conditional use permit under this umbrella with site plan reviews and a quasi-judicial process to try to get the pre-treatment and in the conduit hydro which are most necessary for the resiliency of our system and then later we can evaluate a different type of zoning where we make it one zone and potentially use something similar for a water reclamation facility um this is just kind of some touch points that you might see uh the draft purchase and sale agreement hopefully we have signed around the end of october we'll come back to city council for authorization for city manager signature on that uh this also aligns with some of the contracts that we have out for the outback facility improvements already in july or sorry may we had the owners representative contract awarded we're anticipating um around november or so to have the design contract awarded and uh early next year the construction manager general contract con award um contract award And hopefully if everything goes well with the land transaction, the real estate transaction, we're hoping to have the land fully conveyed to the city by the end of the year. So all of these contracts and processes should align here. And just real quick update you all on funding. I know last time I was here, we talked about the FEMA BRIC grant. We did submit both of our applications, one for pretreatment, one for inconduit hydro. It made it to FEMA at the end of July. We are anticipating if we make it onto the shortlist, an early 2027 notification of that. And if we're successful in making it all the way through late summer or fall of next year is when we're anticipating the notification of award. And then once we get that, we are able to start our construction. So with having our whole team on board, our designer and contractor by early next year, we have maybe about a year of design development. We probably won't break ground until early 2028. So that should align nicely with the brick grant there. And we're crossing our fingers that we're successful in that one.

So Council, that kind of brings us back to you. We had a question, a prompt there to really kick off a discussion. I recognize we're a little short on time, Mayor. So however we want to guide our discussion today, but we would love to leave with a general idea of what else you'd like to know. What else should we be studying or thinking about as we do master planning, as we do long-range planning, growth planning? You know, if there are other questions we'd love to hear.

Yeah, I wanna make sure we have enough time for our last item, but if there's anything anyone really wants to share at this point, thank you for all that information. I think climate change is on everyone's mind right now. And so that was really good to hear that information and receive that study. But anything else, any final thoughts anyone else has for the team?

Just very quickly in the future, I would be interested in learning about whether the water service providers that serve the other 25% of Ben residents are having similar conservation success or other things that the city could be going to provide them with, you know, The tools to also be successful in that area.

I was just Yeah, just curious about like their master planning and how They're coordinating and not coordinating.

Separate water systems, separate water management conservation plans that they submit to the state. But I know the state's growing in interest in terms of what others, even private water utilities, are offering in terms of conservation. And we work really closely with both Avion and Rose to extend our programs to them. If they want to participate more heavily in our programs, that's available to both those utilities.

Yeah. And digging into that in the future would be good.

So I have one comment, sort of things to dig into, and then maybe a request actually at the Council, and that is I still have concerns that are we adequately looking at future scenarios that are maybe worse than we might like them to be in a more water-constrained future with the impacts of climate change, especially taking into account glacial retreat and what that's going to mean. And if we're not doing that now, are we going to be ready for it? And we're just going to end up with these kind of really abrupt curtailment situations. And, you know, it sounds like the science is saying basically that the nature of the soils and all that means that the sort of trade-off between how much we get is snow and sort of balances itself out. That's kind of what I'm hearing you say, right?

That's what we've heard from the state climatologist today.

So far. But it seems to me that it's incumbent upon us to think a little bit harder about some future scenarios that might be a little bit worse than we might like to contemplate. And then what does that mean about the choices before us today in terms of conservation and kind of preparing for that in the future? Climate change, from what I see, is happening at faster rates at greater scales everywhere, basically, than what most of the consensus science predictions have shown us so far. So I'd like to know that we're being a little more fast, proactive on the scenario. So maybe it's just hearing more in the future about what that looks like and what adding an additional scenario, what would be involved in doing that, something that's a little more constrained. the ask of the council is we've been hearing a lot as counselors about a lot of concerns about the commitment we have to 18.2 and and I generally share that it's pretty clear about you know what we can and can't do but I wonder if it is um worthwhile of us to restate that resolution 2933 and kind of update it with things we've been doing around conservation restating the commitment today with the current people that serve on the council Um, how we're partnering the kinds of things that we're looking at around conservation moving forward and essentially just modernizing a little bit and bringing it up to the current date and doing that in conjunction with the time when we get to the purchase and sale agreement to kind of make that statement back out to our community. Um, I didn't have a chance to look at those operation and maintenance agreements of my understanding. There was some difference between the 1 that we're under now and the 1 from the past. And maybe we should be looking at pulling some of the stuff from that into the. Current 1, but that's a separate discussion, or we could do that. So I'd be willing to work on that. If there's a couple of counselors. 1 of the council supports doing that into if there's a couple of counselors that want to work.

Yeah, I mean, I'm supportive of that just staff capacity to time that with also the work on the PSA or.

To get it done this year, basically, when I don't know what our huge lift of just modernizing.

No, I think we stay in the commitment and adding some, some, I think that makes sense counselor and the feedback is well received. I think we have an interest in taking a closer look at surface water and groundwater. A lot of things have changed in the last 5 years since we did our last master plan. And even since we did our what last water management conservation plan so. And now we have the tribes that are also interested in our help and you know push this conversation forward, so I think we're going to be in front of you a lot pretty frequently over the next five to 10 years talking about water, you know, like it or not. Working through these situations, and I would love a volunteer yeah because there's somebody would like to join me in that so we'll use the two of you to kind of get through the workshop yeah yeah okay.

i'm not seeing council purpose object to that so i'm assuming that she's neutral or supportive and something throughout so i'm sorry thumbs up okay great all right thank you thank you thanks thank you hey thanks up our growth plan engagement that's a game quite spoke out here yeah

Good evening, Mayor and Councilors. Renee Mitchell, Communications and Engagement Officer.

Elise Buklich, Associate Planner.

We are here this evening to give you an overview of the growth plan project name, as well as an update on the communications and engagement plan.

So we are going to be talking about the project branding and name and an update on community engagement. The only input we're looking for from Council is feedback on the project's engagement goals, which we'll share with you shortly.

We intentionally developed a distinct name and logo that can stand on its own, given the breadth and the length of the project, while complementing the City of Bend logo and our graphic standards. Our objective was to give the plan a name, a voice, and a messaging system that makes the community feel like it belongs to them and encourages them to participate. Our communication objectives for the entire project are, again, to give the growth plan a distinct identity, really communicate that it's a plan, translate complex planning language into human speak, and encourage our community to get involved. Our strategic platform is rooted in this. Bend's growth is a story of authorship. Bend was built by people who choose it. Every neighborhood, every trail, every gathering spot is a decision people made to be here and to call it home. The growth plan is really no different. It belongs to everyone who calls and will call Bend home. Here is our project logo, name, and messaging line. You see that the name is Bend Made with the messaging line, a plan for tomorrow crafted today. The name Bend Made conveys that people belong here, that it was created by people in our past, and also encourages the idea that people can shape what it looks like moving forward. And the messaging line is very clear, very direct with intentionality, that it is a plan encouraging people that they can be part of what it looks like tomorrow. Here is an example of it in context, in social media, as well as in a magazine when we get all that press about the good work that we're doing on the growth plan.

So now that we have a name and a logo, we're moving into a season of heavy community engagement and wanted to provide an update on that. So 2 years ago we started a conversation with Council and the Human Rights and Equity Commission on a community engagement process for the project. Since then we've used that feedback, best practices, conversations with the community, as well as feedback from our consulting team to create a community engagement and communication strategy, which is live on our website today. This document is a broad guidance document intended for use throughout the project, similar to kind of the need for a name and a logo because this project is so long and it covers so many different topics. This is intended to be something we refer back to. So it's very big picture. Ask the question of what we're trying to accomplish and how we might do that. The second document we've been working on is an engagement action plan. So this goes a level deeper in terms of detail. And it covers the community visioning phase of the project, which will start in September. and go through April of 2027. It provides a detailed timeline of events and the different tactics that we plan to use during the project. For this phase, community visioning, we'll be using focus groups, interviews. We'll be doing something called a visioning roadshow, which is a series of neighborhood-based workshops, community conversations, which are self-directed as well as city-facilitated small group conversations on vision. at tabling and Q&A sessions. We have a set of seven engagement goals for the project, and they really revolve around the objectives of Bend Made. So they cover things like making sure that our staff is out in the community and reaching all different corners of Bend, making an effort to reach communities that have historically been left out of planning processes and making sure that all of our materials are accessible to everyone. And then also continuing the conversation by reporting back to people engaged and adapting to their feedback. So the input we're looking for is feedback on those goals. The two questions we have are, are these goals representative of your hopes for this project? And are there any changes you want to make? And I'll go back to those for reference.

That's great. All right. Council, any thoughts here?

Janet Callahan- has been this well, this is great and I, the more I see it i've been I love how authentic it is, and you know I feel I don't necessarily know the people in those photos, but I know the places. Janet Callahan- So I really like it on pilot new and innovative engagement techniques use at least two forms of engagement. Janet Callahan- I don't want to sacrifice the things that we think are good for something that's new, and so I just want to make sure that you know, for example, I thought. the uh the civic assembly was was uh a really good experience and i don't know if that would count as a new thing i still consider it innovative we haven't really used it that much so if there was an appropriate time or place for something like that i would still want to include it and not say well we already did that and so we're not going to do that or something like that but i think i think it's it's uh i think this looks great i understand that's what perkins

Yeah, Councilor Mendez, you took the words out of my mouth. I think that a civic assembly would be perfect for the growth plan. And I think it is in a way new and innovative because we've never done something like that before, particularly with the growth plan. So I am all for that. I think these engagement goals are incredibly inclusive and it shows that you really were listening to a lot of people, including the people on the Human Rights and Equity Commission So I'm really thankful for them. And I think it's going to mean that we're going to get a product that really is a product that represents our entire community. And I love the tagline. So awesome work.

Yeah. Anyone else? Mike.

Um, I, I also support the civic assembly concept of using that. I don't know if we can use it for the whole growth plan, but to pick like a question, but I think it's a great opportunity to, to use that specifically for something that's truly about Ben, like that we have full influence over right? Well, maybe not all of it, but most of the stuff, um, was a little different on the one we did with youth homelessness. Um, I think the other thing I would say is that, um, The neighborhood districts that I'm engaged with them are going to see themselves up here. And I think if they're just a way to make sure that we are talking about neighborhood, helping us get, like, the neighborhood districts can help us achieve all of these goals and outcomes. I think so just being explicit about, we will be engaging them in the process of using these tools and accomplishing. Ensuring that we get these metrics achieved on that point.

What I would like to do is propose adding some seats for the joint working group. That is the collection of the city committees boards and commissions. So we put a call out for folks. We have folks supply. We're still waiting for the planning commission and the economic development advisory board to get more applicants. Tom Ozden- we're inviting everybody that has applied and expressed interest to that workshop that growth workshop that we have in September, I would like to add a few seats to have the neighborhood districts also represented. Tom Ozden- On that joint working group if it's a city manager appointed committee, but I want to make sure that i'm in sync with Council, I think, and reflective of that piece of adding another dimension of neighborhood engagement through that effort as well sure.

I really appreciate the the quadrant discussion there the idea because I know it's been working as you say with the neighborhood district so I really appreciate that rhymes that we do that the the bottom point there really speaks to me as a former fighter pilot because we would come back in and we would debrief right and we would do lessons learned if you do a lesson you don't change your behavior nothing changes we don't improve our performance so I love this lessons learned I'd love to hear from the growth team as they come back. This has not been working. We're going to change. We're going to do this different. We're going to update. And man, this was a home run. So I'd love you to give us your wins and your losses when you come back and speak to us again, please.

I didn't look up OAR 660 or whatever. Is there anything about sort of socioeconomic status, low income versus high income? homeowner versus renter. Those are just groups that I'm thinking of that I want to make sure are having access to this process and getting their opinion asked as well. So just making sure we have a wide swath across those spectrums in that. I think that's under underserved communities. It may not be specifically related, but just making sure that we're getting, we're not, No offense to anybody, but we're not mostly hearing from folks who are retired and on their home and have a lot of extra time. And I think that's what this is getting at. And I think this is going to help us to not be doing that. Of course, we want to hear everyone's opinion, for sure. But just recognizing other people may have more barriers. And this type of innovative stuff, intentionally reaching out to communities, going outside of City Hall, that's going to help us to do that. So I think this is a really good plan.

to add to that, how about the 53% of the people who commute in every day because they can't afford to live in that community? I don't know how you get those folks, but those folks would probably like to be part of our community.

Yeah, I was going to say like transit-oriented because we're going to have, I mean, the idea of, yeah, some of these growth centers.

That's a good idea. Yeah.

Okay, then just to wrap up with kind of our next steps.

Yeah.

um we have two council workshops scheduled with you all on september 14th and 23rd um after the 23rd is considered the very public launch of the project so cool

HAB-Jacques Juilland. Those are open to the public, obviously, there is public meetings, but their work session format. HAB-Jacques Juilland. Correct right and they're in public works campus in our fall springs. HAB-Jacques Juilland. And some of the other stakeholder that you were talking about, they will be at the table with us and the discussion or. HAB-Jacques Juilland. You're making sure that they really come and pay attention to this. HAB-Jacques Juilland. For setting the stage for the. Right. HAB-Jacques Juilland.

Okay, great.

And we have been made totes and stickers for you all. And our hope is that we will no longer say growth plan. From this point forward, it is.

We got it. Today.

All right. We will go ahead and enter in the work session. Thank you.