City Council - Regular Meeting

Test test. I can hear you. One, two, three. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, we're going to call to um order our work session for today. And let's do roll call from your end. Councelor Platt. Steve. He him. Megan Perkins. She her. Melanie Keeler. She her. Mike Riley. He him. Ariel Mendes. He him. Gina Franosa. She her. And councelor Nor is running a little behind but will be joining us shortly. But we want to get started because we have a lot of good topics tonight. So, we're going to start with our mobility program overview, please.

And while they're teeing up the presentation, I just wanted to let council know we items one or two and three are connected. So, uh we have really beefed up our programs within our transportation mobility department. So, you're going to hear from assistant city engineer Ruby and Derek Hofffire, mobility program manager about the programs that we offer. and it's a nice entry point into transit which is a an element of travel office. So I'll turn it over to Janet Brandon. Hi there presentation. Thank you D.

So I can get started. I'm Janet Ruby, assistant city engineer in transportation. Good evening and I'm with Derek Hoffbower, our programs manager. and we're going to kick it off tonight talking a little bit about how our department staffing and um job tasks changed as we've been implementing the transportation system planned. So gosh, not quite 10 years ago, it was just Ty Holmes and myself, and we were doing some version of the same job tasks, just at a much lower volume and with essentially no funding. And so one of the um pieces related to today's discussions uh that we worked on were citizen requests. So that time we started gathering together, putting together some project ideas. We were able to get $25,000 in funding which can do a few signing and striping projects. Then we crafted that into the neighborhood street safety program which ended up getting capital and then go bond funding and is now being built by our engineering group. We also started the speed radar sign program at that time. And then our as we implemented, you can stay here. I'll go a little bit too. As we um adopted our transportation system plan, we added our low stress network. We um changed to designing complete streets and then we also got some funding for projects. So we brought uh Robin Lewis on board. she came over from growth management who is now retired. Then we um added Sinclair Bur and Brad Tower who work on projects and those projects range from signal timing projects, pedestrian push button projects, ceiling bridge decking to

buffered bike lanes and now paving a gravel street with a grant. We also added Aaron Ritter who works on CAD design. um bringing that in-house saved us considerably and improved quality for our pavement preservation project. Um then now we're today where we added Derek last fall six month and we're hiring a new planner and that's really to work on I call it the people side. So, they're working on education and safety and increasing the options for people to walk or actually kind of encouraging more people to walk, bike, and ride the bus. And those two positions were funded by the transportation utility fee and they are also in our transportation system plan to help the projects. It's not all about just building things, it's also changing behavior. So with the addition of those two positions, we've achieved kind of a milestone with our transportation system plan goals. Then moving on to our tasks. Um we talked a little bit about our um service request and technical services that we've been doing. moving into the project work. Um, and what we've added with the also transportation utility fee is walkway and bikeway projects that we're just starting to scope and we'll be building this year and into next year. And also a number of crosswalks that you see throughout town. We started um developing standards for marking them. We've evolved to adding uh rapid flashing beacons and traffic separators and medians. And I didn't get a count yet. our um OPM group is just working on tallying that when they're doing the um walking and biking inventory. So hopefully we'll have that soon. And then our programs, before I hand it over to Derek, I just wanted to touch on we get a lot of questions from the community about why are you spending um

time trying to get more people to walk, bike, and ride the bus? And really that is one of the um measures and action items in our transportation system plan as a way to accommodate all the people that are moving here and then give the people who are here better options. So we we know people are driving and we're going to continue to make driving and operational improvements, but we also want to make it easier for people to walk, bike, and ride the bus. So with that, I'll turn it over to Derek to talk about how he's already started doing that.

Right. Hey everyone. Uh my name is Derek Hoffower. So I'm the new mobility programs manager at the city of Bend. Uh before that I was over at CCT with Bob Townsen behind me. Um innovating the transit system. Spent about eight years there and before that I was working on largecale travel behavior change programs through a lot of different neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest. So a lot of experience working on this. Really our goal is to expand travel options. And what does that mean? It means we're providing opportunities um for our residents, our visitors to be able to more easily to connect to their destination. So when I say travel options, that's walking, biking, rolling, um riding the bus, car pooling, vamping, anything that's not in a single occupant vehicle. And you know, we've seen from some of the NOS's traffic data that a little over half of all trips in Bend are less than 3 miles. So that's a pretty easy biking distance. A quarter of all trips are under one mile. So those are trips that, you know, could be done by walking and rolling. So we're here to get out to the the community. We're doing events. We're doing wayfinding. Um we have a safe route to school program where we work with commute options. Really, it's talking to community members, getting them getting them educated about all the new infrastructure that's coming into place, where there's, you know, separated bike facilities, where it's safe to bike and walk, where are paths located. So, it's a it's a big lift for our team, but we're really really excited to to, you know, join this initiative and really start to move the dial in terms of getting people to bike, walk, and roll to their destinations. And I'll touch a little bit on bike share and mobility hubs later, but really, we're also using the data. You know, we're looking at increasing safety, potentially lowering speeds, um, and trying to make sure that our residents and our visitors feel safe when they're out on our streets. Um, so some of the main objectives, you

know, we want to build awareness of travel options, these new facilities that we're building with the Go Bond funds. Um, and we're wanting people to use those facilities. So, we're out there, um, doing outreach. We have a travel options plan that's honed on the completion of these major GOB bond projects. We're going to be there with popup events, um, community bike rides. We have some videos planned for the only uh street improvements and putting content on our web and you know a big part of that is evaluating doing some before and after surveys to see that there's a difference in more people using these facilities. Um we're also providing some commuter resources. So, one thing we did is when CCT um went back to fairs, we offered transit passes to all City of Bend employees and we had about I think it was about 55 uh employees now who opted into the transit pass. So, continuing to work with them uh with trip planning resources. So, I'm kind of the the conduit for getting information out to people who want to who want to go to work by bus. Um we also have an intercampus shuttle um that we're experimenting with getting better connect. We have a new campus that's way on the northeast side. So, we're looking at how to better connect that downtown, especially for events and big meetings. And then in charge of the bike share system and so the bike share, I pulled up some of the recent data and we have 300 bikes. I'm not going to go through this whole list, but it's a lot of trips. This was just the VO system and this was from launch of VIA. This doesn't count the bird system that was before this, but almost 45,000 bike trips. So that's 75,000 miles traveled and that's an estimate of a little over 13,000 cartridges reduced and that's from some of VIO survey data that they incorporate into into the data set for us. Um and so you can see here there's a nice overlay. This is just kind of a snapshot of daily average trips. Um so

it's not kind of covering the whole area. This is like where most of the trips are concentrated. And this is like a great planning tool for us because we can see like how visitors and residents are using our local roads by biking and then we can come in on the back end and start to make improvements where we see a lot of usage. Um so some of the service updates uh via adding more bikes. We're currently at about 200 bikes cuz in the winter they take some bikes they're not used as much but now with the warmer weather we're adding more bikes. We're also working on some flyers and information to distribute to local businesses. um to ensure that parking compliance they aren't being left on sidewalks and toure ensure riding compliance as well. And then we monitor and track that on an ongoing basis. Um and then my last slide or second to last slide is kind of a snapshot of all of Bend and you can see these hot spots of trips. Um, so they're going, you can see a lot of kind of on this north south corridor. There's a lot of people riding on Third Street, um, which we weren't really anticipating that. Um, and there's a lot of east west connectivity to these kind of employment centers and shopping centers, um, on these different kind of nodes of town. And you can see the different neighborhood associations and some of the trip origins coming from there. Um, so it's a really kind of cool snapshot to see where the bikes are used and how they're being used. And then to tee this into Bob Townsen's Dar.

Go ahead. The bike share. Um, do we do we have data or does VO collect data on whether the person using the bike is a resident or visitor? Do we I don't believe so. We can probably dig in there. Um, but that's a good question. I will I have a bi-weekly call with the team so I can ask on it. But that's a good question. I would guess in the summer it's probably about half and half. That's my guess. Um, but it's, you know, predominantly you see a lot of the the tourismbbased

folks using it in the summer, but in the winter time it's still it's still used a lot. So I think there's some residents that are using it as well. Uh, so mobility hubs. So this is something I was working on at CCT. Did a mobility uh hubs feasibility study. Um, so continuing to work in collaboration with CCT on these. So these are places where you have a nexus of different travel options. you've got bike share, bike parking, uh information kiosk, wayfinding, um to kind of transfer mode to mode. And so, um we do have a carbon reduction program grant that was awarded to the city and we're doing some revisions to those locations and we have now have two proposed locations that we coordinate with CCT that are on existing transit stops. Um, one is in on southeast third and broster house at a large section of city ride ofway right by the town pump and the other is on Roel Road up by Cascade Village doing a bus pull out because that's a huge wrership stop for CCT and also serves the Redmond routes. Um, so that's going to be designed and construction 2728. Nice thing is ODOT's uh designing delivering the whole project because they're federal funds. And then just upcoming, uh, Bob might mention a mobility hub that they're developing at Cascade Village. So that's next to the Lowe's acquiring property that's going to be a larger scale hub. And then we've got the pilot mobility hub near Troy Field that we're working on. And then just ongoing coordination with CCT on on future hubs. So excited to still have that relationship with Bob and the transit team and looking forward to working on those initiatives in this new position. So, you know, that's probably good on time.

Yeah, those questions will keep rolling into our transit update. It's all down to

glad to have you. just never trust my technology. Let's do that again. we go. Okay. Uh thank you, mayor, uh city councilors. Um Bob Towns and Cascad East, transit director. Um here to, you know, segue from from Derek's conversation there and Janets to uh some updates around C. We have a lot of things going on. certainly can take a lot of time and um if you notice in your presentation there's a lot offormational slides at the end too that I'm not necessarily going to cover but always want you uh to have information available if you have questions and just know you can reach out to me we collect data on every single thing and it's and it's really easy by route uh whatever you need um but for today couple main points and I I just want to start with laying the foundation I know we've talked a lot since I've been at CT over the last or 15 months or So just about what does our relationship look like? And certainly our our our situation is complicated where we get funds from the feds, from the state. We have a COIC board. Uh we have a regional public transit advisory committee. The state payroll tax funds come through county and they approve where they go. And so I

just want to acknowledge that we certainly want to continue our relationship, work on, you know, supporting you, um, being accountable for all things transit within City of Bend and not just within City of Bend, but certainly with a large population, uh, traveling every day to work in Ben that even the community connectors gaining input on things. And today, I just want you to hear again my commitment to doing that. Um, commitment to continue to come to council, you know, process goals. we, you know, our missions may not match up. The example being certainly tourism is big for Ben. Sometimes tourism doesn't really relate to what our transit mission is related to serving underserved populations, but certainly there's common grounds there. And then certainly this year in particular as we work through uh another allocation of state payroll tax dollars that pay for um transit services and are approved through Dashuites County. How do we you know make sure we hear um from city council? We you know review it with our CIC board as a separate nexus Dutes County Commission for all things within Dashuites County. And so I certainly just want to um continue the emphasis that that that is my goal here is to make sure that we're trying to, you know, facilitate a a broad transit discussion that meets most everyone's goals. Um so just getting into some of the particulars today, I am going to go over just some core service data because I know everybody likes to see where we're at. Uh we did just reimplement fairs, so I'm going to talk about that a little bit and certainly happy to answer questions. uh give a a brief legislative update on some things impacting transit and then the the rest of the conversation is really about what's next for CCT uh this coming year that affects the city of Ben. We have quite a few projects. We have some route uh improvements in the works and then to lay the foundation of what what what does it look like next here um in

discussing future opportunities. So just some this is our broad data and when I say core service data I I don't have direct routes on here I don't have van pools certainly I can provide that data but this is really what we talk about and what services we provide all the other stuff between bachelor ride the river lava but um and things like that are are dependent on the contracts they change from year to year dependent on needs and things like that but this is the service that we want to continue to grow and so the nice thing here is you see on the total numbers is still not preandemic for the Benfix route, but as a whole, we passed our um prepandemic numbers and and seem to be continuing to grow just, you know, depending on how you look at it and some of our measurables because we have made some changes, but uh continuing to grow in that 10 to 20% uh a year number. Um, as as things break down here, I think this is a helpful slide too because and again I I want to separate this is Ben transit related costs um and or expenses and revenue. Now this doesn't include Ben to Redmond community connectors, Leine to Redmond, Sisters to Bend, all of those that actually touch Bend as well. It's just been fixed route and um and dial a ride within the Ben service area. And a couple points here to take away. Certainly are grateful for the city of Ben's contribution. The fair number is relatively short because that's just February to June in this year's uh or low in this year's budget cycle. But I want you to to notice just where different funds come from, right? Certainly the top two are federal dollars that are really geared towards uh urbanized areas and certainly DAR related. The Shoots County State Transportation Improvement Funds, those are the funds that are awarded by the Shutes County Commission based on what

the Dashes County stiff advisory committee uh recommends. And so, you know, of all these things and when we talk about what's next is these are the dollars we're we're tied to unless something changes, right? Certainly our federal dollars are our program formula. They change a little bit. The city of Ben's contribution is held true. The stiff dollars can vary. Uh Dashuites County gets an annual aotment of about $8 million and we use that to pay for community connectors, Redmond Dialer Ride, Le Pine Dialer Ride, other services that could vary depending on what the group recommends to uh the Shootes County Commission on how to break down those funds. fairs will continue to grow as we have um new revenue. Um our expenses are are pretty um matched yeartoear obviously fuel the cost of vehicles and and things like that have gone up. But I just bring this up as we talk about what improvements we can look at. We're really in a net zero game and I'll tie on that with the legislative update. But these are our revenues. These are expenses. So if we want to make changes generally unless there's an additional new revenue, a grant or something like that, we're we're within these means. So the example is, you know, we want to increase service on one route, we probably need to remove service somewhere else, we need to increase this area, we need to remove an area. Um and and that's just the reality where where we currently are. Just another way to look at this and this is really a numbers that I I look at regularly and especially you know we can tie it to day week month but this is um last year's data it's the cost per ride and so um obviously the higher uh ridership routes route one and four and seven in particular have lower costs. um if we could get to the $7

number and our fair is $2 really close to a a 30% fair recovery that would be you know almost leading the nation in some of the things. So uh just want to highlight that the difference between Ben dialeride costs and you know micromobility costs kind of relate to that too is this 20 to $45 range and the reason for that is it takes a lot of infrastructure to run dialeride and and microransit and then you have a lot of down times too. so that you're just incurring costs as you're waiting to give rides. But hopefully that number will come down. We have some new efficiencies in the system, but just an uh a different way to look at what costs are as it relates to a fair update. So certainly we started re-implementation uh February 2nd, soft opening. We uh if people had signed up for the pass, had money, we would take it. If not, you know, it was soft that way. uh we reimplemented fully on February 9th. We do have some exceptions to that too. I don't want to make them public so that people don't take advantage of it, but we have certain scenarios where we still aren't charging fairs to uh to individuals and the bus drivers are aware of of those protocols. Um as of I think um today's Wednesday, this must have been Monday, we have 2,600 registered accounts in our in our our fixed route system. That's fixed route, renet, flex route, community connectors. Dial a ride is all always been account based. You have to have an account with us to schedule a ride. That never changed other than us charging. This is where we really get the new accounts and and we're getting about 30 new a day. Now, the nice thing about this, and we can't relay it just after 3 weeks of or three or four weeks here, but we certainly have a lot more riders signed up that have never used transit before. Some of them are using transit now. Some of them have just signed up. So, we'll see how that relates to growth. Um, we

have about 30 group pass partnership agreements and this is um everything from a business wants to get reduced fairs for their employees to COCCC city of Ben to Bethlehem in to um at the end of your slides you'll see a list of about 30. But this is really helpful in getting new riders. It's helpful in connecting people to service providers who are actually paying for transit passes for individuals. So really proud of that and it continues to grow. Our February fairs collected that's actually dollars in hand was 98,000 which was much more than our our projected um amounts for just three weeks. And one of the reasons there is and it's hard to you know allocate is that just a lot of annual passes. Certainly there are a lot of those. Will they continue to increase? What's not shown there is we these 30 group pass partnership agreements that come with compensation. We we only recorded two payments on February's account. Everything else will be March. And some of those accounts vary from 7,000 a month to to 500 to things like that. So certainly as we have more data, we'll have more information on on fair revenues. And just as a total when you count and this doesn't count wreck routes this is just the new service but our fairs will be in excess of you know 2 million even with underp projecting right now which is significant part of our budget that would pay for five fixed route services in Ben for a year uh as expected with fair reimplementation our wrership goes down there's a lot of historic data on this from when people implement fairs and certainly with the pandemic this was to be expected we certainly have a lot of things in place trying to remedy that. It it comes from everything from from people making different route choices to certainly yes we lose some ridership but there's also benefits to that and I know Warm Springs is a long way away but I

want to highlight a significant benefit to the fair system. We have security on that bus route certain times of the day because of issues. Um yes ridership has went down about half but now we are getting the riders who need the system to go to school. We've gotten so many positive feedbacks about how they feel safe and how more people and the numbers are growing every day on that route. So, you know, not indicative of everything, but a good example. Uh the dialeride reduction is about a 25% number and this is what we anticipated a little bit more than that. So, happy to see that. But this is allowing us to have expanded dialeride service areas. So Bend is getting a service area adjustment effective April 1st to the northeast uh area in Bend and the southeast area of Bend that currently doesn't have any paratransit service at all. Um we're also expanding to Dash River Woods for full paratransit effective May 1st and so our dialer ride numbers are down but they'll we'll expand the areas until they're net zero uh in the end. So um with the same amount of drivers, same amount of uh bus options. I do want to add this is a little bit more information, but sometimes there's a really negative um image when you see reduced ridership, but we have a couple examples in in Ben specifically where someone was scheduling 90 to $100 ride trips a month and it was free. It was within the rules of the system and things like that. Now they're scheduling 30. They have a case worker. They belong to a certain agency. That case worker reviews it, says they need 20 trips, says we'll pay for 30. And it's just a and then they buy him a monthly pass. We had a um um I want to say little old lady cuz she reminded me of my grandma, but we just we had an individual who didn't think she could afford the dialer ride system and in Bend it's $2 for the first 10 $4 after that. So she got uh monthly pass and rode the Ben fix route

for the first time and just loves it. Doesn't know why she would ever use dialeride system again now that she's comfortable with that. And she met with our travel trainer and reviewed it. So, yes, we want to, you know, we don't want people to not have rides, but we've connected a lot of people to service areas um that were, you know, Bethlehem and Shepherd's House, Grace, Thrive, all of these individuals have bought passes or have group agreements or we've given some free passes to and our hope is that we can connect people to them versus us deciding who gets um free ridership. So, I just want to share a couple of those. Well, could I just ask you to elaborate a little bit more on the I think the the fair recovery idea because I think some people will look at that 155,000 and say, "Well, it's such a small part of the overall budget and we see these reduction in in in ridership. You've described some scenarios that I think account for that, but we obviously don't want to see ridership going down. Uh can you say a little bit more about what the goal of reintroducing fairs is and how that helps with uh uh service improvements?"

Yeah, certainly. And so a couple things there or just to clarify that 155,000 looks really small because we're a June to June budget and it's February 9th technically to June 30th this year. So a very small portion and just for bend fixed route and bend dialer ride. So our our projected revenue for just those two are you know in the million-doll range um when we're all said and done. And so certainly we don't want to see writership or writers down, right? Wrership going down and making efficient choices that allow us to serve people who aren't getting served and maximize the system. And so the example is perfect here in Bend. We can't afford to add the Shoots River Woods without the legislative package, without cutting something else now by charging fairs. And now we're connecting services to areas that had nothing before. The other thing to remember about with fairs is we'll hear the story about I have a medical appointment. I don't have any money. How do I get there? If you are going to a medical appointment and you don't have any money, more than likely you qualified for organ health plan, which pays for non-emergency medical transport that we provide as well, and it's covered by the government. If you're a veteran going to a doctor's appointment, you can get your trips covered. So, a lot of these times, yes, someone wasn't familiar with that because they never had to be, but we've connected them. Our whole goal as we see these reduced numbers and this slide is we're adding something in every single we're adding another warm springs to Canita to some Nashville route with a grant and some of the savings from this we're updating routes 1 4 5 6 7 8 and nine and Ben with some of the savings and efficiencies that we've gained and so it you know we're it's only a month in you know if we see other numbers that we don't like certainly we're going to have to look at should we make it free between 6:30 and 8 in the morning and five and seven at night to to help with traffic issues and and things like that.

There's still a lot to be discussed on what the system looks like. Thank you. So, Bob, you have about 9 minutes left from our allocation. We have a little wiggle room, but and you have about 10 slides, so I just want to give everyone a time check there. And I want to make sure we do have time for questions, too. So, if we can move forward a little bit here and get to some of the new things that you're going to be proposing, that's

noted. Thank you. Um, transportation bill. I covered this in the fact that um obviously or just in the news today, right? It's going to be on the May election. It's not going to pass more than likely. It doesn't affect us other than it's not new money. It's not reduced money. We're not like Trimeat or Rogue Valley making cuts. We didn't overextend ourselves. Um, so you know, yes, I can't add I can't go from 30 minute to 15 minute frequencies everywhere in Ben like we would have if our our funding would have doubled, but so we need to be a little bit more strategic, but there won't be any cuts. The other big discussion point here is that uh Senate Bill 1544 passed the Senate House. The governor hasn't signed it yet, but it allows CIC to be the qualified entity for the three counties in central Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. More details to work out there, but certainly it allows us to eliminate a lot of additional administrative costs and it allows us instead of like the Prineville to bend route that we're trying to add. We don't need the Crook County group to agree on it and agree to price. Then we got to go to the Dash County group and argue back and forth who paid more. Now it'll be a one uh one tiered level there. And so excited about that. Uh just some of the improvements um that that are coming. Uh phase two of the bus stop improvement project. We're going to continue to have phase three and four. We updated 286 stops under phase one benches on 55 about 10 shelters and we'll just continue to do that. Um we'll actually see phase two and phase three this year. Uh like I said expanded bend uh and and riverwoods dialer ride service effective um April and and May. Um I'll talk about the improvements to Ben fix routes. The Ben North hub is still in the works. There's some legal issues on the ODOT side with the property. We have money to purchase it. We have money to build the hub. We're just continuing uh to wait on that.

Hopefully I'll have more news to share in April. Uh and then the other big thing is we're doing a a Bend transit service optimization study with uh a consultant group later this year just to continue to look at what improvements uh can be made within Bend. And then just on the side, you know, a couple plan updates there. We have some grants for some Latino community needs assessment. uh we're we're taking in sponsorship funds so that we can use those to provide passes for low-income uh individuals. So excited to see that program start. Um I covered a lot of this before just in saying our money is what our money is. So if we want to make it add a route or something, we need to subtract it. There's a lot of variables here based on what the stiff uh formulas are, what our fairs are. The bachelor contract has been a 15-year contract signed that's expired here next month. So certainly that'll affect how uh we do business um moving forward as well as we work through that. We continue to apply for a lot of grants have been successful and and have a few more on the the docket here. Um the state transportation package like I said not a lot of unknown there. We are comfortable with that. Um there is some flex or fluidity in federal funding though and we won't know more until later this year. Um I wanted to highlight and I'm not going to get in a lot of details. Your presentation packet has it but a couple of things that we've heard from council before is really increasing service frequency. As I said, if we would have doubled our money with the payroll tax, it would have been really easy, you know, purchasing buses aside and what fleet we have to go from 30 minute frequencies everywhere in Ben to 15. That's not the reality. So, we have to be creative in that. And and what we're looking at is we have a couple routes that have really low daytime numbers because they're more commuter driven

where, you know, more people are getting on in the morning and the evening. And then we have routes that are on Third Street that are more or that are busier during the day. So we'll be um we'll be modifying our service midday on like routes 8 and 9 north eastsoutheast and using those buses and drivers to supplement third street north and south so that we can get to 15minute intervals. So um you know we we have a little bit of outreach to do on that and a little bit more programming but that more than likely will go into effect the 1st of May. uh similar we're proposing modifying routes five, six, and seven. And I'm just going to get to some of the details on routes five and six. And again, this is just to reflect some of the things we can do, not necessarily so that you can answer questions on it, but routes five and six are the orange and purple and just parallel. One's counterclockwise, one's clockwise. In a perfect transit system, yes, you would love to have the bus stop on both sides of the road in a service area where we're not even providing service to everywhere. And these are 45minute routes. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to to keep them that way. And so the improvements are still serving the exact same areas actually a little bit more cuz route 5 is going to get modified to the north. But now one bus is serving one area, one bus. We can move that down to 30 minutes. We can supplement that with another change later in the year to get it to 15 minutes by modifying uh route 7 which goes down the middle of this to the hospital. So that's how we're going to get creative. These are still two really high ridership routes, right? So, it's worth u worth creating. But basically, this cuts 15 minutes off our loops all day long. And so, what's next? That's just a couple of examples of some minor changes. Here are some of the other things we've talked about. I'm not going to go into detail on all of them, but certainly this is lends us to what what does council want transit and bend to look like? Where can we find

efficiencies? what's how do we match our mission with yours? Um, and how do we make those uh decisions and and even try a few things just to see where we can be successful.

Yeah. So, what I'd like to propose to council is a working group that includes uh city staff, a few counselors, and CCT. So, now that we have built in our mobility program as part of the TSP programs, we've got some resources. I'd like to um see if we could propose both kind of MO involvement and CIC involvement. So, I'm looking at counselors Mendes and Riley as potential candidates um to be part of that work group and and really kind of think big picture about a vision for transit knowing that we don't have the funding, the ideal funding scenario. We we have what we have, but I think there's still some options for us to look at what does the future of transit look like and some of the creative things that we've done. How do we do more of that? um how do we you know really connect to the what was envisioned in the TSB more of a decentralized mobility hub system um so would love to see if we can get council agreement in moving in that direction

I think that's needed okay

sounds good and then last slide was just we we've discussed this before now you know we're as the Ben North hub hopefully I laugh at that because I'm the one who sent the letter from O.2CT saying we were ready to direct sell and that was two years ago. Um but we're getting closer um on that one and certainly that's the big one but we have other uh other hubs um locations in the works you know as a phase 2 three and four and certainly some additional bus stop improvements to to work. This is another item that more of a heads up. We are going to be working with uh CCT. We have in the GO bond our contribution for transit. I believe it's 9 million. Um you have eight.

Yeah, on the website it says eight. I know. Oh, double check that ever, but um the the intent is to have an IGA enter into an IGA with um COIC or Cascades Transit to um transfer those funds. So it also helps with our spending obligations too to uh formalize those agreements. We're working with ODOT too. So we have the I think the work that you've been advocating for as part of co-act with the Empire Interchange and to also transfer those funds to ODOT as well. Okay, great. Anything else, Bob? Nope, that's it. Okay, any questions? Other questions for Bob?

Councilors all got an email about your own city bus pass as being a city employee a couple of days ago. So look in your um inbox if you didn't notice it yet if you want to experiment with using the system that sat was on it right away that night. Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks Bob for the presentation. I think um I think some of these uh changes that are responsive to things that we've talked about. I think what I hear from community is frequency predictability. The bus goes where I need to go right at the times I need it to go. And I think for people to realize since we are not getting any additional funding, that means we're gonna have to change some things and you're gonna have to look at some of those low ridership routes and say how do we pick those drivers and put them on routes that are higher ridership so that we can get more frequency. That's the trade-off that we're in right now.

But I also think it's important to have that vision of what this could be because if we are going to try to seek funding or seek, you know, voter support or anything in the future, we have to be setting the vision of like here's what you could get, right? Right. And so I appreciate you saying, "Hey, if this transportation bill had not been referred to the ballot, we would have double our funding and we could be very easily doing 15-minute headways. We can't do that now, right?" Um, but that's something we need to tell people, here's what you will get if you decide to fund transit um more. And I think that visioning is really going to help with that. And I appreciate the um kind of the creativity and the effort that you've put in to saying well with the resources we have what are some things we can do right now to get going knowing that a little bit more may be possible depending on how the fair discussion goes

both here and bend and I know that's happening also throughout the system right not just yeah here um so I appreciate that thank you okay thank you make sure you stop sharing for closure thing

sorry and next we'll have uh the Franklin underpass closure options. Garrett Saburn with the engineering department. Um, we've got kind of all the different legs from our our progressive design build team here tonight. So, we'll just go down through and let each other here do an introduction. Um,

Jay Johnson. I'll be the project manager for Ky and uh Justin Mason with Dell uh the design manager for the project.

So we're here tonight just to present on the last phase or construction amendment that's planned for the Franklin corridor. Um, additionally wanted to provide some updates to council as requested on the duration for the undercrossing closure and some different sequencing options as we've we've looked at with the team here and hence part of the reason why they're here so they can provide um some valuable information around that if council has additional questions. And lastly, I'm just trying to address some of the questions that council's presented over the last couple work sessions because this one's came to council a few times here. uh highlighted some of that last bullet around community outreach, detours, and business access and uh remaining funds. There's a couple others that we can cover too and and open to additional questions, of course. Uh as a a bit of a recap or reminder, there were two work sessions last year in September and October of 25. Um in that September meeting it was asked that we uh take the Franklin considerations for the final GMP which is uh Haramman to forest street and bring that to a joint subcommittee of the transportation bond oversight committee and the core area advisory board and get input from them to bring back to council at another work session in October. I think October 8th that committee had came to a unanimous decision. There was a letter submitted um can send that to council again but I think you received that in your October 8th packet. The recommendation from that subcommittee was to proceed with the full build of Franklin as we had designed from Haramman to 4th. Um so not to break it up into multiple packages which I think was being discussed at one point. Address the storm water flooding at the undercrossing. Uh try to minimize those the roadway closure duration which we're specifically talking about the undercrossing and and ways to strategically approach that. and then manage the the remaining scope to the current funding. So um not necessarily pursuing be options at the time if we

can prove to build it as designed to the existing budget or remaining budget. Um this is just kind of a high level scope for the remaining or the remainder of the corridor. So as I said it extends from Haramman to Fourth Street. So at the top left is Haramman, bottom right is fourth street. We got it broken up into two different segments here. Uh just quick highlights. There's the key route connection at at Haramman. So we are planning or we're looking at the Hawthorne extension right now and how to connect that to Haramman across Haramman going to the south as a continuation of the Ben bikeway as currently planned. Um, we have a couple private developments. There are planned future private developments that we're coordinating with on the south side of Franklin between the BNSF rail and approximately Second Street. So, um, project PDX, which is the old Lewab, and then the old Blue Dog RB, uh, just to the west of Second Street. Um, we also have some low stress network crossings that we're planning to build with this phase at Second Street. So a continuation of the second street project which longterm would connect up to the only project that was recently built and our future ai project which will build a safe crossing and burnside and third street in the future. So just a few highlights of the scope to get into this final phase um of work that we have planned. This is just kind of a highle schedule and then we'll go into more details on what the individual phasing would look like. But right now we're here in March. Um, a a big decision point I suppose I'd like to highlight is the May 2026 date on the bottom there. Um, we have some existing encumbered funds on the contract which would allow us to initiate some of the waterline work. So, we could start moving forward and and trying to finish that first to fourth street segment of work this year. We'd like to begin that in May. However, we wouldn't come back for the GMP4 approval with city council,

which would be the the other roadway and wall, etc. improvements that are outside of that available funding until June 3, so maybe a month later. Um, also highlighting the area where we would have closures at the undercrossing, that's the orange hatch hatched area. So midepptember to mid uh November right now and then opening the undercrossing back up until the end of the holiday season and and going back into um begin work at the undercrossing again in early January of 2027. That second period would then extend to approximately May as a as a conservative estimate at this time and basically that would complete all the improvements between fourth and haram. I'll move over to Justin here just to talk a little bit about traffic control and business access at kind of a high level and

um thanks Garrett. So to to finalize this out there's going to be a lot of traffic control jumping around. Um, so we wanted to show kind of a couple of examples that highlight the overall plan um for detour routing and and business access throughout. Um, when whenever we we're in a situation where we're going to have a westbound closure along Franklin, um, we we'll be planning on using Greenwood as the the main route. Um we do have connections with Greenwood uh now with only and and Wilson as options, but the the the signed route would would be planned for Greenwood. Um and then depending on where those work zones are, we'll be working um to make sure we have clear business access um using the local local streets versus the maintaining the arterial connection. Um the other part that we wanted to um highlight was that the Hawthorne Parkway um exit or off-ramp would be open during this time. Um so that connection would maintain to downtown. And then looking um where we we have a planned eastbound closure between um third and fourth street. Uh again, the main detour route would be utilizing Greenwood, um Third Street to Greenwood over to ETH and back down to the to the roundabout. Again, using the the local surface streets for business access to maintain um uh clear clear access for businesses during construction during those those closure periods.

Justin, quick question on eastbound and westbound closures. feedback that I received last time when Franklin corridor was closed one direction was that people appreciated the predictability of having a oneway open for an extended period of time and um didn't really understand why it was then switched to a different direction after a relatively short period and whether I don't know what the right answer here is but whether there's consideration for saying you know we can keep it all westbound for the longer period of time so people don't have to keep constantly adjusting their travel patterns and just move the flow of traffic onto, you know, whichever side of the road isn't being worked on. Yeah. And that's that's a a big um philosophy that I know Matt Kenzie with Keaney does when he he laces out. He really the the bouncing back and forth is not ideal and and that will be a goal um through the rest of this construction. the the one constraint that we do have that uh causes problems with that is the traffic signal. And you know, if if we're putting westbound, if we're trying to maintain westbound and putting them into eastbound side, we have to move signal heads and do a lot of those things. That's the one constraint that will need to be considered uh as the final traffic control plans come together. But it's it's a great point and we'll we'll take that in. Thank you.

We've got a couple more slides on sort of the the idea of when we close when. So yeah, might answer some questions too.

Um so jumping back into the phasing or maybe a little bit more detail on the phasing and and maybe I'll just highlight kind of the structure of the slide. We're showing the area um that would current or that would be under improvement during the phase of work as it's outlined per phase. The text that I'm trying to highlight on the left side just kind of outlines the scope, duration, uh, limits, and then on the right side, which Justin was alluding to a bit, was just what our detour business access routes would be, which are in general, um, general shown. Sorry, sorry, I'm getting Paul surprise call on my phone, which on my screen, which won't disappear. There we go. Um, so detours and business access and then some public communication. I think these are both things that have been emphasized by city council. So I want to give more information. So phase one is first to fourth street. Um once again trying to start the waterline improvements in May. Overall this is a fivemonth duration. Um showing this a little bit shorter right now because this would overlap with the next phase of work as well. Uh the roadway improvements would start shortly after the waterline improvements. U most of our waterline improvements will still allow eastbound and westbound traffic. So, when we start talking about westbound close, eastbound close, um we're working closely with the team here to try to limit those durations, but the most complicated comes when we get close to the signal and and we don't want to build a temporary signal versus potentially going with like a one-mon closure um for one direction. Uh detours in general, you know, we're looking at Greenwood as our detour. We do have alt routes that a lot of local traffic will utilize as well. The first week or two is usually pretty tough around that. So, we are anticipating doing uh a little bit more public communication around getting message boards out, mailers, uh working with um Cyrus, our business advocate, to make sure we're getting good communications to to surrounding businesses. Uh we will be doing door knocking along the corridor, social

media, etc. So, expanding that for each phase here. So, you know, two weeks before this phase of work starts, we're out doing that. And then two weeks before we move to the next phase, etc. So this is kind of repetitive as we go through the slides when it comes to the detours and communication the the next phase. So you'll as you remember from the high the overview of the schedule we've broken the undercrossing up into two phases or the closure of the undercrossing into two phases. This first phase uh would start in midepptember. We'd still be wrapping up phase one to the east between 1 and 4th, but we would have two traffic open over in that that segment of the the corridor. Um that piece of work east of first would be done by midocctober and then at the undercrossing area, the contractor would be doing all the utility work. So primarily getting the water line in over the new water line over to Hill Street uh which is much needed and then addressing the storm water flooding issues at the undercrossing with some new inlets and and very deep dry well. So you know pretty significant excavation. There's also kind of a grand reveal going on right now which you can ask Jay more about here with Ky, but um he's hoping that we can start doing some of the wall construction now too on the north side to help you know reduce that tail end schedule. But um still working through details on it. We'll have more on that when we come back in June and have a more solid schedule then too if we get direction to come back in June. And then the last phase of work here would be phase two. This once again, you know, we would open the undercrossing back up um during the holiday season. So we'd have to go in and patch the road and stabilize and put in traffic control for closures, etc. Closures for for pet access probably on the north. um and then come back to do you know the remaining roadway and structural improvements as well as extending that waterline utility from Hill over to Haramman Street. So um that dur or the

duration of that works about four to five months as I have listed here right now. The five month is maybe more on the conservative side. Um and then the uh improvements I guess as we start to see them implemented ideally um K& is starting to work back from Heramman start to pull those closures in back towards the undercrossing as we're wrapping up the undercrossing and start staggering openings here on the west side of the corridor. As I mentioned the detours, the public communication, that stuff's all the same on the the right sides. I'll let Jay talk a little bit to the construction. We've had some questions just about why we can't have a travel lane uh through the undercrossing during construction down there. So, our biggest constraint in there, as everyone knows, is the walls on the west side of the undercrossing. So, we only have roughly about 24 ft. Well, our equipment's 10 foot outside track to outside track with the smaller pieces. So, anything larger than that, we're taking up more room. Um, even with our zero swing, which means the back end of the hoe doesn't sit over the tracks. Even with a zero swing, we won't be able to make that turn in the undercrossing with the walls will be too pinched. So, we're going to have to dig them up. When we do the drywalls, that'll be roughly 15 ft deep. They'll probably be roughly 15 to 20 ft wide. Um, so basically, it's the entire roadway in there. So, we're going to have to pull that material out, back the hoe out, bring in another hoe or a loader, and load it up into the truck. So, it's extremely difficult area, which is kind of fun and challenging. Um, but it's a really, really horrible constraint to have. Um, couple of the things that we're looking at to help speed this up is when we go down to put the water line in, we're going to use a rock saw, which will be able to go in. There's like a 14T8 clearance, I believe, under there. So, we can't get our equipment in and out under there. So, we'll use a rock saw to

go down and use uh to install the water line. And then the utilities on the other side, which is some communication lines that we're working with them, and we'll put them in on the other end as well on the other side. Um so, that will help with the speed of getting things in to help reduce some of the closure time. Um and then we'll try and get all that work done in between October and November for that closure. And then we'll come back in February to do the larger wall construction that's needed on both sides. Got it.

And then last slide is just is just remaining budget. Um so we have a break a breakdown of the different funding sources that are contributing to this uh remaining segment of Franklin Avenue. Um the estimated construction cost with some other uh ER services, rightway services that we have right now is around $15 million with uh or sorry, yeah, it's around $15 million and then our budget amount is about $16 million. Um Mike had or councelor Riley had brought up a question the other day about just what we had included in there for contingency because we had previously shown a range of roughly 13 to 18.6 million. um went back and and dug into that a bit more today. Um it's challenging right now, right? Because there's a lot of unknowns when we brought that estimate at 30% design, but we did have K& do a heavy bid on it. We had a third party estimator do a heavy bid on it. And so the low end of where we ended up on that range was was our heavy bid estimate with contingency added on top of that to to create that range amount. Right? So that would put us um K& was lower than our I should add K& was lower than our third party estimator. So based on what K& provided us that time we had about a 15% contingency. I'd say that's roughly where we are with um our budgeted amount now and then that range would go beyond that which we put in a 50% contingency contingency on K& amount for the range.

Okay, great. Yeah. Um can you go back to the schedule slide please Garrett? Yeah. So, just wanted to start there with council the the concept of having the two the two chunks of closure with the holidays being open. Um, and we did receive a letter from the downtown business association supporting this and in discussions and their meetings. I've heard the the summer is very important. The holidays are pretty important, too. So, um, trying to get in those shoulder seasons is what this schedule does. Um, so just want to make sure council is comfortable with the schedule or have any questions about this. I just really appreciate the gymnastics um that have gone into this um to to really listen to the businesses and so I think yes I'm very much in favor of it. Steve

G as originally designed this this was going to be a little bit more towards the summer. Is that right? This this this construction phase perhaps which is which was kind of what generated that letter. Is that true? It it was where well the the original conversation is that we would have sequential construction. We wouldn't have a break like this. Um, you know, thanks to the business advocate here with the city and I think the mayor had led up some conversations with the downtown businesses to try to understand some of their concerns which helped lead us to this and I totally agree with that. There is a cost though to spread it out a little bit, right? Can you can you put a a rough dollar figure associated with that?

Jay dug into that a little today if you want to respond where you think it's at. We well everything's up for negotiation, but for us to leave and come back, we're looking at around $100,000 to$125, but all of our stuff that we go into at this, we talked with the independent cost estimator and so we will go negotiate that, but that's roughly what it would be. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I'm supportive of the break for sure. Just want to make

Yeah, I am too. I um I have two questions. the idea the one lane you know keeping one whole lane open for periods of time um is that going to add cost to the project also potentially from sort of to councelor Mendes's question earlier can clarify you mean not on the undercrossing but the other parts yeah the other part the other parts of the we can put it there so so

if I was to have if I was to have my perfect way to build this job we'd start at four street and go to first street on the north side um the main reason is the intersection there, you're going to a right turn only. So, everything on the west side of the intersection would already be in our traffic control by dropping that lane. Um, we'll do it anyway that's necessary. Um, but to keep the one lane closure, no, that would be that that was part of our original traffic control plan of doing one side and then the other and that was our intent from the beginning, but we're also trying to work with everybody to make everyone as happy as we can. There's more space here too than there was between fourth and eighth.

And so, you know, part of the arm wrestling that we're doing right now as we're talking through this is is how to maintain eastbound and westbound or one lane of each um for the majority of the time knowing as you know they both emphasized here that there's the signal that we have to work with. So I I think speaking a little out of turn probably the the biggest challenge right now is between Second and Fourth Street on the north side of the road and likely seeing a westbound closure for that segment for a duration of time which I think the most concerning is the second to third part. So, we're talking to the contractors, luckily, have a table with us of how to expedite that. And they're they're considering doing some night work um with the waterline improvements. So, we have it open during the day, which is another thing I should have emphasized for the undercrossing is they're promising every Saturday they're working while that's closed, which is a lot to ask sometimes of your employees. So, um there's several things that we're we're still talking through and detailing out with these considerations. I think I think it's important to have access down into the downtown area, the westbound open, but during the summer, it's also important to have your emergency route open for people exiting the downtown or going eastbound. So, we're trying to balance those. And

yeah, are are there I have one question. Is there there any big unknowns that we know now of the unknown unknowns, but the um that I mean, is there anything we need to just sort of say in a meeting like this? Like this potentially could if we find this might slow things down. just so it's on the table and we don't get in a situation where nobody ever talked about this and now it's delaying it for another two months and yeah I mean there the team's working to a 60% design right now so there's just the general progression of design um construction things that we discover out there in coordination with franchise utilities that affects us

um Justin probably has a list that keeps him up at at night I think the big ones for me is just finishing our our permitting with BNSF and ODOT our right away we're wrapping up right Now, there's always some risk there that we're carrying as we're closing it. And then from a construction schedule, there's uh big questions around the walls at the undercrossing and their historic nature. That's jumps out to me. Yeah.

Follow up on that specifically that, you know, we had some significant delays on the only corridor due to difficulties uh that the railroad crossing presented. Do you anticipate any similar kind of difficulties with the railroad in particular for this project? We we shouldn't be impact Well, yeah,

from what we're looking at is with only one of the big things with the railroad there. Well, it was subsurface, but the railroad here, we shouldn't have any impacts on their property. We're trying not to touch their area. Um, the other part is is we're underneath it rather than up above. And that's where a lot of constraints come in with the railroad is if our equipment can fall on their tracks fing the track, but we're going to be down below. So, um, we will be close to it when we build the, uh, the north wall up on top and the sidewalk, but it it's pretty minimal. It's very different requirements with this project with BNSF than the only project. and and we should not get into a circumstance again where we run into what we ran into with the only project with just the unknowns that that took place.

Yeah. And we we've been making some design considerations to pull our improvements back to to tie into existing a little bit further back. Uh as far as the walls, um for instance, on the east side, there's some some rock fascia uh that's out there that we're going to tie into now rather than replace. um just trying to stay away from the bridge abutments of the railroad to to try and alleviate some of those concerns. Thank you. Great. Yeah.

I have a question about um bike and ped access through there. that detour is really really long for bicyclists and pedestrian. And so I'm curious if you're considering um reopening the undercrossing for bikes and pads on the elevated, you know, sidewalks earlier perhaps or at certain points in time when you're working on the water line and down below.

So this is um it's a great question. Um one side will always be open. It's probably going to be the south side uh the up above side. Um, currently we're looking at um trying to help speed things up because we know that this is very impactful. Um, we're looking at taking uh starting the walls in October on the north side. So that means we'd be excavating them. Um, and building the the one up on top on the northeast side is a is a port and place wall that we'd be trying to get back um uh during the first closure. We would start it and then we'd finish it hopefully by the second closure. I'm an optimist so I believe we can get it in. And then on the northwest side we would build that up. That's a different wall. It's an MSE. It'll be a hill thicker wall. Both walls, all three walls down below have a fascia on it that will take a little bit of time to put on. Um so that north side will be the side that gets closed for the longest. Um we also have to put on a parapit um which is that railing um which is another challenge because it requires a fairly large concrete moment slab um which will take a little bit of time but we believe that if we start earlier we'll be able to get done a little bit earlier but our intent is to leave that north or the south side open for pedestrians throughout the the closure and then they will flop back and forth while we're doing the work um that's to the east of the closure.

Great. Thank you. And maybe by the time we've gotten to there, a lot of those crossing improvements on Franklin have happened. So if you do have to come to the other side of Franklin, you are going to actually have a a crosswalk there, right? Yeah, that'd be helpful. Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. Um, so I'm trying to remember. I think it's it's well over 10,000 cars go on Franklin. So, in anticipation of what's about to happen to Greenwood, um, is what are some things that we can proactively think about so that, you know, that that there aren't people backed up all the way, you know, to to Newport Market on one side or, you know, I mean, so what are some things that we can be doing? I just like us to be thinking of that before this project starts. Um, so that we're not having just traffic just get out of control on on Greenwood. Yeah, I think we we had the perfect storm with the only closing, which is hopefully, you know, we don't get a snowstorm the first day that we close this one and we don't have the other

um but in all in all seriousness, we did have some lessons learned that we took from that as far as where we're locating message boards. Um, we had a bit of a reactive scenario in coordinating some signal modifications around town that be more proactive than we're we're talking about. Um, and then I think our messaging, especially for where we are on this corridor, needs to go up a notch. Um, best there still will be people we'll miss and we still will have a tough first week or two. Yes. With closures and and changes in traffic patterns.

And I think with only open and you have multiple ways to get down there, I mean, I've already thought about that. I I probably won't use Greenwood just from from my from the southeast, right? I'd probably be using Wilson or something else. So, um letting in the communications people know that's the official detour if you come upon it. But there are, you know, the other crossings for people to use that are all open now, which is helpful. Yeah. And there's the other alt routes, there's the exits off the Parkway. We have a lot of local traffic that goes onto the Parkway. I would see that probably taking a notch up as well. Um multiple exits. Yeah. Yeah. Further on Greenway trauma as I would call the um the fourpack

uh that Russ talked about the only roundabouts right there um that's starting really early maybe late se or late 2026 early 27 am I right early 27 probably and so I was just wondering for this fourth that would we likely detour down to Greenwood as well during that there's going to be maybe a little bit of a interaction on wood at that point we don't have our phasing set up for that one yet. Um, and what our impacts are. I'm just kind of we just got done reviewing proposals, so I'm going through all the different um I'm just thinking up there the northeast right of where the So the fourth and fourth is going to be kind of where that on Greenwood is where the thing is. Yeah, it's not on Greenwood. It's on

I know, but the detour from I'm assuming the detour will go down to Greenwood is what I'm saying again. You can Well, you should actually be able to go around to you can go back to if you're trying to get across. Our detour should be in the east of on on Highway 20 to the east of Third Street though. Um but yeah, and we also have the Butler project potential Butler phase two that we've got to be thinking about with sequencing that one as well. So there's some coordination, additional coordination and and some thoughts to go in. Thank you for that. So, councelor Platt, are you asking to have it considered that we may need to think about um to some extent delaying when some of that stuff's going to start so that we don't overlap two things happening at the same time? Well, is that essentially your question?

Yeah, the this one's ending just before the back's going to start, I think. But if there's any delays, just kind of keeping track of that, I think. Yeah, because we would potentially detour on Greenwood both times. Yeah. I mean, once again, we got to we have to coordinate with the Butler project, too. So, we need to we have four intersections to build. Some are more impactful than others as far as detours um and impacts north, south, and east west traffic. So, we need to think about that with the phasing, which we're still in negotiations with the design build team on that project. And once again, it's a design build team that we'll work through those details with as we um develop our first construction package. I I would guess that's probably going to come towards the end of this year. Thank you.

Yeah. And so, and we do we're talking about intersection work. Not every single time is the whole intersection closed, right? So sometimes we will be able to get through there. Yeah. And some of them, you know, we may have preferences that we're going to communicate that we still need to work through the details with Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds like there's council support to move forward with the schedule you've proposed tonight with the the two different closures and to um move forward. So, thank you for all the work to put this plan together and to try to reduce the impacts. We know it makes it more complicated. Correct. So, we got to move, but yes,

I But so I we talked about this yesterday but it didn't come up in the presentation and that is um the Central District Business Association asked questions about lighting yesterday in particular the second street crossing at Franklin. Can you just talk a little bit about how that's going to change and or get improved? Yeah. Yeah absolutely. So all all of our um intersections along arterials and collectors per our standards we have to do um illumination or horizontal illumination for our for our PD crossings in advance of the crossings. So, um, every single one of these will see some level of of illumination upgrades to help improve the contrast and visibility of the crossing specifically. Okay. So, Second Street included, First Street, Third Street, Fourth Street, uh, Hill Harold. Okay.

And then I will I will add to we're also looking at coordination with BNSF for the tunnel area as well. We're lighting that's really for lighting. What we're not looking at is pedk scale lighting here. Um, which would be in between the blocks or in between the intersections. That's not something that we typically do. Okay. Thank you for all the information. Thanks. Um, next is going to be the Juniper tree preservation and land development presentation. Council Norris. Yes, I am going to be leaving for this item. I had declared an actual conflict when we voted on the tree code um last year and um and will be leaving and not participating in this part of discussion. Go girl. Thank you.

Good point. I know. I'm not used to sit in while I'm teaching. Maybe a love a visual aid. Wow.

Down from the tree. Isn't it angels down the tree? No, I'm not. I don't have the arms. It was pretty cool. I thought it was great for the tree inventory. Did you see Ian? He's on the city tree inventory website. Yeah, he's on a picture actually climbing trees inventory. Very good. He's legit. Okay.

Okay. Um, thank you for having us here this evening. Uh, mayor, city council members. Um, I'm the urban forester, citybender urban forester. I'm joined today by Jenna Dybal, who is a central Oregon forestry and natural resources agent for our area, and she comes as a subject matter specialist. We're also joined by Melissa Steel, Ben's deputy fire marshall in case there are wildfire questions. Okay, this work session was created because of concerns and questions received regarding regulating junipers differently than other trees. Uh, it was scheduled after the annual tree code review in October 2025 to address requests from local developers regarding perceived challenges arising from the inclusion of western juniper in the list of trees subject to the new uh develop codes. As a preamble, uh, junipers are currently regulated and have been historically in the Ben Development Code and the Municipal Code, uh, just like any other tree. This is a snapshot of some of the developer concerns. Uh before council gives direction to staff about if, how, when to uh regulate junipers any differently than other trees, the presentation that follows will provide more information about the species, especially since uh there have been so many opinions on the matter. Uh as a reminder, the juniper question came up during the true act process and it was reviewed a number of times before being tabled. So there are a range of possible options for juniper mitigation that staff thought might be worth exploring at the end of the presentation. These are included here for you to consider while we present. We tried to condense these down a bit just to make it more uh understandable and legible. It's worth pointing out uh

that there are already discretionary pathways available for development in the new development code which allow exemptions um that few projects have leveraged to date. Things like topographic challenges or connectivity for roadway easements. We'll return to this slide at the end of the presentation for the discussion. First, let's quickly consider definition. This is how the dictionary defines a tree. There are other more botanical definitions. Um but the point is a tree is a tree is a tree, right? Um western junipers are most certainly trees. Uh there is a considerable amount of misperception uh which can be seen in how people react to the topic. Nonetheless, this is also uh reflected in the literature. On the one end, on the one hand, you'll see articles um with titles like the tree that ate Oregon, and on the other hand, articles referenced as the much maligned juniper. Some people refer to them as weeds that drink too much water um or are as invasive despite the fact that western juniper is most definitely native and is simply well adapted to compete in a harsh environment. Uh the moral of the story is here is that there is plenty of nuance and we're going to try and tease some of that out today. So to frame the conversation um it's important to understand the dominant tree species for our region. Um Bend and the Dashes River divide and ecotone that is a transition between uh the east cascades uh forest dominated by ponderosa pine and the juniper dominated step of the high central Oregon desert. Uh on this map, ponderosas are represented by the lime green areas and western junipers by the violet areas. The concerns from the development community arise from the fact that the bulk of the areas currently available for development are mostly covered with junipers at density at densities they

claim are prohibitive to affordable development under the new tree preservation codes. Jenna will go into this in more detail, but the historical context uh to the issue is also important since western juniper has dramatically increased its range in the past 150 years. That said, it's unclear whether the density of juniper forest has increased in our immediate area. It's certainly expanded across the state, but it's not clear that it's more dense in our immediate environment. What we do know is that the western juniper is a unique native plant adapted over millennia to our high desert. Low annual rainfall and thin volcanic soils. This is a genetically superior tree for an aid ecosystem able to thrive in extended periods of water scarcity and summer heat. It is also one of the longest lived species on our continent. The trunk slice you see here is north of 400 years old and came from Dry Park Canyon in Redmond and was dated at the Dendrology Lab in Corvalis, Oregon. So this guy here was a sapling when the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock.

How did you get that? It came through uh Abram Mcristian, the city forester in Redmond. He's done a couple of slices and sent them to the lab in Corvalis. So I can't take credit for we get to keep it or is it on loan? This this he's got one of his own. He's got one that's even older. Um so he said we could have this one indefinitely. You mean like follow the code or wondering if we get to have it.

The oldest known western juniper as you probably know is uh 1600 years old and is located nearby east of Bend in Horseridge, Oregon. Uh the crux of the issue here is finding a balance between housing, industrial property production and protecting critical ecosystems and the plants therein. By unnecessarily destroying juniper forest, we not only remove functional green infrastructure uh that provides things like shade, habitat, uh but we also risk destroying a critical element of what gives character to our area. Old trees like junipers are not just relics of the past. They are also the living present. Now, if there is any doubt about the significance of Western Juniper to our eco region, consider that travelers are welcomed off for the uh plane at uh Redmond Airport by a 500-year-old juniper trunk in the lobby. In fact, as you drive out of the airport, you quickly see signposts along Highway 97 that you are in the Redmond Bend Juniper Scenic Portal. Um, hikers can also venture out into the desert, uh, the rough lava landscape of the Oregon badlands wilderness nearby, uh, and hike past dozens of specimens over a thousand years old, part of some of the state's last, uh, old growth stands. And now, Jenna will uh, present on some ecology and botany for us.

Do you mind if I take the spaceship? Absolutely. Thank you.

Down, but thank you. Hi, everybody. Thanks again so much for having us here. Um, like Ian said, I am your central Oregon forestry and natural resources extension agent/ass assistant professor of practice with Oregon State University. I serve the tri county area plus Warm Springs and a lot of my programming has to do with juniper ecology and management. Uh, so like Ian said, I'm here today as a subject matter expert. I'm not here to advocate for any d one direction for you all to choose. Uh, my goal here, as it is with all my programming, is to give you all the context. who's necessary to create an informed decision. So, with that being said, I can talk about juniper literally for hours, but we've drilled it down to some three main points that we want to get out that we think will be most useful to you. Uh, the causes of western juniper expansion, how to identify old growth juniper, and uh some brief management options and considerations that are appropriate for this conversation. So, setting the scene, Ian did a good job of this. Um, but for further context, across the eastern Oregon landscape, we have over 6 and a half million acres of juniper. Um, like Ian said, these are native species. Uh, but I like to call them opportunistic. Uh, they can reside in a huge range of conditions. Uh, elevations ranging from 600 feet to 8,000 ft. Uh, precipitation ranging from 7 in to 30 in annually. You can find them in sands, lonesome, clay types of soils, but they prefer the dry and cold stuff. Uh, and that adaptability has paid off big time. Uh, depending on where you are in the eastern Oregon, there's anywhere between 5 to 10 times the amount of juniper on our landscape compared to pre-settlement era. And this is because, like I said, these guys are masters of survival and persistence. These are hardy dudes. Uh historically we would have only found these guys on rimrock and outcrops uh and low productivity soil areas. And I'm

realizing now is the eco region map not did it not make the cut here. We can go to a few slides. Jenna, I'm sorry.

That's okay. That's okay. I'm going to try to explain this. Uh the map really helps visually to break things up because the distribution of juniper across eastern Oregon varied widely even across central Oregon. Uh but it can very broadly be broken up into the various different eco regions. We're in the mazama eco region that essentially extends up towards like pilot view gradeview area heading into uh crooked river ranch area and then out to the east towards the horse ridge area. The mazama province is where historically we would have had old growth savannah. Uh at most it would have been like 25 trees per acre. Uh, and then very generally I can say that down here uh would have been like old old growth up towards the Redmond Sisters Vengeance Triangle. We're talking new old growth. But this guy uh was on a walk around Klein Butes the other day uh on the west side and I'm pretty sure that tree is over a thousand years old. Um and there were other trees. There's plenty of infill of new trees in there, but that's all old growth savannah in there as well with lots and lots of new infill. Um, uh, seed dispersal can happen via gravity or water runoff. But fun fact about juniper trees is if their cones, berries drop to the ground. Uh, it will take anywhere between 2 to 3 years for that casing to fully erode and for that seed to be able to germinate. So, most often, uh, our juniper seeds are spread by, uh, bird poop. uh when birds eat the seeds and it goes through their their digestive tract that two to three year uh disintegration period goes down to a matter of hours pooped out immediately ready for uh for germination. Um because of this they also commonly establish under shrub cover like 90 over 90% of junipers you're going to find establishing in shrubs because that's where the birds are pooping. Uh, and they also have a somewhat parasitic relationship with uh, sagebrush uh, and essentially take their nutrients uh, benefit from the protection from exposure and then grow out the plant and push it out and essentially kill it. Um, they've got a

huge well-developed root system. 65% of their roots are going to be lateral. Their lateral roots could extend up to three times the drip line of the tree from the center of the tree. Um, and again, slow growing and long lived. Like Ian said, our oldest known western juniper is over 1600 years old. All right. Post Europe settlement juniper expansion. Um photo photographic evidence. Um these are all in the John Day soil formation area. So this is where we would have had uh only like five trees per acre historically and they would have been topographically confined to rocky outcroppings and rim rocks. Um but you can see that over the course of less than a century uh the woody uh woody plant material just exploded across the landscape out here. Um we also have done uh studies where we've overlaid uh the ages of all trees in a certain stand with the last known fire and we found that none of those trees existed before that last known fire. So in some of those areas that is how we've scientifically figured it out uh as opposed to just anecdotal photos. But why is it everywhere? So I would like you to disregard the primary and secondary components in there. Also disregard atmospheric carbon dioxide and really focusing on climatic influence, livestock grazing and fire. So as with all things in natural resources, it's ne there's never just one reason why things happen. And in this case, it's just the same except it's a one, two, three punch of perfect conditions that led to the explosion that we've seen today. So, first and foremost, in the mid 1800s, we started to see a period of milder climate, more precipitation, and it really just primed the landscape for good establishment ground for juniper. So there is some evidence that some juniper expansion did start before white folks got here, but not nearly to the same level that happened after Euroamericans got here because they made

two critical natural resource management decisions uh that that primed landscape was able to take advantage of. Those being uh livestock grazing and fire suppression. So when we got here in uh east eastern Oregon, we grazed this land hard. We had seasonlong grading uh grazing hundreds of head of cattle per herd. And what this did was it decimated the bunch grass herbaceous population across our landscape reduced the fine fuels and that uh reduced the capability of frequent fire that would have killed young junipers uh across the landscape. Now what this did first we lost the grasses. What happened next was we actually saw shrub expansion uh across our landscape first. And my hot take of the day is we have just as much of a problem with shrub expansion as we do juniper expansion. Uh but that being said, what did we just learn in the last slide there? Junipers like to establish under shrub bushes. And in lie of having no power lines or homes around uh around our region, this is where the birds were pooping on sage brush. And so, not only did we reduce the fine fuel load across the landscape, we just created a whole bunch of primo germination grounds for juniper across the landscape. And then at the same time, we suppressed fire from our landscape from for over a century. Uh, and historically, those frequent fires every 2 to 25 years would have called young junipers before they had a chance to establish. Okay. Juniper characteristics. We generally break up juniper into three categories. juvenile, post settlement, and old growth. Uh, juvenile, only thing you need to know is these are the guys you're going to find in sage brushes, and they're going to be pokey and sharp. Don't try to pull one out with your bare hands. Uh, they're trying to maximize their food intake and prevent themselves from getting grazed. Uh, important for you guys here today is the difference between post settlement and old growth trees. Post settlement trees look like

this. They look like trees. Old growth trees look like this. They look super weird. So, fun fact about junipers is it is because junipers are so gnarly and knotted and have hollowed out insides. Uh we can't really use a traditional core or an increment bore to age old growth junipers. Uh many a forester has lost one uh to trying to date an old growth juniper. So, when we're dating like say the 1600y old juniper, what they what scientists do is they do punch cuts with chainsaws. So they are literally and pulling out a giant block and reading the rings on that. The trees are fine. Don't do like multiple punch cuts on them, but a single punch cut they'll be okay. But if you're just, you know, landowner, land manager, you're not going to go around doing punch cuts on every tree to figure out if it's an old growth or not. So most commonly, and I kid you not, we identify old growth based on how weird it looks. It's the easiest way to do it. Um, and so that weird component is really that abnormal broad uh canopies. You're going to have like some dead spiky tops, uh large uh really large lower branches or super gnarled. Um, and that's kind of the weird component of it. But, uh, there are young trees that are starting to look weird. Um, I've been seeing a lot of the same uh uh events that cause these dead tops and abnormal uh canopy creations happening in post settlement trees now. So, I'm expecting that we're going to have some post settlement trees that look weird upcoming. So, the best way Oh, sorry. Got ahead of myself here. So, tree height and diameter not a good indicator of old growth uh juniper here. So, here we have two photos of uh old growth junipers in Idaho. They're

virtually in a similar location, same similar elevation. Uh the tree on the left there is about 6 feet tall, 8 in diameter. Uh the guy on the right is like 40 inch diameter and 40 feet tall. Uh the guy on the right there is about 300 years old. Guy on the left there is over 600 years old. Reason being that guy's trying to grow on a rock. It's tough growing on a rock. You end up being stunted, you end up being short, you end up being weird looking. So, because of this uh we it's it tree height as opposed to all other tree species when we're like easily determining whether something's old, not going to be a good indicator for your juniper species here. This is going to be your big giveaway. Bark texture is going to say it all when in doubt. Um, these are three trees up in the Kleinbes area that are all right next to each other. They're all virtually the same height. They all have virtually the same shape. You're going to have to believe me on that. But they're all at least a hundred years apart in age. And I knew that based on looking at bark texture. So your guy on the left here is going to be your youngest. He's probably around a hundred years old. You're going to have gray bark. It's going to be peely. And if you pressed your hand up against it, it's going to feel flat on the bark. Now, as you get progressively older and older, your bark is going to get redder and more cinnamon colored, and you're going to get deeper furrows in there, where if you put your hand down on the bark, you're going to feel lots of bumps and grooves under your hand there. So, and it gets even more uh furoughed than this. This tree is probably a young old growth, like 300 to 400 years old. Um, so they get even more gnarly and furoughed than that. But this is just a good comparison that redder, more furoughed is going to be the big giveaway of whether something's old growth or not. Um, just some management considerations

if you're looking to do hazardous fuels reduction on your junipers. Uh, big focus is going to be thinning and limming, reducing your vertical and horizontal fuel continuity. Uh, maintaining that fine fuel continuity or, uh, ideally your bunchrass population, not cheat grass population, uh, where appropriate. making sure you're practicing good defensible space and strategic fuel breaks across your property. Um, and the real key here, uh, is we live in a disturbance-driven ecosystem. And if we are going to artificially remove that disturbance, aka fire, from our system, and we want to maintain resiliency in that system, we need to mimic that uh, disturbance via active management. So thinning and limming, reducing that vertical fuel continuity. Uh bring a if you got a lot lot of shrubs around, maybe you bring a little mower and you just make a bunch of weird zigzag patterns around and kind of break that up a little bit. But essentially the main message here is it's not just a oneanddone idea. You're going to want to plan for maintenance on a 10 to 20 year cycle approximately the same frequency 2 to 25 years that we would have had fire across this landscape. Okay, big elephant in the room, water use and juniper. Um, I was told that the Camp Creek paired wershed study was cited in some of the letters to council and thought I'd give just a little bit of context on the study for you all. So, the Camp Creek paired watershed study is a 30 30 plus year study that's being done outside of Brothers, Oregon and by Oregon State University. Um, it's an amazing study. They did 11 years of pre-treatment data and then they had two watersheds that are right next to each other. They cut the juniper in one and they left all the juniper in the other one. And for the 20 years since then, they've been conducting tons of hydraologic research to see uh what the impacts on hydra hydraologic systems are

on juniper removal. And from this study and other uh similar studies, although this is kind of the best and greatest and very unique one of its kind, um we know a lot about juniper in its water use, we also have some uncertainties. So what we do know is that juniper intercepts a lot of precipitation and it's basically a 1:1 uh uh ratio. So if you have 10% juniper cover, you get 10 inches of rain. unheard of here, I know, but for for example sake, we'll say you get 10 inches of rain. Uh on your uh ground, you're actually only really getting like nine inches of rain. So that's the sort of 1:1 ratio for interception there. Um it also uh their presence can reduce soil permeability of water, the ability for water to get into the soil instead of just runs right off it into um other systems. Um and junipers do drink a lot of water. Um, on average they will drink about 13 gallons a day. Um, in a really good wet summer, like best conditions, it can be up to like 37 uh gallons of water a day, but it can also be as little as seven gallons a day or six gallons a day. It's very dependent on what the landscape conditions are looking like at the time. Um, but while I say that, something that I really like to emphasize here, just in general, trees drink more water than grass. just it's a bigger body, needs more water. And we do have some areas, especially in the sisters area and up towards Lake Chinook, where we're seeing as much pine encroachment into our grassland systems as we're seeing juniper encroachment. So, just want to put it out there that yeah, junipers drink a lot of water, but they don't necessarily drink more water than other trees. Um, what we and we do know some things about what happens when we remove juniper from the landscape in terms of water usage. Um, it's pretty well established uh that in general you can expect to see increases in soil water availability on your site when you

remove juniper. And what that means is because junipers have such big lateral roots, their roots are competing usually more so for resources with the other plant life that's in this area. And so removing juniper from your system can improve uh water availability for your new bunch grasses or your shrubs that you want to promote on your landscape there. Now what we're not as certain about are the water yield uh impacts of juniper removal. Does you know we've heard many anecdote and true anecdotes of people who've removed juniper and a spring was born from whence there wasn't one or a stream that would dry up every summer now flows year round. That absolutely happens. However, because this is one study and it's a great study, there is still and and we do show some promising results related to water yield availability post juniper removal. However, um there's so many variables at play that we cannot predict. you know, if you remove juniper here, you will get this much water yield. At this point in general, and pardon my frankness, it's a little bit of a crapshoot. And us as scientists in good faith, we can't really tell you, hey, go out and if you do this, this, this, and this, you should expect to get greater water yields. We just don't have all those variables lined out yet. I'm hoping maybe in the next 5 to 10 years we'll get more more paired watershed studies and we'll get some more certainty about you know what sort of conditions uh you need to look for to maximize water yield availability when you do juniper removal. All of that being said, what we are recommending is there are plenty of other ecological benefits that can come from removing juniper. you know, hazardous fuels reduction and resiliency, improving wildlife habitat, improving forage or bunchass populations, uh getting products from

your encroaching juniper. There's b a a great uh juniper product industry that's really burgeoning up here in Oregon right now. If you manage juniper for any of those other ecological benefits, you will very likely have indirectly some sort of water yield benefit as well. And so, um, while we're not, uh, recommending that folks manage specifically for water yield, um, again, there are other, uh, management options that will, uh, benefit your ecological system in whatever your goal is. And you will probably also get some sort of water yield. Uh, just how much exactly, we can't really tell you right now. Okay, I'm just going to time check that I want us to have enough time for discussion, but I think we're on track, but about if we can finish in about five minutes with the presentation. Great.

Okay. Uh the one caveat to the camp study was that it was framed very much as habitat restoration. And as you can see from the slide here, this is a picture taken from our current housing project. This is the stark nature of nature of mass grading uh that happens with development projects. It is the opposite of habitat restoration. Um the challenge in assessing the request to exempt junipers has been difficult because of the anecdotal data uh referenced by developers has not been verifiable either in the context of recently proposed housing or industrial project sites in the southern and northern limits of the UGB respectively. Um, so it's been very hard to assess uh, you know, whether it's going to impact their their build costs. Arguably, junipers can be managed without too much difficulty in an urban setting. Um, they can be suitable street trees. Uh, and have the added benefit that they don't require supplemental watering. Junipers can absorb plenty of water when it's available, but uh more importantly, they can survive for extended periods with very little. Uh think about a new development. Newly planted trees are often deciduous species not native to our area that require substantially more water and permanent irrigation uh through the establishment period and beyond. Um there are wildfire considerations to bear in mind, but again these are manageable. Yes, like many conifers, uh they're rich in resin and as young trees with low hanging branches and densely growing, they can pose a higher fire hazard. That said, retention of larger trees with higher branching on development parcels should happen naturally since only uh regulated trees greater than 6 in in diameter are typically retained. The rest is simply good practice and

stewardship. removing dead branches, down debris, as well as limming trees up to at least six feet to eliminate ladder fuels. This usually happens on development parcels as they move towards project completion and final landscaping is undertaken. So this slide addresses some of those concerns which uh were the bulk of the uh developer developer concerns. Um, again, environmental concerns. I think we're challenged with a limited data set. Um, and as Jenna pointed out, the water availability science is not strongly c uh correlated to juniper removal just yet. As for wildfire concerns, um, we just spoke to that. Like I say, manageable with good landscape stewardship. Um, as for conservation goals, retaining junipers actually supports that because they don't require a lot of water. And on the developer data, we have discussed that to a certain extent. Um on parcels currently proposed for development, it is not evident there are densities of jun junipers which would preclude the ability to follow clear and objective tree intention pathways in the code allowing for development and for it not being a reasonable cost of doing business. So this is uh next steps staff staff recommendation. We suggest maintaining the status quo until more data is available and review the juniper question at the next annual review of the tree codes if necessary. Any tree code amendments and further consideration of the requested western juniper uh exemption should be reviewed at that time. So, we're back to the original slide with options for consideration. Happy to field questions uh on these. Um I mentioned earlier that there are already discretionary discretionary pathways

available in the new development code uh pertaining to tree preservation which allow exemptions like I said topograph topographic challenges or roadway connections for example. um two possible option areas uh for consideration. Significant changes would be removing junipers entirely um or exempting them for example from industrial properties. Technical adjustments are um more qualit not are least qualitative options um numeric and by tweaking other aspects of the code. Um, happy to discuss those if they need uh more explanation.

Sure. And um I see we have Pauline here and so I actually want to ask you a question, Pauline, because Ian, you've mentioned there's a discretionary track where you can exempt trees. But I just want to be clear that you can take the discretionary track, but you're still going to be mitigating for all those trees even if they're on a slope. You're just being, you know, allowed to to say you can remove them. Is that correct, Paul? You mitigate for a portion of Yeah. Yes. So can you explain what that means the discretionary track and how that would be different or not different from the clear and objective track?

So if they want to go anywhere below the 25% um DBH of the total trees on site if they remove let's say 5% just to keep math easy. They have to make up for the 20% of the DBH that's missing. Not they don't have to mitigate for every single tree they have to take out. It's just getting up to that 25%. So it's not that they're not allowed to, for instance, on a heavily graded slope where they say, "Look, we have to we have to grade this or else we can't build anything." They're not allowed to subtract those DVH from the total. They're still in the total. They're just allowed to go lower than the 25. They can go down to 0% if they need to. They just have to mitigate. And mitigation again is either payment and loot or replacement.

Got it. Thanks. All right, council. We got about 15 minutes. Is there that was a lot of information. Thank you very much. I know a lot more about Juniper than I ever did before. divorce, sir. Um I think appreciated the presentation. Yeah, very very cool to have you here. Um

I think we just need to um maybe start with the top with the most significant changes and just talk about if there is council support at this point for um sort of the request to just not have Juniper not regulated. I just want to make sure that we know if we're there or not. Is there anyone that's supportive of that at this point? Can I just offer some a little bit more historical context from because I sat on the true act committee and I represented an affordable housing developer on the true act committee who was arguing to retain trees. Um, the reason why junipers were just decided to be regulated the same as ponderosas is basically because of what Jenna described is that it's very difficult for the lay person or for the code reviewer

to um apply the unique kind of characteristics of what would be a significant juniper tree.

Um, surveyors are not picking that up when they're going out and surveying, right? But really like the committee I think the committee kind of wanted to go in that direction. It's we it just you know made everyone's brains explode. Um at this point in time though it would be nice where we're we're opening that discussion. It would be nice I think um and that's not an option that's up here but I think it would be nice to try to find some way to um preserve the iconic junipers and not just junipers in general. Um that was what we were trying to do with ponderosas and that's why there is the sort of the the significance or preserve a percentage of trees over a certain diameter but with junipers it should be we want to preserve a certain percentage of junipers you know that have these unique characteristics

so okay obviously makes it more complicated but um I'm just trying to cross one off because I don't I don't think there's support for just just taking junipers out

altogether I don't think there's support that. So I think we need to then we're going to get into sort of the other ideas around what it is we want to explore and I don't we don't have to reach a decision tonight, right? But I want to talk about some other ideas and I want to talk about we've heard a lot from folks that um told us a lot about trees and all of the benefits of those and which are of course absolutely true, but I also want us to talk about a little bit one of the the struggles that our developers and builders are bringing to us as well and how to balance that. So, just want to make sure um I just wanted to take that one off the table just so everyone was really clear on that that we're probably not going to be going that way. But I think we do need to talk about industrial and then maybe talk about some of these technical adjustments which might be a little bit what you're talking about, Gina, is how do we put it in the code um to treat this tree a little bit differently?

So, can I ask a different question though? Sure. We have a recommendation from our staff which essentially you're taking off the table by um largely by introd is there support for just following the staff recommendation tonight. Sure. And then and then I would layer on top of that is there some qu is there some questions we want to have staff come back to us as we go through a couple of key points. one would be the defensible space code that we know we're going to move through this year and second um the uh the next time we're going to revisit all the questions we're going to do another annual review of the tree code later this year. So to me that seems we need a recommendation from the staff. So, if you want to go back a slide, Ian.

Yep. Can I something I'd be curious um ever since you said this yesterday and I've been I've repeated it many times because and I and I think as we go forward with these conversations, I'm I'm really interested. You talked about the equity concerns about where junipers grow in the city of Bend and and this is a geographic equity issue between the west side and the east side largely, right? Um, and so that's something as we're having these conversations that I am really interested in hearing more about and and making sure that we're not um creating an environment where um we are we are being in un you know inequitable. So

yeah, I mean the equity piece there's a few levels to it because just singling out one tree species you are potentially depriving that landscape amenity amenity that ecosystem amenity to residents on the east side. So that's one of one piece of the equity. Then you've got the other piece where development that's already happened on the west side, they may already have mitigated for a whole range of tree species and now you're changing the goalposts. You move the goalposts.

The third piece is you may unintentionally spur um destructive development on the east side um by lower effectively lowering the costs comparatively. So yeah, it's the it's challenging. This is the difficulty with singling out uh singling it out or making amendments or technical adjustments on the basis of one species. Thank you. Okay. So is there anyone who supports this recommendation that's on the screen of basically status quo and keep monitoring until our next annual review with with also keeping an eye on defensible space? I think we should do take some action. But yeah,

C2 sounds good. I mean, I I generally support this with a caveat that I think what we should be doing tonight is directing staff to come back and answer a set of questions for us related to um what we might need to do think more about on industrial lands and also might there be a way to think a little bit more about accounting for uh potentially the fact that maybe we do have more junipers than we might have had, you know, uh in historic times and that maybe there's some kind of allowance that's given there. And I I think to councelor Francza's point about is there some way to determine um that's different than other trees um how you know and I don't it's not clear to me that there is but we could ask staff to explore it more a way to identify some of the bigger more significant trees and then come back with some changes to the code on that

right but that would not be I I I guess I am in agreement that I want to direct staff to take a look at some things and come back to us tonight. So that's why I'm saying I don't support this as on the screen which is basically just stand pat for now. I think we should kind of have a further discussion. I assume we should define that tonight what it is we want to talk about what it is and when we want to talk about it. Yeah. I want to talk about it as soon as possible. I want to respond to the community concerns from our builders and developers. I do too. And try to figure something out.

And I I want to actually go beyond I mean there's another part of the code that has been brought to us but we haven't changed and that's the um the tree protection zone around the trees during construction. That was a major change in the code from that that the true act committee did not vote on. Um it used to be that you just had to protect around the drip line. Now you have to protect one foot for every inch and it's like a much greater area of protection. And so when you look at like a site plan accounting for a tree protection zone, it's just impossible to retain any trees. And so I think it's actually having the reverse the opposite effect of what we want, which is to preserve trees. So we need to be a little bit more flexible on that. So that's not in this tonight. So I know was that not in the package that we just did with Pauline.

It's not during it wasn't now. I'm seeing the nods from I thought we adjusted the root perfection last week 25%. We added a discretionary path now that we have Congress on staff to do a alternative root protection zone so they can encroach more than the 25%. Okay.

Okay. So that's what we've already done and there may be you want to do more than that but we did do a little bit on that. I just want to make sure we were clear on that. So, okay. So, with the time we have left, what I would like is for folks um because I think we have agreement that we want staff to come back um with some ideas around some certain things. I think we need to define what those are. And that was sort of why I was saying we're taking the removing juniper's completely. Could you go one more slide, Ian? Off. Um I do want to have discussion around industrial properties. um having um talked a little bit with with Kirk from uh Taylor Brooks that I passed that information on to council um in thinking about the type of development on industrial properties where you're talking about um buildings with a bigger footprint, storage yards, things like that where um tree preservation is not as um you're not as adaptable with your development pattern and that if there are parking lots, they now will have parking lot trees and there will be street trees which I will come back to. Um I do think that we may want to look at having a different standard for industrial versus housing. So I would love I would like to have staff help develop some recommendations around that. Not necessarily Junipers, but that is what is in Juniper Ridge, which is also our land that we are trying to have developed and um bring property tax, tiff, and also um commercial development brings affordable housing dollars into our coffers. So, I do want to make sure that we're thinking about the trade-offs of adding costs to that development when we also get some benefits when that development does happen. So, if there are enough people for the industrial conversation, I would want to have staff look at that. So, other thoughts on that?

Absolutely. I mean, I'm okay talking about it, but I don't really I'm not sold on the distinction. I mean the the the code is flexible and provides in lie of processes that don't require um you know fine talking about it but it sounds like there's support anyway. So okay. Yeah. I mean I think I think there's some parts of this that we should be talking about. I think um um but I I'd like to get a little bit more specific on what we're talking about. I guess well I think for

maybe we don't do all that tonight some suggestions. The other thing that I that I would ask for after talking to a couple of folks this week is we have just recently changed to allow CF parking lot trees to be counted as mitigation. I think we should allow street trees to be counted as mitigation as well. And this will have some impact on the cost of developing housing. Um and they're planting the trees on the on the right of way that we have asked them to do and required them to do. I think those should be able to count for mitigation and that can help a little bit as well. Um so I'd like to put that on the table for the discussion as staff comes back to us. Sure. Okay. I'm see you had nods on that generally. All right. What other um

I think one other thing that I was thinking about is that if um trees that are going to be that are on properties that are um going to eventually become public right away, do we need to think about thinking about those trees differently in terms of how they count towards the total amount of trees that you know are measured and are considered regulated on a site, right? The places where we've said here's where the road's going to go. And that's an issue that's been brought up in the past, I believe. Yeah, I would be willing to talk about that. Yeah, same. I'm so hoping I'm not taking notes. Okay. I'm sorry. I meant to, but I'm not.

Um, and you know, I just want to make sure that you feel like you've got the right clarity from council on that direction. So, I I could take notes, but I want to make sure this is making sense for you.

No, it's making sense for me. Um, and I would actually very much welcome some more engagement with uh the developers. What we are really lacking is that data piece. We haven't actually seen project scenarios where they've actually run their a tree inventory and then run the numbers that they propose to retain through the uh city city view portal for through the retention calculation sheets. So, we just don't really have anything to hang our hats on in terms of being able to say, "Oh, yeah, you're yeah, that's going to be really expensive." We've seen some big numbers thrown out there, but we haven't been able to verify it yet. So,

having some more project specific and some actual retention calculations to show what the mitigation would look like, potentially look like. Um, so that that would be helpful particularly for the industrial sites. I know Brooks uh there was a there is some data there. I tried to run the the calculations and couldn't quite come up with how they arrived at their number. So yeah, I I mean I think I'd be interested in you talking together with those folks and trying to nail some of that down so that we're all talking about the same impacts. Not that I don't think that we're not getting good information, but it'd be good to be on the same page.

I and I would just add to that. I I think cost isn't the only because the whole reason why we did the tree code is because people in Bend are really bummed about losing all these trees that we have, right? So it's al it's really about outcomes. Sure. So I mean obviously we want to keep development costs reasonable but we also want to set up a system that really encourages and supports developers in retaining those iconic trees junipers and pondos. Yes. Those. Yeah. And I think the point from the tree the very beginning of that tree code discussion was about those larger you know sort of bigger trees. Um for sure. So that was an emphasis. Okay. Yeah. Ariel.

I mean I I would like to say also from my perspective it's not just the iconic trees. It's the overall canopy that is important. And I don't really understand why we talk about exempting junipers from industrial properties when junipers are trees. And it sounds like we've heard from a lot of people that there's a lot of junipers out there. Okay. So, if we're going to talk about industrial properties, I don't I don't see why it's in the context of junipers in particular. So, I struggle with, you know, we have a a we went through this extensive process. There's a little bit of a question about are junipers in particular different. Well, junipers are trees. That's what I feel like I've confirmed tonight. And I think um so I'm not interested in saying, you know, should we exempt junipers in particular unless there's some other special consideration here. So I I don't want to lose track of the overall goal of the the code, which for me was also always about I don't want to lose trees overall, and I understand that we you know, we should talk about right of way and parking lot trees. I think that's fine, but I just don't want to end up with fewer trees. If anything, we need to be planting more trees,

right? Yeah. I think I think we have to have a real discussion and we have to make some trade-offs and some of those trade-offs might be in the places that we have zoned industrial and that we have tried to promote big commercial development, we are probably going to lose those trees. So, what is it? What is the benefit that we want to come back to us and how is how do we balance that so that that development actually can happen. um but that we can also get the funding and all the other things we need to do the other program. Um, so I think and I think for me what I heard when I sort of pitched, you know, let's talk about industrial. I don't think it should be around just junipers. I think it should be do do we need a different pathway for industrial land because the development type is different. So I don't think staff should be refined to just talking about whether it's junipers. I think it's kind of looking at the whole pathway.

I agree. I think I think it's about trees in general and are we going to do something different there. And I guess I would add to the why is, you know, we are we we've talked a lot about balancing the need for housing with um uh with tree preservation. I think we're also trying to balance the need for jobs in the community. That's a big part of what we need to provide in order to deal with affordability issues in our community. We may have to consider um for places where um job growth is a is part of what we're targeting some doing something a little bit different. But it's the trees in general. Yeah. Um not just junipers.

Yeah. I think where the juniper distinction comes in is what Gina said around having to measure it differently to find significant junipers just because of of all the great information the genitals tonight. I mean, I do wonder if on areas of of the community where we are going to be growing, if there is there a way to identify a threshold like if the density of junipers is above this point, might that be somehow because of recent management practices in the last 100 years or so? And should we be thinking a little bit differently about how we approach the treat code there? Again, those are green field developments where we're going to have a lot of that on the east side is going to be housing. there's going to be some industrial and commercial, but might we need to think about it a little bit differently there? And I mean, I would look to the scientists to help us understand it. And if there is no easy answer, there's no easy answer and we just go back to the way it is. But but I I think it'd be worth kind of probing that question a little bit and say in these circumstances you get above this point, maybe we need to think about it a little bit differently there to account for the fact that things have really been that are very different today. So Eric, as far as one more, Steve, go ahead.

I just want to make sure that as councelor Fosa suggested, we are going to get some kind of a rating system back from staff. I just Well, they can propose to us. They can Yeah, I that's really important that was on the list. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we have direction looking at the industrial all trees for industrial looking at a more nuanced system to regulate juniper trees based on some of the things that we heard tonight. Um, also density maybe as a as another option. So, I don't know if any reaction to that, Ian. It it honestly came up as a possible uh option in my mind. Um, we just don't really have a great understanding of how densely covered some of these areas are.

So, what does that mean? Some sort of aerial survey? Um, that sort of thing. We'll look at it. And then I think what I also heard is just in the calculation, you know, looking at rights of way, street trees, sort of the same sort of thing that we uh got from CFAC, let's sort of apply that so we're not in conflict there. And I think the last point that was on the staff recommendation that's really important is if there are conflicts between the defense of the what will become the defensible space code that we're going to be looking at

and the tree code, we need to really pay close attention to identifying those conflicts through the process. So, and fixing them when we get there if we need to in the if we have to do something in the tree code to make sure that we're not having two things that are bashing up against each other. And

yeah, and and as far as that, that's that's a great point. And besides like so when we're thinking about a um defensible space code, I don't care what kind of tree it is as long as that first 5T is clear of the vegetation that we know is flammable, whether it's a juniper or a ponderosa or whatever that is. And taking that into account, um I really don't care what kind of tree it is. Um I think the defensible space code is going to hit those more scientific things of a non-combustible environment. And so it's not just remove all juniper trees. Um, I'm actually more worried about man-made, you know, couches and things that are right on a wooden deck. I mean, that's the research we have. These are why homes burn down, not because of trees

or the ornamental stuff that we planted, including at my house next to the window decoration, right? But yeah, no, those are the things that we got to look at. And so, as far as the the defensible space code there, like Ian said, there are ways to mitigate for fire safety, for wildfire safety with these junipers. Absolutely. Okay, great. Okay, well I think we have direction. We're a little over time and we'll look at coming back in well time. What is the timeline? There's a lot on the council work side then. So we'll have to figure out how this fits into that. We want to give time for our developers to give information at least a couple months at the at the earliest, right? And the latest I would hope would be negotiate in real time. We'll we'll come back to you at a more time

and we'll and we'll look at our defensible space code work plan too. We're doing that anyways. effect will be coming in front of council in June. Okay, great. That might line up. All right, thanks everybody. Thank you. Thanks.