City Council - workshop

all right we're going to go ahead and get started we're um i'm hoping council norris will be here shortly and then council franzosa will be joining us a little bit late but we want to get going because we have a very fun and full agenda so i just want to welcome everybody to this workshop that um i've never participated in something like this before and i'm looking forward to digging into details and talking about our ben made plan for tomorrow that is going to be our comprehensive and growth plan update um and starting to get into the details of what that means where it comes from what kind of data goes into it Brian Reichenstein, what kind of influence we as Council will have on it, and what kind of influence our community will have on the future vision of our city. And so i'm going to throw it over to the main to kick us off and explain what we're doing here. And we also have another workshop later this month as well that you can explain and give us a roadmap, and then get us into the presentation.

Brian Reichenstein, Thank you, Mayor. Welcome, everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome. My name is Brian Rankin, senior strategist with the city of Bend. John Pimentel, yeah, so this is unique opportunity there and Council, so thank you for making time today. thank all the public all the folks here thank you a lot of familiar faces appreciate you being here in person as well as committee members so just a frame today this is a little bit different than a typical city council business meeting for example today there are no votes it's really mostly a discussion and an opportunity for the council to provide high-level policy direction and some that will influence the project. So I think we did a little orientation video and posted that a week or so ago. And I think this is a lot like goal setting, but as it applies to our specific project and then made. So we're not doing public comment today. This is really an opportunity for the city council as policymakers to provide their direction to the project. It will influence the project in a lot of different ways going forward. There is going to be an opportunity for the public to get deeply engaged in this beginning on September 23rd. So our objective here is to ask city council questions and provide meeting in these meeting materials and then also to reflect those same questions in an online engagement platform that will be launched during our second workshop. And I'd like to introduce Alex Joyce. managing partner for cascadia partners and then we have matt kittleson from kittleson and associates um and so alex is going to do most of the talking today and take you through this he's wearing two hats today facilitator and then the consultant lead so i know it's tough to wear multiple hats but alex does a great job so alex take from you thanks brian thanks everybody for being here

So I'm excited to be here and on behalf of the entire team, we have been in sprint mode for the last couple of months and are excited to share and get feedback and input on a lot of the framework work that we've been working on. So this plan really is about setting the path for the next 20 years and where Ben wants to be in 20 years. so the project has five phases we are wrapping up the frame phase so understanding bend and today as well as the next workshop on the 23rd mark the project the public project launch and the start of the visioning phase so it's a chance for council first and then the community the broader community to provide input on the vision for ben to 2050. uh and the questions that we'll be engaging in discussion today will look a lot like the questions that will be available for public input on the project website as well so visioning is all about capturing a consistent set of information so we can reflect on that throughout the project and the vision becomes really this touchstone this statement or set of statements that then everything needs to be looked looked at through throughout the project Once visioning is complete and there's a visioning statement, then the planning work begins. And that's where a series of scenarios and public workshops will help to try out different growth options for the plan. And then strategize is where we really dig into the implementation details of a preferred growth approach. And all along the way, there will be a different additional adoption packages for all the associated deliverables. So between now and the end of the day on the 23rd, so the end of the second workshop, we're going to be covering a lot of ground. We're going to cover today, we're going to be covering what makes Bend, Bend. There's been a whole bunch of decisions over the life of Bend that have shaped the Bend we have today. And now is an opportunity before we start talking about the future to reflect on what do we like about those? What would we like to change going forward? And then where are we now? So the present. Where does Ben sit now? What's the condition on the ground today? And what trajectory are we on based on the adopted policy? We will start the discussion about the future today and we'll be continuing the discussion about the future on the 23rd. That workshop will be really focused on the future. Today we're going to be talking about major forces that the Bend plan could respond to. And then on the 23rd, the primary focus of discussion will be on some hypothetical future alternatives that have been modeled that we can learn from and can help us understand what council's desires are for the future. At each step of the way here, we will be asking questions, so we'll be pausing to have discussion. It'll be mostly discussion today, about one third to one quarter only of me speaking, and the balance is discussion time. There's prompts at the end of each of these sections to talk about the lessons from the past and as we consider the future, two sections about the present. So how do we build a plan that centers community? And we'll be talking about the community impact framework. And then where Ben stands today, what do we like about the current trajectory the city's on and where might we want to course correct? And as I said, we'll be starting to talk about the future, there are forces that shape bend and we want to talk about those and have a discussion about which of those we should be prioritized the plan responding to. So let's start let's start with a little history about how Ben became bend and that history goes way back obviously to geologic time when. There was a lot of geologic activity that shaped the. the land that Ben sits on. And Ben, interestingly, sits really at this intersection of two different landscape typologies that really color the experience on the west side compared to the east side, right? There's the Cascade Foothills intersecting with the high desert in the east. and that creates a different set of conditions in each part of town there's also natural features that have been shaped in geologic time that really form the natural framework of the city and it's part of ben's history growing around these features and and connecting to these features is part of ben's growth trajectory it's also important to acknowledge that generations of indigenous people have called this part of central oregon home um for thousands of years um So what are the main eras of development that have shaped Bend, and what can we learn about those? As we step back and we look at the Bend's development patterns over the decades, until the 1950s, the city of Bend really sat within a one mile radius. But between 1950 and 1980, there was a pretty huge explosion of the footprint of Bend, and it spread out to about a four-mile radius. But since the 80s, about all of the development that's happened since the 80s has really fit within that four-mile envelope. And we're going to peel back the onion here and learn a little bit about these different eras that have shaped Bend. So there's a lot of ways to slice and dice history. This is one, we've characterized several different eras that had pretty distinct development patterns. With the arrival of the outsiders, settlers, there was the rail and timber era. Then there was a pivot era when the timber industry and the local economy had to reinvent itself. The first recession era, the rapid growth era, the great recession era, the transformation era, and then the post-pandemic era. Each of these areas had distinctive development patterns we're going to go through. And when you step back and you look at those eras and you look at the development that we have on the ground in Bend today, by those eras, you can get a sense of scale. So not each of these eras resulted in the same amount of land in Bend being built. Some were relatively modest changes, while some, like the rapid growth era, constitutes about 45% of the development pattern we have on the ground came in that 1990 to 2006 period. So that has a heavy influence on how people experience Bend. And in fact, between 1990 and today, almost 80% of what's on the ground today has been built 1990 to today. Right? So that is the bend that people experience. And each of those development eras had distinctive patterns. So the canals were really the first major human reshaping of the land in this part of Central Oregon and Bend. And they really allowed for intensive agriculture on the east. Then the railroad came in and connected then to not just the regional economy, but the national economy. And that's when timber exploitation started to happen. It anchored the original settlement pattern that we'll talk about right next to the train station and the river. Then state highways started to open up regional connectivity. These followed indigenous trails and wagon routes. They established regional access. The population by 1950, as I mentioned before, really fit within still that one mile core of the city. And that's when the population passed 11,000. What defines the development of that time? It was really pretty small lots, very regular in shape, modest structures, typically one story, but they were alley loaded. So a very regular pattern of development defined that period of Ben's history. And then as local connectivity expanded, the road network grew and it served to expand the footprint of the city. There were new subdivisions in the pivot area that grew the footprint of Bend. Interestingly, the lock patterns here doubled and tripled in size compared to the historical core. So it wasn't actually a fast growing period of Bend's history, but the footprint of the city expanded significantly. so then new roads facilitate not only the expansion but development of some of those natural features that i called out earlier some of the harder to reach features like aubrey butte this era was defined by a very different development pattern as i mentioned there were excuse me as i mentioned there were larger lots uh were fairly typical in this time two to three times the size depending on the part of town And connectivity was a lot less. There was a lot less of a regular block pattern. There was a lot more segregated land uses, and there was a notable decrease in the number of multifamily nestled within these neighborhoods. And you can see these patterns are pretty evident around Bend and certain parts of town. So, but starting in the 1990s, interestingly, the patterns of development shifted back towards smaller lots, connected street grids, then traditional neighborhood design really shaped a lot of what people have come, people come to know as the west side. The parkway was another major feature of Bend's development history and served to increase connectivity outside of Bend, but it also created a barrier east to west in the city. The roundabouts that have shaped so much of Venn's identity took hold in 1999, but then proliferated through the development of that rapid growth era, a lot of which was concentrated on the west side, and so it was paired with that development. So it changes the transportation experience from the west side to the east side. And then ben's trail system right the trail system that so many people love in the city that connects those natural features into the into the Community and through the neighborhoods the rivers, the buttes the forest. A major portions of the West side trail network were built as part of that rapid growth era. So the rapid growth era, this is sort of the development pattern. Lot sizes shrunk back down to closer to that historic pattern. The connectivity increased. Alleys were reintroduced. There was a sort of a return to traditional neighborhood design principles during this time. And as we progress the great recession era, while not a lot of growth happened during that time, a lot of the patterns persisted in the areas where growth did happen. So connectivity, integrated open space, alleys, Following the 2016 UGB adoption, there was a major transition and emphasis towards more compact urban centers and mixed use communities that filled in, as I mentioned, not a lot of the footprint has changed since 1980, started to fill in those growth areas. So the patterns persisted in that era as well, regular street connectivity. Interestingly, the building, while the lot sizes sort of remained stable and fairly small, the building intensity increased. So two, three-story buildings, so the lots that were built were used more intensely. So you see that pattern of connectivity continue. So we've talked through sort of the arc of how Bend became Bend and the defining eras. As we look at how Bend has grown, what development and investment patterns should we build on? What's part of the Bend development legacy that we like and we think could be part of its future? And which of those decisions and development patterns should we avoid repeating as we start to pivot and talk about the future for Bend?

Great, thank you. So we might have time if there's a couple of clarifying questions. I know we had a lot of pre-materials to read on this topic. Or if there are no questions, we can just sort of jump in and folks can give their opinions and we'll go down the line. So just wanna check if there's any clarifying questions first. Sounds like no.

Well, maybe I do have one. Some of the diagrams that they didn't all show up here around, TAB, Mark McIntyre:" average lot sizes and floor area ratio that I just assume those are citywide averages right.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" They are citywide averages. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Oh it's based on the arrows. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" yeah.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Restricted to residential parcels so that's where the applications and the growth that happened during that period.

or is it or is accounting for everything came before plus the influence of what happened during that period this is a really a new number at the end there's a really important distinction so what we have available to us is a snapshot of today what's built today so what is our building stock today and how if we look at that based on its year built and then its physical characteristics that's where those numbers come from right so looking at the city today That's what these eras are. They're the building stock of today.

yeah it's it was essentially a query of when a structure was built so you can look at taxes you took that that is a 15-year period you took during this 15 period 15-year period this these are all the sort of things we have on record that were built at that time and here's the average in that time period yeah exactly and of course let's keep in mind it's never perfect because right right these are gross and abolished and rebuilt and things like that it's more to establish the pattern development occurred

in the urban area and the change in floor area ratios is reflective of all the projects right so to from a relatively large suburban lot to a high density multi-family lot occupies the land yeah if it was built in that era and it was residential that's how that analysis was done so it's an average of residential restricted

um all right arl do you want to start us off sure so i think um any particular order but i think i was really glad to see the trail system called out in particular because i think that's one thing that people really love and oftentimes we wish that we had more of the the connectivity where where it exists is amazing um and and that's something that i would uh like to highlight moving forward I also really appreciate Ben's compactness. So I'm intentionally not talking about density, but just the compactness of having so many amenities close by. No matter where something is in Bend, you can get there pretty easily, especially when you think about how things are in other cities, big cities, especially a city like Portland. So having those amenities close by is Really valuable and there is a pattern there too it's it's so much of the pre 1950s bend has more amenities and less traffic and there's some there's a lesson there, I think, for us when we think about planning and how to get. How to move forward.

Open space is.

tremendous, and I don't want to lose sight of that. We often think about preserving the nature that we have around us. So much of it is public owned, but I think we really also should keep our eye on preserving open space inside the city limits as well. I also really like the diverse housing types. There's been a shift just in the last decade, but I think it's important that we have a variety of housing types available. And I want to talk later about when we talk about things like density, I think there's a good conversation to be had about what the consequences of density are for. Why is density beneficial? It's not just some intrinsic quality that maybe some people really like. But I want to focus more on the attributes, the consequences of it. And then I think there's a good conversation to be had about grids for transportation. we have pretty mixed history when it comes to grids for me i'm personally skeptical about the need for grids for driving because i don't know that we need to make the entire city equally accessible to driving everywhere but i do think grids really help when it comes to things like wildfire egress and active transportation providing that access Mike Bruckner, Is especially important when you're not driving but it's it's important to have higher traffic roads on roads that are built for it and not feeding them through residential neighborhoods so Mike Bruckner, I don't know. I think there's there's a conversation there about grids that I hope that we can have to and that and I'll stop there.

Okay, perfect. All right, Mike.

Um, echo some of the things councilor Mendez said, and that, and this is the building on right question of what's worked well.

That's what I'm doing. Either way.

Okay. Yeah. The grid patterns, connectivity stuff, I think is an important thing for us to continue to pay attention to. I think largely because that makes the community more walkable and likable. And I think I was particularly struck when I was reading the forces memo, the last in the series I got to this morning, um, about how important that is to livability and social connection and kind of the glue that can hold the community together versus breaking the community apart and kind of eroding that civic engagement and civic trust. It seems really important to me. It's also important for a lot of other reasons in the transportation system. So I think that's really important to me, walking and biking infrastructure and connectivity. HAB-Jacques Juilland, I think we need to continue the focus on the change in the mix of housing types and there's a part of me, as I was reading through the documents about him, should we be targeting like it was in the in the sort of the timber whichever that first phase was called that. That maybe is kind of where we've been going, I would say, is back towards that mix of housing types, and we need to continue to look at that. And I think we also need to be really conscious, and I'm not really quite sure how planning helps with this, but I can see some examples about the balance of ownership versus rental, and not making sure that we have adequate opportunities for people at a variety of income. you know which gets to ages and wages and stages and wages right um it gets to all that um it's it's really important that we have those options so I want to continue to see that happen I think the economic diversification that we've seen in the community is really important and it seems like that's going to be important going forward for the health of the local economy um I think more areas for concentrated development, which is something that we've started, like a core area, climate friendly areas, and making sure that, you know, we want some of that in the core, but I think, and we've started to do this, we need to develop some of these centers for services and activities and gathering places across the whole community, not just, near the center of town because as we grow over time and given how far some of those parts the farther ends of the community are we need places for folks to go um i have some concerns about density and stuff too that maybe we can come back to at some point um because it's maybe a different kind of conversation I think that we are still seeing a lot of our properties that have been that are targeted for lower income, especially stuff that is subsidized to be immediately adjacent to I I think what most people would describe as less desirable transportation corridors. I don't know what the answer is, but the extent to the extent that we can use planning tools to help avoid that concentration and making sure that those members of our community can live and work, and especially live in places that are not just along some of those areas that are difficult, that many people would probably not be their first choice.

Great. I've been making lists of divisions because I thought that, to me, that was the most interesting part of all of this information and just what are the divisions that have existed and do exist today. And some of them are obvious, obviously, like East-West and rich-poor and white and brown-black. But then a couple of them that I think tie into here were access, people who have access and people who don't, and then connectivity and isolation. And there are, I think, are a lot of neighborhoods and communities that are really isolated from one another and can't walk down the street and have a cup of coffee and run into their neighbors. So when I'm thinking about the history of Bend and the future of Bend, I think that's something that I am interested in sort of targeting. And I agree with you, Mike, like let's target areas where we can be doing that and we can build that connectivity. I also think when we're talking about connection and connectivity, we also have to think about how goods and services and people get around our city and whether it's freight or whether it's somebody on a bike. And I think I share a little bit of the concerns about the density, the high density. Most of us live in dense neighborhoods in Bend, unless you live in Aubrey Butte, basically. But I think some of the developments that we have had recently, particularly affordable developments, I feel like we're not bringing the community along a little bit and not providing the services that people need. And so that's something, the conversation that I would like to be having too. And I think that's about it.

Okay.

Steve.

The only thing I'll add is with climate change mentality. I'm mindful sort of the way the built environment sort of shapes the form and the factor of our city going forward. So I look at the way some of the density and some of the broader areas have been built over time. And I hear our community talking about their concerns about wildfire and egress. And I understand that we have by our form and function created some pinch points for egress. And so when I think about the going forward i'm i'm i feel the weight of getting it right that we are we are balancing a climate resilient community as we go forward which includes climate friendly and equitable uh areas in our community and the safety for our our citizens and our and our neighbors throughout the time and that's it thanks thanks steve

So I will add, as someone who was in high school when the parkway was built, and lived in one of those large lot neighborhoods before now living in one of the small lot neighborhoods. It was super interesting to me to see the difference from the rail and timber in the early first 50 years of Ben, where the growth was not as fast, and then sort of when the growth started ramping up, what type of patterns we were getting into. I think it would not be a surprise for anyone to hear from me that I think part of the problems we're in today with housing, affordability, transportation connection are from our post-World War II style of building, especially in that 50s to 70s era. And then I think some of that came into also that rapid expansion in the nineties, even though we were seeing smaller lot sizes. I think there's still way too many neighborhoods that that don't have the connectivity we need, and that is hindering us a little bit, and we talk about evacuation, connection, active transportation, freight. We're just running into that in our built environment. Now I also want to some of the large lot era would have been mitigated if we hadn't had up until very recently, regulations that didn't let you build anything except for a single family home on those lots. If we had been adaptable over the years and maybe let more ADUs and more quadplexes and we maybe would be in a different spot now. But I agree with Mike that we're trending back towards our history. And when we were a very working class town, um a rail in timbertown that little red spot is right where the railroad station is right like that's why we're here uh so i think The way I think about this is wanting to build on the type of neighborhoods where you can connect, where you can get to services, where you can travel safely in all types of modes. And I think continuing the trend back towards our history of smaller parcels and more adaptability so that we are not trying to freeze things in amber and we're allowing ourselves to grow in a way that sets us up to pivot and to change. thought there would be a pandemic right no one predicts exactly when there's going to be a great recession but we need to be able to adapt um and i think we also we have to double down on keeping that compactness as much as possible and for us i think that means we're going to have to grow up and so i think we're going to have a different era going forward, especially in the core of our city, that's going to be different than anything we've seen before. And I think we need to grapple with what does that look like and how do we help the community understand that that's a need? If we want to not scrawl, then we're going to have to do that. And how do we keep the spirit of bend while we're evolving into that next next phase?

So it's kind of one thing I think that we've started to have a discussion over the last couple of years, in part, I think after that, I think John Pimentel, The Dutch boys were here about not having every road do every purpose before every function and really I think that should really inform how we think about the tsp part of this in particular, I guess, because. John Pimentel, You know, and I think this and maybe echoing what i'm counselor Perkins was getting at is not having every road. John Pimentel, You know, do every single thing in terms of walking and biking and we can't it's just not possible and it's not possible, mostly financially and often because of right away concerns right, and I think. Really bringing that forward. How do we concentrate more on these roads? Their purpose is to move vehicles and to move freight. Where is the infrastructure then for walking and biking that's not necessarily on there? We have to provide a certain amount under state law, but how can we kind of keep that relatively simple and put more resources into other places that I think often feel safer for people as well and are going to get more people out of their cars?

All right. Counselors, any other reflections based on your colleagues' comments? Anything else you want to add to this discussion? Yeah, go ahead.

Ben doesn't have a big central work district. And I think that's pretty unique compared to other cities. I'm not sure how to build our large number of people who work from home into this conversation, but I think it's worth calling out because it has a big effect on the way that people's needs for getting around town. So I just wanted to kind of put a flag on it.

I would put a pin in that too for the forces conversation that we're having coming up, like kind of what forces are happening here. But yeah, I think that... is a different era than anything we've seen before as far as how people do their jobs. So that's a good point.

I'm not really sure where this is going to come up today, so I'm going to say now. It may not go up there, Brianne. But one of the things that struck me in looking at the historical stuff was that there really wasn't much reference to arts and cultural kinds of things in the community. We talked about the Hayden Homes Amphitheater, and I think there was one other. But it seems to me that that is really important to the livability of Bend. And again, I'm not quite sure. What it means from a planning perspective that's different from what we do for certain kinds of businesses that you know those facilities and services and stuff fall into different business types. But how do we bring and tell the story and support? continue to support what is a very large i think on a per capita basis nonprofit community broadly but also more arts and culture is something we're talking about in the community and and it may be that we need to ensure those voices are brought into this process and i don't know yet and i don't i'm not saying this as a criticism i just i'm not sure the extent to which those voices are going to show up in stakeholders and groups that are providing sort of targeted input and helping us think about that. But I do think it's really important to the fabric of the community and civic life and, you know, where does it show up? Where's that room for them that's different?

I appreciate that. Not all, just about.

Right. Like we had the first Dia de los Muertos celebration in downtown Bend last year. It was a huge thing when you talk to people that come from other communities with a large Latinx community. My mom in particular was very surprised we didn't have that kind of stuff. That should be on that list of hallmarks of things that happened in Bend. And there are many other examples, I think, like that throughout its history and it brings it into the story more. It felt relatively absent.

Yeah. Okay. Any other thoughts before we wrap up this section? We're missing a couple of counselors, so we're going faster than we thought we would because we thought there would be time.

I was going to say we have time to expand on any topic.

Yeah. Maybe could you go back a few slides? Okay. Megan, can you hear us and participate, or are you just watching at this point?

Yeah.

I think the pivot era maybe is what I was thinking of.

I can Can you hear me? Sorry, y'all?

No, we can.

Oh, yeah, we can hear you.

Yeah, so, Megan, I don't know how much of the previous you've been able to log on for. But if you wanted to give any thoughts here on sort of Ben's past and what we should continue with and what we should avoid and sort of want to weigh in on that happy to have your comments.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it and sorry for joining a little late. Yeah, I appreciate what you all have said. I totally agree on, I did hear the comments just about being thoughtful. Totally agree on the infill. I mean, I know that we've heard a lot of presentations that we need to do a little bit of both to hit a little bit of our funding, our housing targets. So we need to be real cognizant and doing both infill and being very thoughtful about how we are growing. I totally agree about finding places where we can support cultural events, even sporting events. I know that we have a pretty good, you know, in Bend Parks and Rec field availability, but just being thoughtful about that moving forward. I also, you know, would just add, I know we've been having a lot of discussion, I don't know to what extent it was happening, just thinking too about our commercial areas and how we are growing and creating complete communities moving forward, so.

Thank you. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Because we have time. Yeah. So the 90s were a rapid growth. Was there, I mean, are there a couple of things that you can attribute to that rapid growth historically? Like why did Bend grow so fast in that?

Because not everybody who- The population increase- Significantly. Significant in that era, so.

One of the things that always rubs me about some of those diagrams is maybe this is just prior to that era is the annexation concept, right? There are a lot of people that were part of our community every single day. Yeah. You know, roughly 15,000 we annexed in that happened right after I moved here. And they really were part of the bank already, but they don't show up in the statistics the right way. So some of those curves I think are more like this than they actually represent because they're tied to jurisdictional boundary changes. And, um, you know, and they were interacting and they were on the streets and um going to our schools and using our parks and uh not paying not paying their their fair share necessarily around the money but that's awesome and uh it and that was you know partly why we annexed also was to make that get that happening

But part of part of part of annexation is you sort of take what you get.

Yeah, right.

And so I think I think since we've we've we have our land use system, and what we're going to be doing with this first plan, if we are ending up with any additional land, is that we've moved away. We want to be careful not to take what we we get. We want to actually plan for really good infrastructure right? So I think that's a difference from the past. The reason I want to come back to this slide is just to be very explicit that I don't want to do this anymore. I know these are lovely places to live. I grew up on a cul-de-sac and I will advocate that we avoid these at all costs going forward because this sets us up so hard HAB-Juliette Boone, For our transportation system and you can't then say, well, we need to connect these worms. Let's just get rid of these houses. No people live there. It's not possible. It's very hard to retrofit this type of a HAB-Juliette Boone, Street network. So I think that there are some areas that you can see still in bed that that are part of our struggles that we should just be really intentional. I think we are. We have been moving that way. Definitely. We're going to continue to move that way. But just to be very careful not to replicate these things that are going to create problems down the line. I totally agree.

Did you get your question answered? It's kind of stepped on you.

I mean, I think so. I don't have, Alex, and we can brainstorm. I think everybody around the table probably has. Yeah.

Yeah, and this is more of just like in every, yeah.

Such a rapid growth period. I don't have, this is more of an analysis of what happened, not why it happened. So I think you were I could certainly throw things out there.

It was a period of some rapid economic expansion nationally and and growth, generally speaking, and and then also made some big moves in terms of entitling and master planning big pieces of property during that time. So it could accommodate growth. Some cities didn't make that choice.

really on the map as a place to move to. And I've said to people moving from Seattle to here, although you're moving, to trend. That was what I heard. Oh, my gosh. So we were, I think, maybe.

I got a question for you, Mike, then. Because of that rapid growth, you know, because I hear it's like, it's my fault for moving here. I'm the reason why we're growing so fast and why the city's changing so fast, right? When I moved here in 2018. Was that kind of like anger at the newbies there when you moved here?

Um, there was, um, yeah, I think it was around, which I think was echoed in some of what I read today. It was around affordability, like price, you know, cost, because when you're moving from Seattle, the house we bought was like a screaming deal when we thought about it, but we're banned. Our friends were like, well, yeah, that's a great place to move to. And we, none of us can afford it. It's the same time I say. And during that period is when we had, um, slow growth down movement, the turtles during one big election, there was a lot of politics around growth and affordability and speed and change. I think we're starting to see echoes of it today. And it was driven all over the community, but a lot happening on the west side. A lot of reaction to it.

When I was in middle school and high school, you did know which kids were from California. Yeah, it was a thing then wasn't fair. And they were all nice, great kids to be in school with. But there was definitely a feeling of, especially, I don't think we thought about Seattle, but like a lot of Californians who are having their own housing issues coming here and also enjoying the climate and everything.

I grew up in California.

Okay, well, we'll lump you in with Californians.

Yeah. All right, anything else here before we move forward? Brianne, you all, do you feel like you've got some good insights here from us? Okay. Okay.

Great.

Thanks for going backwards on that too.

Do we would we like to? We are scheduled for a short break. Would we like to do that or plow on?

And what's the when is our next break? I want to make sure the next section would be about forty minutes long after the break.

So is everyone okay with keep going? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And feel free to get up and get anything you need. Let's just let's just keep going through that one pretty quickly. I'm gonna slip it over here. Yeah, come on over since Megan's online.

John Pimentel, So we're going to pivot to talking about the presence and we're going to be talking about growing a band that centers the Community. John Pimentel, And this is specifically maybe people didn't need to break.

John Pimentel, We'll come back to this. So they have this.

I don't have my gavel. Hello.

Thank you.

All right, we're ready to get started again and get into present bent. So go ahead.

I don't know if everyone got the memo, but I think some folks on the sides are having a little bit of a hard time hearing. So if we can all speak up, that'd be great. And use our mics for those online.

Is this better?

okay no they were working so we're gonna start to talk about two sections on the present um and this is specifically about the community impact lenses that will be used as part of this project um and putting on my you know consultant pad here i just want to kind of acknowledge that this is a pretty groundbreaking and i think um important component that will shape all of the deliverables throughout this project. And I think it should be a point of pride for the community in terms of how we're approaching this. So it's a consistent set of lenses that every deliverable will be looked at through. And at the core of it is really a mapping of areas of vulnerability and areas of opportunity within the city. so that at every stage we can ask question the question you know what people in places in the city have been will require extra support to mitigate the effects of growth and change and then what people in places in the city have been have housing security and high quality of amenities and jobs that can support future growth as well so um Why is that important? So when we get to the questions of what should go in the housing production strategy or what projects should be in the transportation system plan, how do those map onto areas where we have high opportunity or high vulnerability? So it encourages and ensures our team and our community get to reflect on all of those decisions and how they map and impact community across the city. The team has been working on a methodology, which was in the pre-work packet. It's largely around a set of spatial analysis. And also there will be maps and data atlases and charts to help us understand that information. There will be lots of opportunity for engagement with those impacted by these questions. And it will also help tailor an existing tool you already use, the AIM, the AIM tool, and add a spatial component to that decision making framework. with the goal that there is a reporting framework for each of the deliverables in this project there's an understanding of the the community impact as it is today the likely community impacts of the potential decisions that are associated with that deliverable and a reflection time on that um and i'm going to introduce my colleague beth goodman with echo northwest who is going to try and help us make sense of the aim tool and use an example to do that so beth take it away

Thank you very much, Alex. I'm very pleased to be here with you, if remotely today. So in using the community impact process and the AIM tool, What we're really trying to do is get staff and consultants to pause, if you will, and to really think clearly about details of equity issues from as early in the deliverable as possible through the completion of the deliverable. We'll be using it on a lot of deliverables that are already ongoing because we've been working on some things for the last few months. as these tools have been developed, as well as starting off on some new deliverables with it. So an example of how we're going to use the AEM tool is on the contextualized housing needs assessment, the CHNA. What that is, is it's a deliverable that's required by the state as part of your housing studies that's really meant to focus on equity issues. And the exact kind of questions we're asking in the AEM tool, as well as the exact kind of information on the slide that Alex was just looking at a few moments ago. So we're trying to understand the needs for housing within the community through the lens of equity issues over the next eight years. The CH&A is going to inform the housing capacity analysis and the housing production strategy. And we'll be talking to you a lot more about this in future meetings. So the discussions with staff and the consultants on the CHNA are going to really mix the ask and identify phases. because the work on the CHNA has already been started. We've been thinking about a lot of these issues because this is really part and parcel to the core of what the CHNA is. So we're going to work with all the data that Alex just showed us on the prior slide, such as the maps, census data for the whole data for the whole city, other city specific data, And then integrating information from our interested parties, in other words, your stakeholders, and what we're hearing from them about their housing needs and the housing needs of their friends and family. So in the ask and identify discussions, we'll understand who is going to benefit from the analysis in the CHNA and who might be burdened by whatever the outcomes are of that, because the outcomes will be really expressed through other deliverables of this. These deliverables are all very interconnected with each other. We're focusing on groups such as low-income communities, populations of color, people with disabilities and tribes, because those are the ones that are required to by the state, as well as it being a very appropriate idea in something like the CHNA. But the AIM tool is going to help us go deeper to understand if there are other groups that we should be centering beyond the ones required by the state. In the measure portion of the AIM tool evaluation, which will be happening a little bit later on, what we'll be looking at is what outcomes is the CHNA supposed to advance? It's all about equity, so it's supposed to advance equity outcomes. So getting to what Alex was just saying about opportunities for development of housing that's more affordable in your more affluent, higher amenity areas, mitigating potential displacement, those kind of things, as we're looking at Bend growing up and out. So some of what's coming out of the CHNA is probably going to inform, say, the monitoring requirements and the housing production strategy, which is really intended for the city to help understand whether over this next eight years, the actions it's taking are benefiting the groups that it's supposed to be benefiting, not having unintended consequences for that. And here in the CHNA is where we're going to begin to discuss recommendations and mitigation approaches to address the unmet housing needs will be identified. And the housing needs we'll be identifying are things like need for different housing types, need for housing with certain characteristics like accessibility, need for housing in different locations around the city. So this is all mixed together. And the CHNA really exemplifies what the AEM tool is going to be doing. And that will feed into later parts of the project, such as the housing production strategy. Alex, I'll hand it back to you.

So the spatial analysis lenses are really, we think about them in three typologies. So people, so this is cultural, demographic, and economic conditions, really human beings, right, of our city, the communities and the businesses. And then there's place so what's the physical environment, both the natural and built environment. And then practices, what are decisions, whether they're local decisions laws private decisions, etc, the practices local practices that. have an impact on on people and those taken together those then form the basis of composite maps that we can come back to at each stage and overlay potential decisions and say hmm how might this impact you know people we care about or people that might need extra help or areas of opportunity So those are the composite maps. So areas of opportunity, which is a composite of different variables that prize opportunity. Those were spelled out in the methodology memo that hopefully folks had a chance to take a look at. And then areas of potential vulnerability also spelled out. And there's still a lot of engagement to do around the components of those and whether they map to people's lived experience today. Anything else you want to add on to that?

I think in all of this, I just wanted to share based on some of the things that Alex Alex started with that we're taking existing tool and framework that. The City Council human rights and equity Commission have been developing and are now using and projects at the city. And what we're doing is adding a spatial component and spatial analysis to that to help kind of refine our. considerations because a lot of this project have their deliverables that are spatial right so when we're talking about changes in land use changes in transportation systems and projects lists and also strategies to produce more housing some of these have a spatial component and so i just wanted to share that that it has been a real it's been a real evolution it's been a real It's been very, very challenging, honestly, to try to pull and weave these things together. A tremendous amount of work represented in some of the materials that you're seeing, especially the methodology memo, going down many different pathways trying to find ideal data sets. We all started off with really big eyes thinking, oh, we can do all this. Look at all these. Let's do this and this and this and this. and realizing we don't have maybe some of the different data sets that we would love to have to do this analysis. So I think when you look at that methodology memo in particular, you'll see a number of different data sets that has been, we believe that is a combination of what's reliable, what's available, and to really help us use this framework going forward. So also another note is that we've been coordinating extensively staff and experts internally and coordinating on this. So this isn't just a consulting team and growth management doing this work. This is work that is being informed by different experts across the organization. And I think Lindsey put it really well. She just said, look, we're going to experiment here. We're going to have to all experiment. We're in this together. Let's go through this process. Let's try it and let's refine and let's get better and try, refine and get better. So it's not the kind of work that is just done once analytically and then you move on. It's more of a continuous improvement process that we will be applying to different deliverables through the project.

So with that understanding of this being a sort of deliberate and equity-focused decision-making framework that will shape the deliverables and the process around this, The question we have for you as Council is, is the team on the right track with our approaching Community impact. And are there dimensions of Community impact that should be emphasized.

Great. All right. We'll start down on your end this time, Councillor Platt. If there's a question, go ahead.

I'm starting to kind of understand the opportunity index, and I swear I've looked at the memo a few times. Can you explain how, I see a lot of different factors in the methodology, but I guess I don't understand how the opportunity piece of that is going to be determined.

yeah so i think it's it's areas that have um the components in place that could be attractive for future growth right they have jobs they have easy access to amenities they have stable households who wouldn't necessarily be vulnerable to displacement should there be growth that happens in that area right there are areas where growth could happen and leverage existing assets and also not necessarily be a destabilizing force but growth has to be able to happen so places are built out okay sure it's just it's a way to sort of understand peel back and understand the composite of our city today And where do we have some of those things that we've all talked about in the previous conversation about wanting to kind of align growth with access to amenities and and also avoid you know displacement. As a result of planning future growth so but but happy to take input on the composite that's that's its intent but that's what this conversation is about taking them.

And Alex mentions demographics around the characteristics of different people and the patterns that those reveal throughout our community. And Alex mentioned those. And there's another lens to look at, too, which is the asset side. So for example, in the methodology, where do we see concentrations and essentially how close are people to? things like childcare centers, higher education, schools, parks, jobs, libraries, tree canopy, grocery stores, et cetera. So you can see, you're looking at these mapping layers through different, as Alex said, different lenses. Here are the people indicators, you can look at those. You can look at the place indicators and look where you have these higher concentrations of assets and higher concentrations of what you might consider to be harms and harmful things. So that is what this tool will allow us to take a look at citywide.

Okay, great, any other clarifying questions? All right, Council Pat, you wanna give us any thoughts you have?

Sure, maybe Alex, just make sure I got this right then. I'm looking at this as sort of a slack ability in the system, maybe in some cases here. So this would be, some areas have a little bit more slack. When people approach development in a negative way that these areas could accept a development shock, if you will, a little bit more because they have capacity to allow for more development. Is that all one way to look at it if you're looking at development from a bit of a negative lens?

Yeah, the word capacity there, I think, is what we probably need to spend some time on because I think what this isn't really answering is like how the development would map to the ground. There are plenty of aspects of this project that will identify the what and the where. This is what's there now. And if the community decides that growth should go there and investment should go there as well, right? What might be the impact of that because of its condition today?

okay so my thoughts on this are as somebody who's a big fan of the owner numbers just a beginning that i like to see that we've put context onto this with this with our housing needs analysis um and what i what i see when i see this is blind spots for me and for members on the council and for city staff and i think this is a good tool for us to sort of highlight those So people that are not within the Venn diagrams that we're familiar with, I want to engage those folks. And I want to engage those folks in a new and deeply meaningful way so that we really do get their impact beyond our lived experience. I want to understand how the different places in our city are feeling about this and what their thoughts on because we hear a lot of that we hear about fatigue in the southeast of our city for the developments going on and yet we hear about amenities deserts at the same time and so when i look at these what i hope to in the end of this process is to be to explain to the public this is how we used your inputs to craft the future. And hopefully, we'll all be well conversant on this so that we are able to explain. And that'll be part of our messaging long term on this to say, this is how that input, this is how this concern, this is how this benefit was folded into our planning practice and the outcome. So I'm excited about this. I'm concerned.

about our ability to bring in outside voices uh throughout this process that remains to be seen from my perspective thanks i like what you said steve yeah i mean i think about how the the human rights and equity commission has has taken on this work and and so much of it and so much that we hear in the community and i know brian that we've talked about this a lot is You have to come back to us and say what you learned and tell us what was the outcome of all of this. And otherwise, we're not really doing a growth plan for the whole city. And so I'm a huge fan of this. And I think that all the different layers here are really great. I think there's a couple of things that we've already talked about today that might be important to include. One of them is, this is a little bit sort of harder to quantify, but what about like areas of town that have had like disproportionate impacts on them because of growth, right? We saw that just recently with council, right? Saying like, what is happening in my community? How can I be a part of this? And so I just wanna make sure that that's included. And like I was talking about earlier also, some of these isolated neighborhoods, these neighborhoods with cul-de-sacs, with no commercial nearby, that are completely car dependent. How do we make sure that they're included in this plan? And yeah, I don't know. I'm like wondering about wildfire. I'm trying to like figure out how to like get that in here too, Steve, but I'll have to kind of mull on that. That's a place for me. I think that's a place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all for now.

CELINE GOUDNER- Yeah, I'll go next. So I think this is a really important part of the process that we're going to need. And I want folks to separate this a little bit from engagement, community engagement. This is a tool, actually, to get information that data, also qualitative and quantitative data to decision makers that make the final decision and informs also some of the analysis we do on some of the growth scenarios that we put forward. So if we say, some of this tool allowed us to see where there would be high displacement. Well, let's create a growth scenario that avoids that and compare them. It'll give us some data and some real interesting information to use decision makers. Some of the key questions that I really like, there was one about renters and homeowners and where they live in Bend, where there's access to wealth building through homeownership. I think that's a really interesting thing to think about. I want to throw in there in the it might be under practices, but also place, thinking about homeownership associations and the restrictions that they place on what might be built in the future. We've seen the state kind of do a little bit of override when it comes to housing, but there's still gonna be restrictions that people are facing, and there'll still be restrictions around commercial or some of those other things, amenities that we want folks to have, and again, adaptable neighborhoods. So that's one thing I would add of just making sure that's part of the analysis. And I will say for me, people and practices, are the more interesting to me as far as information for me the place a lot of that feels like um stuff that comes in through sort of the data analysis that we've done in the past the people in the practices feels like some of the newer newer ideas that we're bringing to the table as far as the kind of data that we're bringing for our decision making I just wanted to highlight, I think the, um, the questions under practices where we're thinking about. Um, underserved populations where there's been historical patterns of segregation that need to be disrupted. That's really important to me because 1 of the things I want to see with our growth plan is the idea of a. city where people connect across incomes and across ages and across backgrounds um and that we create neighborhoods where that can happen and so in order to do that i think we have to think about we have to have data about the past and where that has not been happening um as part of our forward but that's it for me mike um i would echo i agree with a lot of what i've heard so far especially the mayor's comments i think the thing that i'm

I didn't get as far into the detail memo on the methodology part for this, but I'm just trying to think about jobs, jobs and access to economic opportunity. And to what extent that has shown up, you know, cause I saw like, and this is sort of nitpicky, but it's on one of the pages in the AIM tool. It's sort of what past land use transportation and housing decisions tell us about how underserved populations have been affected. Low land use is maybe a very broad term, but I want to see us explicitly talking about what have we done that has made it harder for somebody who lives here to access economic opportunity in our community? Is there something or not? Not trying to prejudge it. And maybe what that's informing really is, again, going back to the transportation infrastructure in the community. I mean, how easy is it to get from where a particular person lives to where the job opportunities are in the community, the ones that exist now and the ones that we hope to stimulate in the future? For example, today, if you live down off of the Parkway or Highway 97 and some of the affordable housing projects, how easy is it to get to the new job opportunities that are coming in Juniper Ridge? John Pimentel, And just what does that has that tie into this the stuff in the forces around the economic challenges that the Community faces and the gap between. John Pimentel, Housing prices and local wages. John Pimentel, So I think that's really important to bring into this discussion I don't have the answer, but I want to make sure that the team is looking hard question. specifically around access to economic opportunities so i think that's what it's about because i don't know what it in here but yeah but just being really explicitly talking about it um to me that's one of the big things that i took away from all the reading was was um and maybe it's because the last piece I read was the forces memo, but just the importance of us looking at how do we support people who live and work here and generate their income in our community in a way that provides more opportunity for them and therefore help solve what I think is the equally important, perhaps not more important part of the affordability question, which is the work people do and what they're paid and how much income they make that's connected to what they can afford.

Thank you. So the spatial analysis methodology memo uses the language of displacement, and it links to the work of Dr. Lisa Bates in Portland on gentrification, which is a fairly academic look at John Kane, changes in neighborhood income levels and people being forced out and things like that, and I think the thing that is often missing from the academic approach is. John Kane, it's not just displacement displacement it's like kind of a neutral term. What I would say I'm more concerned about is something along the lines of uncompensated displacement. Because if you are, I'm thinking about someone who is living in a low income household, who is a renter. So they are not a property owner. And if their landlord tells them you have to move and they don't feel like they have any other good options. In other words, they feel like this is the best that they have in our community. It's the closest they could be to jobs and to schools, and it's the most affordable option they have. And every other option is going to be worse. That's a very different kind of position to be in than if you're a property owner and you feel like, well, the neighborhood's changing. I guess I'm going to have to exercise my options and sell. So I feel like for me, the focus is really on uncompensated displacement that is often along racial lines. And I don't know what the answer to that is, except I would encourage us to think broadly about maybe we do have a program that prioritizes people who are residents in an area that has been flagged for gentrification. or something to provide people with a little bit, to the extent that we can, something of a safety net so that we recognize if you have to move, we're at least doing the best that we can to provide other options that maybe weren't even available when you first moved. And I think that's really the concern for me. So I love this work. I couldn't tell if in the displacement, what is it called, the index that was created, I couldn't see whether property ownership displacement vulnerability index it that's the element that I thought might be missing there because it's it's I think I think it's it's a distinction worth making anyway and it's one that's not often made in the academic literature, but we don't have to be that neutral.

yeah.

Yeah, I think you put your finger on something that sort of points at the utility of this tool and this approach. So if we get down the line and the preferred growth alternative or a scenario or some sort of policy change is likely to result in growth and change in an area, This will allow us to understand, well, who is that likely to impact? And what might their lived experience be? Is this an area of town that has a disproportionately high share of folks who rent? And what are the options before us to mitigate any sort of displacement? And that opens up a whole conversation around the policy responses. There might be a compelling reason to have growth and change in that area for all these reasons. but it opens up the conversation at that stage of, it sort of ensures that we have that conversation actually, this tool about, okay, what do we do to mitigate?

All right, the whole time you're talking, I was thinking about the central district. That's what was going through my head. Is that what you were really thinking about when you're talking about or kind of broader?

No, I'm thinking broader. I'm thinking of places where people have a currently stable life, but they're vulnerable because they live in, maybe it's a mobile home park and the property owner sees more advantage, economic advantage in selling and redeveloping. Well, from one perspective, That sounds great. It's higher use of the land. And maybe it's going to provide some more amenities. But for the people living there, that can be really terrifying. And I think that is captured in here in the displacement vulnerability index because it talks about concentrations of renters. So I think that captures it. uh but i i thought it was worth flagging because we don't use the the language of uh gentrification here we talk about displacement and i just feel like it's it's not displacement alone it's it's more than that it's um it you know it's like the bend central district i think is it's a different scenario for a property owner who has a business that is maybe a better fit somewhere else in a more industrial part of town or something like that there's a there's a path there to helping them to compensating and helping that move be smooth and i'm worried about the moves that don't have that path to compensation and that aren't going to be as smooth okay yeah uh just to riff off of what counselor might like just to riff off of what counselor mendez said i think

what you know what we look at is naturally occurring affordable housing and so like thinking about what this data set is showing and then what programs we might be thinking about in the comp plan and then development code and whatever it would be how do we preserve that naturally occurring affordable housing so i think not to put words in your mouth but i'm not an academic um I honestly like this is seems so comprehensive I don't really have too much to add to it, but I also appreciate a counselor riley's points and about access and I guess, and you're the study is probably going to do this, but you know. sure someone might live within a quarter of a mile of a grocery store but highway 97 might be cutting them off from that grocery store um and so that to me would not really be access for example so how do we really capture where where those sort of walls that are these very high speed difficult to cross highways and materials are that run through our city i think hopefully that will be highlighted as well that's all i have okay

This displacement conversation, it just brings up to me, it's really about power, right? Who has power to determine their own destiny and who is at their powers is completely under a landlord or a development or a job or a car not working. And that's the hardest thing to map in this methodology. But it just seems to me that it's really about power.

Can I ask if there was just a reason why? Because it seems striking not to have gentrification, the word, the term in there. Was there a reason to focus on displacement or is that intentional?

I mean, I think as a practical matter, we sort of thought of them as two sides of the same coin. So displacement is what you talked about, what you've all talked about, which is if people don't have a choice in the matter, growth and change can be scary. yep right um if you have an ownership stake yep it could still be scary but you might come out of it okay yeah right um and so i think displacement really gets at that i didn't have a choice in the matter thank you yeah yeah all right council north was going from virtual to come in in person so she will be here shortly but um any other thoughts on this tool before we move on to the next section

John Kanean- I think I agree with customers are very comprehensive and I think it what i'm excited about is it helping us get a lot of information to help make decisions in the end, and a lot of. John Kanean- ways that we are having this lens early on in the process of as we take each step we can use the lens to say okay so answering some of these questions early on versus waiting till we got five scenarios and then running through a tool right integrating it earlier is a really good idea.

So Mayor and Council, we will experiment with this. And I wanted to make something a little bit more clear. This isn't just intended to be a staff and consultant exercise. So the intention is we do this analytical framework We bring this to the council. We bring this to our committee structure. We have these discussions with the public. And I think I really appreciate Lindsay's advice here is that, you know, this is this isn't just a linear process where you do your thing and then you just move forward. We may learn, oh, you know, what we've learned through this process is let's go do some more engagement. Some of the engagement focus in this part of town or in this neighborhood, for example, there's a and so to reach out and then we might learn more and then bring that back so it's more of an iterative process and more of a cycle than it is just something that is started and finished but our hope is to bring this work to you as we move through this process great okay

John Potter, Great and I make a comment about yes.

John Potter, The materials that lead that led up to this workshop, I think, are super informative and I really appreciate all the time and work that went into them, and I think they really help the kind of ground me for the conversation today, I think it'd be. John Potter, Nice to kind of bury them a little bit in the website for the Community as a whole, I know that we're people in the room that are member of advocacy groups here there's folks from neighborhood districts. John Potter, If you haven't had a chance to look at those background and. and to just help inform your thinking and understanding as we go through this process. And especially the story of how Ben got to be where it is today. I think it really is important for people to see that. So if we can figure out how to get them off a kind of relatively obtuse place in the council page is something that's more in the Ben May project page as we move along. I think it's really important.

I assume that's the plan.

Yeah, yeah.

I just wanted to emphasize that. Yeah, I think you're right.

yeah i think our in our goal and what we're inside we're building uh a website uh it's called social point launching social point on the 23rd it is more of an engagement platform the idea is that this is an engagement platform that's better than just the city's website and i don't know that's no offense to anyone at all and then to put these materials in a more user-friendly manner on that website to drive engagement through social point as a tool, use our website as more of that kind of, we have a library where you can get access to all the information, but to really use social point as the tool for engagement and to provide snapshots, maybe not 400 pages plus pages of materials, but to make it easier to use as we move forward. So for the public to get that input.

Okay.

Great. Okay. So we have one more section. Whoops. We have one more section on the present, and then we'll start to talk about the future here and then continue that conversation on the 23rd. So we are on a path. Bend is on a path. We're on a trajectory. And that path shifted in a dramatic way in 2016 with the city's adoption of the Conference of Plan Update and associated other plans. And it really centered around a new focus on growing up within what at the time were called opportunity areas. And also when we grow out, do so in a complete community way. So a mix of housing types, a mix of housing and jobs, a mix of jobs that are also about serving local daily needs as well. And then just a general emphasis on integrated land use and transportation planning with a specific emphasis on shortening the trips, shortening the distance between, this has come up a couple of times, shortening the distance between households and jobs, households and destinations, right? Making the community more accessible. This has manifested itself in a lot of different ways over the last 10 years, looking at things like intersection density, connectivity, the fine-grained nature of the network as a measuring stick, and has supported a lot of implementation tools like mixed-use zoning, density and efficiency measures, a focus on transit, complete streets, et cetera. So, a new paradigm has shaped the last 10 years of growth, and it's helpful to kind of reflect on that as we, so we know what course we're on now and what course we want to be on in 2050. As well as, so there have been a lot of local changes, but there's also been a lot of local response to state zoning changes that have increased the development capacity at the local level and in pretty substantial ways. So things like House Bill 2001, the elimination of parking minimums as a result of some of the climate friendly and equitable uh communities uh requirements and then um some of the the one-time ugb expansion work so the entitlement right the what's allowed to get built city-wide has transformed pretty significantly over that period this map i know is a little abstract but it gives you this is if this map's never been produced for the city before you've never been able to step back and say where is development allowed and how and by how much across the entire city things like the downtown zoning districts and standards existing on paper only don't allow for that holistic look. The team has prepared this. So you get a sense for, if you really wanted to know what your growth plan is, this is sort of what your growth plan is, right? This isn't a combination of all of this responses to state requirements, all of the local decisions that have been made. The darker blue areas are where more intense development is allowed, and the lighter shaded to yellow is where lower intensity is allowed. And if we look at how Bend is built today, it's quite low density by comparison. right so most of bend today is floor area ratio is a planning term that you should just think of as as development intensity it's how much of the lot is covered by building uh and and and stack buildings as well so point is there's a lot of parts of town where the zoning allowed far exceeds what's built today right um and if you were to do the math So the allowed density is on the left, that's the existing zoning on the books today. What's on the ground today, what's built today, subtract those two things, there's still quite a lot of development capacity citywide. The question is, though, and I think right that that's less the question, the question is, for this process is, is it in all the right locations, based on where Council and the Community actually want to grow and the type of growth that they want to see. that's really the question that this process is intended to iron out. beth when I call you in to talk for the next couple of slides here.

Oh yeah sure you go back to that one. Is there anything in the current codes that prevent that development capacity to be actualized or acted upon? I mean, is there anything?

In the code?

Yeah, that we haven't yet solved. Oh, there are. That's what this is saying, that the code basically allows us.

Yeah, the code basically allows this. There are undoubtedly things that are hiccups or complications or challenges or barriers that exist within certain zone standards, for sure. But if you just sort of step back from it and you say, how much entitlement? And a big part of the story here is when you eliminate on-site parking requirements, there's a significant portion of your property that can now hold a building, for instance. And so that's a big uptick in what's technically allowed. Now, what's actually governing why you probably are unlikely to see a city that looks like the left are market preferences and market conditions where not everyone's ready to give up their car and the market's going to respond to what people like. So just because it's technically allowed doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get it. Does that answer your question?

Yeah.

Okay.

Sorry, Beth, go ahead.

No worries. So I'm just going to tease you with a little bit of the smallest amount of data that we are collecting for the CHNA as well as the HCA, the housing capacity analysis. Some of this you guys already know, but just to emphasize some of this over since 2010, the typical home value has increased at about twice the rate of the median household income. Average rents have increased a little bit slower than median household income, but that does not include utility information. It probably means they've grown at a similar rate. Cost burden rates across the city are at about 33% on average, but 46% of your renter households are cost burden, meaning they pay 30% or more of their income for housing costs. So on the next slide. When you think about housing affordability, every household needs housing that it can afford. And that's based on income largely, as well as considering things like accumulated wealth and accumulated debt, of course. So this graphic here illustrates housing that's affordable for a four person household at these different income levels. So looking at a household of four that has 80% of AMI, area median income, it's $96,000 for a household of four. They can basically afford two bedroom rent, including utilities. Now that's for a household of four people, two bedroom. So a three person household at the same AMI might not be able to afford that rent. When you look at the typical home value of 738,000, It requires more than $200,000 of income to afford that housing without accumulated wealth, which, of course, we know that a lot of households in Bend come to the community with accumulated wealth. About 56% of Ben's households have income below $144,000. So they certainly can't approach that typical home value. And the next slide, please. So when we look at the types of housing units that have been permitted in Bend, you can see a big difference between the 1999 to July 2014 permits where 78% of new housing was single unit detached. For the 2014 to 2025 period, what we're seeing is that 52% of housing is either multi-unit or middle housing types. So there's a really big shift, and that's as a result, I think, of a lot of the work that the city did with its 2016 UGB expansion and all of the other policies. So it's what you're set up for. It's what you're going towards that Alex was just talking about with the higher potential development capacity based on allowed density. And then if you go to the next slide, just look at the different types of units permitted since 2014. And what you see is some years you have a lot of multi-unit housing permitted and it takes a while for that housing to absorb. And so multi-unit housing comes in sort of large amounts and then some years are smaller amounts. We've seen middle housing permits steadily grow, especially since 2001. Middle housing rules were adopted by the city after 2019. And staff expect that there's more middle housing production in the pipeline in pre-permitting activity. So as we're going through this in the next few years, we'll probably see some middle housing picking up. So that goes to what I was hearing Council talking about, about that mix of different housing types. We'll pick up on these and other issues when we're talking to you in October. Alex?

Thanks, Beth. So when we look at where that shift in the types of housing that are getting built and been mapped to the ground, there's a few patterns that emerge. So since 2014, so this is sort of a proxy for the post 2016 period, you've seen concentrations of new single family units. It's a bit scattered, right? But there are definitely concentrations within a couple of the expansion areas. but a lot of infill as well on older lots or housing that's turned over. Interestingly, if you look at the accessory dwelling units where they map, they map pretty tightly to the highly urbanized central neighborhoods. Again, policy changes unlocked a different development pattern and bend, and this is sort of the net result of that. middle housing development, it's a little scattered, but you do definitely see, so this is like duplexes and triplexes and cottage and townhomes with an ADU, multiple units on a single lot. You do see a concentration of that within the close in area of Bend as well. So pretty highly amenitized areas with access to amenities like the river and jobs. And then multi unit development again it's happening everywhere, but there is a concentration around. A couple of the opportunity areas in particular that were defined in the 2016 conference plan. So 9% of the multi unit buildings permitted are within opportunity areas, but they account for 20% of the overall units in that period. So what does that say the project sizes that are happening in the central west side and the kind of. Chris Wanner, Core pine area or are bigger in scale right, and those are also not all the opportunity areas are performing equally. Chris Wanner, But the ones that are the ones that have kind of a high degree of amenity and are are kind of close in they are punching above their weight in terms of capturing bigger projects. So shifting and looking at retail, retail demand in Bend has been pretty strong over the past 20 years. In terms of production, it peaked in the 2023, 2025 area. But again, that's macro level. If we look spatially, the permit activity is really concentrated in existing commercial areas. I know this has been a topic of community conversation, but there's not a lot of retail activity happening within the expansion areas. It's been planned right. It was part of that planning effort, but it's helpful to reflect on the trajectory on is that's not that part of that complete community piece is not necessarily happening. With a couple of exceptions. So I'm going to turn it over to that to talk a little bit about the policy trajectory as it relates to transportation.

As a question about previous slide. So if you go back a couple to the James Heiting. Keep going. No, James Heiting. Um, James Heiting. Let me go back James Heiting. somewhere one of these. My question is just about how much of these units are actually for ownership versus Justin Cappos, or rent, and and the extent to which this one. I'm not clear to me the extent to which Justin Cappos, land use decisions can impact that. But that's more about like the condo laws and all those sorts of things. Just to try to understand that, because it does seem to me that one of the challenges we have is making sure we have the right balance of ownership opportunities within the mix of housing types that we have. We know we want mixed housing types, but we also want um ownership opportunities and my my instincts is most of what's been built in the multi-family for sure is rental but even in the middle housing types most of it's for rent am i accurate about that one and two what are the levers we can pull or is it mostly advocacy for things at the state level your instincts about the multi-unit so projects over five units say are spot on they are

The vast majority of them will be for rent as opposed to for sale. Not necessarily anything the city's doing. That's a condition that exists across the United States and challenges with delivering ownership multifamily. Middle housing is far easier to subdivide and to sell. Legally speaking, it's far less complicated. And so I don't have the exact figures. I would say it's probably a fairly healthy mix of both here. When you have townhomes, those are typically for purchase. Whereas if you have someone building an ADU, they might hold onto it to rent. So I would say this is probably the most diverse spectrum from ownership and rental.

John Pimentel, yeah in anecdotally in conversation with legacy village, for example, and talking about how they were planning on meeting some of their middle housing requirements, they were shifting some of that middle housing from what would traditionally be considered. John Pimentel, More rental stock into more of an essentially a townhome model attached kind of semi cottage semi not detached cottage but attached. essentially a townhome, which is fee simple, where you'd have the land sold with the units. So I think because HB 2001, it's relatively new. The market is beginning to manifest more and more and more. But I think what we can see through some of the larger master plan applications is that development community is adjusting and saying, okay, well, instead of doing this in a rental product, let's make this into an ownership model, but we don't have the stats exactly. And we can certainly break this down by that going forward, but.

I think it'd be good for us to better understand what the actual numbers are showing us about the trends in our community with that, especially the middle housing types, just, you know, and how does that inform decisions that might be made with the plan and to make sure we get the right balance of ownership and the opportunity.

Okay. So we're back on the TSP.

Yep.

Okay, Matt.

Perfect. Thank you. So, starting with just the integration that we've been talking about throughout so we certainly haven't talked about the tsp but it's come up a lot because there's been this focus over the last really 10 years since 2016 is out pointed out about linking. The land use and the transportation decisions together that was shown in how we talked about vehicle trip length and how that affected infrastructure. I think that's really the story of Ben's TSP as we go forward and how it's been used over the last 10 years is that there's been an integrated approach to thinking about those two questions at the same time. So that happened at the land use planning side, and it also has happened in just how we planned infrastructure with avoiding the isolation approach of thinking about, let's just do this one project here and do this one project there. Really the system as it's planned is an integrated set of, of modal networks so for example the complete uh low stress bicycle networks the key walking and biking routes those are systems that were intended to be holistic and how they look at how people get across the city there's also a lot of integration in terms of what cascades east transit cet is planning from their transit network how that relates to mobility hubs how that related to some of where those resided within the land use system so looking at that first last mile traveled from how people get places. So we talked about that a little bit about how people get from one place to the other. I think that's related to those transit corridors. And then relating those transit corridors to the things that we know affect how people might use them. transportation demand management, parking strategies. Those are all things that have been considered and modeled in Ben's transportation planning. And also just, if we look at it holistically from a congestion management, understanding that how we plan the system affects the congestion we see. So we're trying to manage that from the first conversation, not the last conversation, as we get into the transportation infrastructure that's needed to support where we're going over the next 20 years. And we saw that as the outcome. of the planning that was done at the TSP. You'll see at the bottom, we were able to affect change in terms of vehicle miles traveled as part of that package that we looked at through the last TSP and also affecting fewer drive alone trips. So affecting a mode choice outcome as we look 20 years in the future. So that's kind of from the infrastructure side. Next slide on the funding piece. The other integration that I'll talk about is tying the needs to a funding strategy to actually deliver those needs. That may seem like old hat because I know you all talk about delivering the GEO bond and the transportation utility elements that we've looked at over the last several years, but that was really started back in 2020. The GEO bond was the outcome of the work that many of you were involved with through that TSP update to get to the $190 million voter-approved bond. And that was a specific conversation through the last TSP to say we need to tie these needs to funding strategies. So there's several of those that are identified in the TSP. some that have been implemented, some that are still being considered, but really linking the strategies not just to a hope and a dream, but actually a tangible outcome that aligns with the broader strategy for the city. and lastly just looking at where we go so i think we have as they started with a strong foundation for for where we are but we have new state requirements that are necessary to address through this work the climate friendly equitable communities which i know you've heard a lot about we'll continue to hear about that creates new requirements new rules there's some background information on that a new packet we'll talk about more of that the next time we get together um but the city's comprehensive approach to planning from both the transportation and land use perspective puts us on great footing and really this this question about how we continue the conversation is part of the the Bend made work plan really throughout this till we end up with adopted TSP uh several years down the road so that's a quick hitter on where we are and more to come as we talk in the future on this topic thanks Matt

so we started talking about what the pivotal moment of 2016 and the last 10 years have put us on a well the path is is longer than that but the last 10 years have put us on a distinctive path and if ben keeps growing under today's policies plans and trends what do you like about where that is headed and what concerns you

Okay, so we I had in my notes of folks wanted to take a few minutes to write some thoughts down, because that was a lot of information. And this is kind of a big question. We can do that. If anyone's running to start right now, we can do that as well. But we're all going to have a few minutes to share. If you want to take 2 min to just make you're ready to save.

Okay, you might advise matter question before Yeah, go ahead. On this side, you talked about the 2020 TSP and how it modeled reduction in VMT. Is there like a validation of if that occurred or was that actually that is what has occurred?

No, the modeling was what the outcome would be if these if these strategies were implemented yeah we certainly are on the path of implementation but that question I think will be further explored through this work of are we getting there what's needed because there's elements of that of that plan that haven't yet been implemented okay thanks

And I guess one quick thing about why do we even care about the path we're on? Why consider that? It's important because it's the way the cake is baked right now. But from a process perspective, we want to have a trend-based understanding of the future as well. And as this process uses scenario planning to help us test out alternative futures. And one of those futures needs to be our trend path, right? So by 2050, where are we likely to be based on the path we are? So the technical team, that's just a foreshadowing of some of the content that we're going to be working on at the next workshop is putting alternative futures in the context of the path we're on and comparing them.

Great. All right, Steve, do you want to start us off?

Can you go back to the timeline slide, please? The 2016 timeline slide? Thanks. So when I was looking at this back this last weekend, this was really instructive to me because I was thinking about the folks who were writing this in 2016. And then I looked at everything that happened after 2016 and how that really just upset the apple cart under which the plan was developed. And so when I saw this, You know here with what I hear often in the planning commission as I'm as I'm the liaison to that is I can't understand what we're still planning along these guidelines right now. Here we are. It doesn't match where we are, where the city is now, and and so I the the danger that what i what i had when i looked at this was i don't know how to build a plan that is perhaps a little bit more flexible so we don't hang the 2026 one on our on our website and point back at that and have it not really agree with the conditions on the ground i i don't know how to do that um and i don't know that it's possible but we when we try to explain to the public in 2030 and it doesn't match i i would love to be able to have as you suggest brian some some iteration that comes through this stuff but it's such a heavy lift to go through this so that was my first thought or my first concern on this can you go slide one more slide forward so what is it you're saying about doesn't match and maybe brian could weigh in on this like our population

Laura Leal, Change right was it state and we're going to get into forces conversation that was it state law that changed right or was it density? Well, yeah, let me let me ask Steve. What do you think's here? Because i'm i'm curious, and then what happened here for you to do you know like what is it you think that's changed that the plan hasn't responded to as far as laying out land uses right, which is the main point of the right plan update.

um is it you know i'd love to hear from you and also yeah i i just i feel this when i'm when i'm working with the planning commission when when i see that the housing the housing goals of the transportation goals have not been updated to reflect where we as a council are now um and and we point back to this plan please tell me if I'm wrong on that but I and I'm not saying these are things that we did these are externalities that have been thrust upon us and I'm just I'm trying to figure out a way do I have that wrong do I misunderstand this where we are

I think it depends on the level, Councillor. If you look at the high level, I think based on some of the information that Alex has been sharing today, and during the presentation, I looked over at Councillor Riley, who was on the 2016 UGB Advisory Committee structure. And the discussion at the time then was, these are real quotes, nobody wants to build a mixed use building in Bend. nobody wants to live in attached housing and bend the market won't build it right it'll never happen And I think what Alex just showed you is that there is a path and there is a trajectory and in certain parts of town, you are seeing new development patterns take shape. Not everywhere, not exactly according to plan, but that large scale trend has begun. And then if you look in reference, what Matt just covered in terms of the transportation systems plan, thanks to a lot of voter support, good work on the council, TBOC, the whole community putting up with a whole bunch of delays at all the various intersections and with all the projects going on, you're moving into that plan as well. You're implementing that plan. In other words, a 20-year plan does not just take shape overnight. It takes years to get there. I can't speak to exactly. I think there's another point here of it's not the comprehensive plan. And some of these studies are not always up to date, right? They don't always reflect today and, and nor can they. And I guess what I will say for this council, this is your opportunity to update it. Number one, and then the state requirements of us having to essentially do this work on a, basically in every eight year cycle. is going to drive this conversation so that plans really do get to reflect and they get to reflect these changes and new councils and new leadership and new policy directions more frequently. I think a lot of people were smarting quite frankly, after the last UGB expansion and that major update, because it took darn near over a decade to get finished. So here we are, I think this is our chance and we'll bring everything up to snuff and make it You know, and tighten it up.

It will take 10 years to do it.

Yeah. And what I want to be clear is I'm not throwing shade on the process right here. And what I want to understand is or what I want to say is it is tough when we have all these external large rudder stick inputs that happen into our flight plan here. And I'm just trying to figure out how we can help. increase the increase the the update of that such that we can point back to it and then one more can you go one more slide please i love this i love this slide right now right and and but but what i see my job is here and alec alex i really appreciate what you said but i see my job and our job is is how can we put the dark dots where we want them i'm understanding that right but marian as you said alex with where does the market want to go at the same time where do we smartly put the dark dots um as we we approach the zoning for our city so i this is fantastic i love this so that's it for me great thanks who else is ready to go and maybe go back to the sorry could make you go around the slides back to the question slides

But really, what do you?

I'm not totally ready to go, but I wanna jump off what Steve just said. Yeah, go for it. Okay. Yeah, so I was just thinking about that. I mean, we have that allowed density slide, right? And we can allow it, we allow it, right? But we don't build housing. Right. So like what's in our control in this process and what's out of our control in this process? It's just something I was thinking about when you were talking about that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, who wants to go next? Ariel, go ahead.

Yeah, could you put that FAR cloud slide back up?

Sure. Yeah, we might be going back to that a lot.

So three things that I wanted to share. The first is, I also think this is a really cool slide. The thing that stood out to me though, and that worries me, is you can also tell where our highways are. And we know there's a pretty strong, well-established link between air pollution and sound pollution that is really bad for premature mortality. So if anything, I would like to see the areas where we have the most vehicular traffic, the things that contribute the most to those adverse health consequences, that should be lightest. Like I don't want to have more density around our highways and our big arterials. I think that we need to have the opposite. So that was my thought looking at that. And so that would be the dark line along Highway 97 and then also east near Pilot Butte, you see Highway 20 represented there. So I think that's a little bit troubling.

Can I make a quick point? Because I wanted to link some of this together if I could, which is the harms that are identified within the community impact framework. Those are inclusive of some of the things you just mentioned, right? Where are there things in our community that have harms to human beings right like air pollution um other things like that so i just want to link those two things together that there's a way that we can keep track of as we go through this process those kind of considerations excellent yeah thank you um and this is also i think echoing some of the comments that council reilly had made earlier as well um the other two things i was going to call attention to are the really interesting discussion of the

the per capita VMT targets. Our current TSP was based on the 2003 requirement that we not increase per capita VMTs by more than 5%. We now have a goal of reducing per capita VMTs by, I think it's 11%, although I also saw 12% in some other places. So I've often wondered, just as a thought experiment, what would it look like if we were able to actually freeze the number of cars on the road and say, we're going to grow as much as we want, but we can promise you that we're not going to add more traffic to the roads. So the numbers, and this is just rough, it's my own work, uh looking at current population projections that suggests if we wanted to actually freeze the number of cars on the road and say we're going to grow without adding to traffic we probably need something like a 34 percent per capita reduction of vmts that is of course a huge number but I would like to see a little bit more discussion of here's what we think a target would could look like and what would it take to get there so it's you know we have We have some numbers. I would like to see a little bit more discussion of what would it look like if we were actually a little bit more aggressive with some of those targets? And what would it take to get there? Because I think the reason why we shy away from higher numbers, the bigger targets, is people don't think that we have a credible plan to actually achieve them so what would it look like if we had much better transit service if we had a much better connected active transportation network if we had lots of jobs that were close by and you know all of this stuff then what would that target look like so that's the per capita target discussion and then i wanted it because i don't think that we'll have an opportunity to talk about it in other contexts we have a lot of discussion of density here and we can see the increase in multi-family housing over the last couple of years and as as i was preparing and reading i had flagged a couple of metrics that i think are linked to density because for me i'm less interested in density for density's sake like i don't think that there's i mean i think you know people have different preferences about density and i'm i'm okay with that um i know you've called attention to the importance of ownership and rental opportunities i think that's also important um but the consequences of density i think are what are most important for me and so we We pursue things like density because it's better land use. And what that means is lower cost to provide services, which means we don't have to tax people as much to provide those services. It means closer access to amenities, better access to things like nature, lower ecological impact. We can measure things like the percentage of households who live without a car. We can measure things like VMTs, of course, which we do. But I'd like to see us describe some of those benefits, the attributes of density a little bit more explicitly so that when people in the community hear us lauding the imbalance that we're making up for in terms of multifamily housing, it's not because I think that more people should live in apartments, it's because I think that represents something really good that lots of people will benefit from and agree on. And I want to make sure that we don't lose sight of all of those other metrics and attributes when we're talking about something like density.

Great, thanks. And I think just to your TSP comments, our next workshop is really going to dive in a lot more on that. And I know you have a schedule conflict, which I'm so sad about. But we're working on how to make sure that all of your input and questions get into that workshop as well, because I think that's where we're going to dive into a lot of that DMT.

yeah it's basically counselor mendez's dream workshop i know so deep into all of those topics uh i'm so sorry you're not going to make it but uh we'll have a great information pack and we can meet and discuss uh when you're available but good questions and input but can i jump on that a little bit and and not the way i think you are worried that i'm going to rl but i think more like

that, you know, I think about the TSP and we're talking a lot about, you know, here's the density for people who, but there are plenty of people who I would consider Bendites, many of whom who work for the city of Bend, who drive into town every single day and don't live in Bend. And so I think when we're talking about all of this, we have to be thinking of the people who are, that we consider Bendites that don't actually live in our city? And how do we include them in this process? Because that is 53% of our workforce. And the other thing I think is also like how, I've been thinking about like a remote workforce, especially when we're talking about transportation, you know, like we have a large remote workforce. How are they getting around the city? Do they get around the city? Where do they, you know, like I'm curious to like dive into that a little bit more in the future as well.

Yeah.

Okay. Go ahead. One of the things that jumps out at me when I look at this map, I think it's also a really great map. Can I ask a question though? To what extent does this reflect James Forrest, Norcal PTAC, Average lot size, because that was the other thing that we were looking at historically right. It was like point. Forget the number in the the timber area.

James Forrest, Norcal PTAC, But in the intensity scales is irrespective of life. James Forrest, Norcal PTAC, There are there are this. This accounts for things like setbacks. It accounts for things like lot coverage maximums if they exist in the zoning code. So the to the extent the city has adopted zoning standards. It's reflected in this map. And we even took it a step further because we're suckers for punishment, which is we looked at all of the special plan districts. And sometimes they adopt a zone standard that's in the underlying zoning. Sometimes they supersede it. And so there was a lot of math to go into, okay, what's the effective entitlement even in some of the places that have their own sets of standards as well.

Alex, would that reduce the intensity then if they're cutting it off the lower level?

It cuts both ways, actually.

Some are higher?

Yeah, depending on what the outcome of the desired master plan was, right? Okay. Yeah.

John Pimentel, Think i'm i'm thinking about like the southeast i'm a little surprised that we don't have more capacity or more intensity allowed down there, given how much development is occurring there and the need to get neighborhood serving commercial do have we allowed enough. down there to ensure that we're going to get the number of households that we need right and the number of heads as we hear people talk about to get the kind of commercial development and therefore complete communities i mean have we done enough frankly in some of the parts of town especially i'd say in the southeast and then am i thinking about where we're likely to expand and i'm getting ahead of myself here but having been through the early the previous ugb expansion i see that you know there's likely to be quite a bit in the north or the east and north And we even talked about one thing when we were looking at the 1537, the Caldera Ranch versus the one that was just east of town. It seems like maybe we need to be thinking about that. And that's, I guess, the purpose of the plan. But I'm surprised that there's, when I look back on this, that there isn't a little bit more of that allowed in some places to get at this issue of promoting neighborhood commercial.

You talked about the square next to the Central Library. Well, that yeah, that one.

But but just again that's pretty far away from that part down there at the end of the southern end of Fifteenth Street. Yeah, I nursery and that part up there that's Petrosa. So I just that's just an observation when I look at this, given how things have actually played out, and where I think future expansions likely to occur. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Everything it's concerns me a little bit of just like and this i'm expressing I think personal references here but. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Is there something about the. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Yes, it's it's minimum lot size, some of the development that I see there's just like there's nothing around these houses and to me they don't feel very desirable and I think sometimes it's we're hearing from the Community like. I wouldn't want to live there who you don't want to live there. Well, people live there because what they can afford, right? And we have higher numbers of units. I get the need. We need more units. There's no question that supply is part of the big part of the problem, but they're not inadequate supply. But do we need to think a little bit more about it's some combination of this allowed intensity of use and lot sizes to just give people a little bit more breathing room we're sure that we have some breathing room in across the community and um if i'm being clear but it's part of what i react to when i go to some of the new developments that are happening and i walk around and i look at the houses and i go in and tour them and and it's like you know you can't even take a full stride and up hit the fence and and is is that is that what we want and especially like everywhere And just making sure that we're thinking about that and we're providing that right mix. And I think maybe we already are. And I'm just reacting on a personal preference place when I go in and see some of these, because not all the parts of the development are that way. But certainly a lot sizes have gotten a little bit smaller. John Potter, The structures have increased in size relative to that that's the other boss, you know one walk around some of these and what we put a whole extra room in here because they're thinking about the remote work. John Potter, environment and catering to the kinds of people who are moving here so that structure, a little bit bigger they're maximizing their four area ratio right.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" I think one of the pushes and pulls there that doesn't relate to things that can map to plans and policy are. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" What is the balance of work that needs to get accomplished on a lot like does it have to be your be all end all for recreation outdoor activity or are there shared spaces that are incorporated within the Community like where. Where and how through the development patterns do people meet their needs? We saw the development pattern in the Pivot area where the expectation was your house and a park next to it. That was the expectation. That all happened within your lot. But is that calculation changing for people and does that get reflected in common spaces that are active and available for kids?

or shared not not everyone gets it in their backyard but those balances do map to development policy does that get at um things related to coming back to one of counselor mendez's comments about the importance of open space and what we see happening in developments and these very thin little strips that are qualifying as open space versus something a little bit more concentrated provides a little more place for kids to play or whatever that might be i think some of that is a subtlety of some going forward that we want to talk about i mean the last thing i would say is that um the move towards areas like intensively developing, redeveloping, opportunity areas maybe the bcd is really the best active example of that um and uh cfas you know um think there's a lot of opportunity to build on what we have here already and allow perhaps even a bit more intensive development in some of those places um uh going forward that helps us i think provide the mix of spaces and sizes and types across the whole community So building again on the work that's been done so far to kind of get that right balance.

Thanks. Yeah.

I'm Just to riff again off of what you were talking about related to lot sizes and intensity of years. I mean, if you compare different forms, so the small lot size with a single family home that has small setbacks and a fence around it versus like the land trust model or the habitat model where. you've got the houses around common areas and they're using the cottage code instead, you know that that living experience is is is way better based on you know. the reports from those folks who live in those communities. So it does kind of beg an interesting question, I think, that I hadn't really considered. If we're gonna be allowing single family homes, is there some way that we can do that so that it is a little bit more of a desirable product for everyone because that definitely is what folks want. Going back to the question you asked us, if we keep growing under today's rules and trends, what do you like about it and what concerns you? And I have to say, I think I'm struggling a little bit too because I think it's interesting because under these same development rules and we're seeing different approaches in different parts of town right like in some parts of town we're seeing these developers you know building what council reilly was just talking about very little open space around the house as few trees as possible no commercial neighborhood commercial development but then when we look on the west side it's really just one developer that's doing this you know much more desirable urban planning approach you know to neighborhood development with commercial amenities um and you know i i don't know i mean i like to think that we are it is our responsibility as a city and the city government to you know ensure the orderly development in our city or whatever it is that you know the state law on our in our municipal code says and so i think we do have some role to play there in in guiding how development occurs i don't think it should just be a free market approach to that um So I hope we can have a discussion around that.

I'm kind of confused. The whole plan is, right?

Yes. The whole plan is. Great. On transit and bike infrastructure and roads, I don't know. My observation is that we're sort of taking a different approach than what the plan. envisioned you know that we're we're building roads for cars and we're building you know other roads for bikes um as opposed to having a network that kind of sort of interconnected and works for everyone and maybe one thing that that I um that probably was never considered and will be very politically unpopular but i'll say it anyway um we have a lot of the um older style neighborhoods that have cul-de-sacs and so we don't have a gridded street network in many parts of town and so that forces traffic onto the main roads and so you know what if we actually looked at those you know neighborhoods and evaluated what it would take to unfortunately displace a few people to maybe make some road connectivity or or at least HAB-Juliette Boone, Have come up with some bike and pin connectivity in these areas where we've got we've got dead end streets. HAB-Juliette Boone, So that that's something that I that I wonder about and. HAB-Juliette Boone, would be interested in looking at and then. HAB-Juliette Boone, You know just other trends is you know we're not getting starter homes. HAB-Juliette Boone, You know. not getting a lot of communities where we can have as mayor says diversity of of age you know so diversity of living options so that we can have folks you know aging in place as well as raising families and that's one thing i'll leave it at that okay thanks i'm sorry you weren't here for the very first part where i said cul-de-sacs were terrible and we shouldn't have that yeah so like your dream we talked about that yes just to make sure i understood your comment on that though you're talking about kind of

the opportunity and challenges, but exploring them, of retrofitting some of the existing development patterns we have in Bend today like those. Is that what you're talking about?

That's exactly what I'm talking about. And actually, sorry, I was looking for my note on that. That's another, in our existing neighborhoods, we don't have this neighborhood commercial, and there are some real structural barriers to allowing people who maybe want to do a very small scale neighborhood commercial So, and we've had conversations around it, you know, but we haven't really been able to make any progress on that. So I don't know if there's anything that we should be including in the comp plan to make sure that we're, you know, that we're looking at.

It's all in bounds for the process we've laid out here.

So we'll try that. It did not go over very well.

It's challenging. But I think part of what we were talking about earlier today was it was, again, sort of this, what do you like about what happened before? What do you not want to repeat? And that we do not want to repeat that. We want to make sure whatever we're doing, when we're building anything new, we're not repeating that pattern for the reasons you said.

okay yes yeah um i agree with a lot of what's been said but um i think just on a little bit in terms of the density um i think it's great a lot of what's been happening with the middle housing i think we need to be a little careful and just make sure that we're tracking some of those numbers and just making sure that we're passing on some of those affordability down to the homeowners and that you know some of what we've been seeing is that when you are actually building these houses because of some of the attached and some of the additional costs that it that it takes to attach that it is passing on some additional costs to the homeowners. I think we need to be a little bit careful making sure that we're tracking that. I am really curious about how some of those homes and what the rentals are turning out in terms of rental versus homeownership. AND THEN JUST IN TERMS OF OUR NETWORK AND AS WE BUILD OUR ROADS AND JUST THINKING ABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE AND JUST BEING COGNIZANT ABOUT ALL TYPES OF INFRASTRUCTURE AND UTILITIES AND AS WE BUILD OUT OUR ROADS AND HOW THAT CAN ALL, AS WE DEVELOP, THAT CAN ALSO PROVIDE COST SAVINGS TO THE HOMEOWNER EVENTUALLY. SO BEING REALLY THOUGHTFUL ABOUT THAT. MAKING SURE THAT WE'RE PLANNING AHEAD SO THAT THERE'S SOME EXPECTATIONS MOVING FORWARD. I'M JUST THINKING KIND OF LIKE THE SOUTHEAST AREA. and growth there in particular. And then just thinking a lot about, you know, that going back to that map, just opportunities for, you know, some of the best communities that I've seen, and we've talked about it a lot are just, you know, areas that, you know, people live close to where they work. And so whether that's, you know, in the downtown core area, or we're actually, you know, creating communities, more complete communities on the outskirts of towns, but you know we can do both and so I look forward to those types of opportunities as well and then we've talked about this a little bit but just making sure that we you know just think about it moving forward and opportunities but just reduced right-of-ways in neighborhoods I think that that can be really interesting and I think it can provide some safety you know, for bikers and walkers, but also creates this really, you know, livable, you know, more aesthetic community of tree-lined streets and just smaller streets. And, you know, it also provides for density, you know, in a community as well, so.

Great, thanks. I think what I had written down about what I like about the trends is we have been creating more housing diversity in Bend and I want that to continue. And we are urbanizing and I use the word urbanizing to move on from the word just density. To me, urbanizing is talking about creating walkable communities with amenities and thinking about how we're changing the way we get around town and how we're building homes. and introducing new forms of homes maybe, especially in these dark areas that have the capacity for them. I like that trend. And I think that's also the trend the state is pushing us towards. And it's also the kind of core concept of Oregon's land use system is that you urbanize within your UGB, your urban growth boundary. so that you don't sprawl. So I want to see that continue. I think to Councillor Mendez's points around housing density and having more people living inside the UGB, that supports the trend of really thinking about climate impacts and adaptability for our city and i want that to continue um i am concerned about um people who rent and bend um 46 of people who rent and bend per year report are cost burdens and we are making a difference in the rent by keeping that production high i'm concerned about not being able to keep that production high and at the same time not having that next step to home ownership for people who are renting so i think those are both things that we need to be thinking about going forward with the plan and to that point we're talking about small lots small you know small lots that don't have a lot going on that can be more affordable for people those are what i see as the potentials for starter homes the cottages the town homes the attached homes the homes that don't have a big yard and aren't selling a lot of land to bring the price down of the home. And I want us to be careful. I know you gave a caveat of this, Mike, about this is your personal preference. But be careful about, I wouldn't live in that type of home, so Laura Leenhouts, Ph.D.: you know I feel some type of way about it, or maybe we shouldn't have as many of it. I think what we want to aim for is the ability to have lots of types of homes, and I and I thought about when we were presented with the affordable housing that Lca was working on, and we're told about some of the larger apartments they were making because of the desire for multi-generational living within that population that they were hoping to serve. And so, just thinking about It might not even be what stage of life you're in. Are you a student? Did you just graduate college? Did you just have kids? Are you a single working professional? Are you married with two dogs? Are you retired? I've also spoken to people in town who are retired and would like to not be living in their single-family home anymore, and there is nowhere. for them to go um and we've seen that i've seen the popularity of the senior apartments that have gone up around town and why the market is serving those up i would love for there also be options for people downsizing that maybe don't want to live in a senior apartment or an assisted living right yet but they want us they need that they don't want to take care of that yard right they're ready to go down to that what maybe in the past might have been a condo type opportunity right that we have less of now so just things i'm thinking about about the options i also want to agree with steve i'm a little i'm a little less concerned and more optimistic about how to make this plan acknowledge the adaptability that we will need to have as a city acknowledge that things are going to change and we're going to need to allow things to change over time in that square that's right by that word central library where i grew up and i can picture in my head is full of cul-de-sacs and big lots and going to be very hard to retrofit and change but how do we think about when we're building new neighborhoods that we're not building them that way that we're building them to say this is what we are building them as now but maybe in the future we will need more housing or we will need a commercial spot additional commercial spot or we will need something else here um or maybe we plan for a school but now we don't need it and we need to do something else right making that part of the comp plan to acknowledge that adaptability of a city that's growing is something i really want to work on and i don't think it's going to be easy but i think it i think i'm hearing that that is part of the desire here is to understand that when you have a plan set in stone and then you bring it back to your community and it's been 10 years it's very difficult ACM Conference 29th, To say hey we already decided this and not say where were the opportunities, as you said, Brian there will be more opportunities, but where are the what do we build into this to allow for some flexibility. ACM Conference 29th, Because I think we're going to need it going forward, you know not exactly sure where we're going to be landing in the next 20 years having a good idea, but being able to adapt, I think it's going to be really key so. HAB-Masyn Moyer- You haven't i'm gonna see if megan had more to ask you that you had a little bit earlier, but anything else you wanted to add so okay.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- I think you're right about you know we do want all those various housing types, including the ones where you take the stride and that's the fence, but I think it may be. HAB-Masyn Moyer- We should also then be asking what else is happening in those developments and and do we have the requirements right in terms of open space and how that's laid out so that show that it is amenity. maybe not richer maybe than we have today or different ways of getting that work accomplished so that it really functions for somebody. For example, myself, I mean, I'm entering a different phase of life now and our needs and desires are gonna be different. And there's a lot of reasons why we might not move out of the house right now related to taxes and all kinds of different things. But you want the option, but you also wanna make sure that you've got the amenities nearby to balance out I think what comes with having that much smaller place, some people aren't going to want that. But I'm just asking a question of what else do we need to do to make sure that the amenity mix is appropriate, the best amenity mix to ensure that that stuff really provides a quality of life for people there that is equal to folks that live in a part of town that City Council Chambers, Have a lot more room around their home yeah I think you're trading one for the other right so yeah I mean, how do we get that.

City Council Chambers, I think, in the spirit of the question what I would say is, I think we're on the right path yeah and I think you know the neighborhood I live in I have access to a pool and an incredible park and trails. City Council Chambers, And I think part some of that is because of the amount of people that are in that neighborhood that we're able to fund some of those things, because the pool is a neighborhood pool right. City Council Chambers, So I think I think we're going the right trend on a lot of that stuff where I think. City Council Chambers, We all share a concern is on the other types of amenities that are sort of private market provides like commercial right that's the one I think that it's that maybe we really need to dig into. City Council Chambers, and figure out some of that flexibility that Council rents was talking about and allowing more of those things to happen in more places to try to get that so that those amenities are also available. even though we can plan for parks. I mean, I guess, unless we start having more food trucks in parks, but things like that, that we have public agency partners to plan for, but sort of the private market side, I think, is where we need to figure out how to make that happen a little better. Okay, any other comments before we take a little break here? Okay, this is really great. We all really love this map. We love this map.

okay so we're going to take a little what are we doing now brian a 10 minute break yeah we're ahead of schedule okay great um so the original agenda had us coming back by 4 50 it's 4 28 right now so mayor how many minutes do you want to release 10 minutes and i thought we were going to do we're going to do our little prioritization exercise before we break or do you want to wait i think we have a break and then we're going to have our last section so we're about yeah 10 minutes ahead of schedule yeah 4 40. perfect thank you

think we're like, last week.

There's nothing special about the color just the 3 stickers is what matters.

I think Mike will be here shortly. So sure.

Yeah, absolutely. So this is the last section of the agenda. It's about the forces that are outside of Bend, but that are likely to influence Bend in meaningful ways. These are called drivers of change. They're things that we may not like and we may be bitter about, but you know what? It's probably good that we think about them in the context of planning because the plan can respond to these things, even if they're not something that we chose. So these are forces that shape us that we didn't decide on. And over coming decades, We've identified five primary drivers and then two cross-cutting forces. Hopefully, everyone had a chance to review the memo associated with this because it goes a layer deeper than we're going to cover today. I'm going to go through each of these in a little bit more detail, but there's state mandates and federal whiplash. There's imported wealth reshaping housing markets. Growth is slowing, aging, and diversifying. fire, water, power, and insurance climate change and how that's repricing growth. And the knowledge economy is getting repriced by AI. And then the cross-cutting forces are fiscal straitjacket, unique to Oregon at the jurisdictional level, and then the widening divide. Now, these are forces that exist in a lot of other places as well. What makes them worth considering in Bend is some of the unique things about Bend make us more vulnerable to some of these forces than other communities. So that's why they've been identified. They're not just arbitrary forces. They're forces that we have some unique vulnerability around. So driver one, state mandates and federal whiplash. So the government layers above us are increasingly setting the expectations and requirements for planning and other things at the local level. That's again, not an Oregon thing, although Oregon punches above its weight in terms of state mandates regarding zoning. But that's an issue that's happening across the country, largely driven by the housing affordability crisis. So states intervening in local zoning around housing affordability. And then in the last decade, the federal government has become a much less reliable partner in terms of funding availability and those kinds of things. And so those two uncertainties are a reality that then sits within. the climate friendly and equitable communities requirements for a require and to do two hard things, to grow inward through the use of infill and to drive less through mode shift, right? So broadly speaking, those are two objectives that have to be met to meet state requirements. Just as a preview in the next workshop, we're gonna be talking about some other communities that are a little bit ahead of some of these questions and have some results that uh relate to both of these things how to move the needle on mode shift how to capture more infill bellingham and boulder so that's just a preview of something for next workshop the second driver is imported wealth reshaping housing markets This is not something that's a new thing in Bend. For 40, 30, 40 years, Bend has been shaped by folks coming in with imported wealth. The longer term narrative has been largely centered around Californians coming, having cashed out of somewhere in California or coming with rental income that's rooted in California. the the um the composition of those folks who are coming from the outside bringing wealth and bringing higher incomes has changed a little bit in the post-covet era layered on top of that base of of california and migration is folks coming from high-priced other west coast markets so seattle the bay area and portland right and and coming with higher wages as well as equity from catching out of other markets. So not a new phenomenon. The face of that phenomenon looks a little different, a little younger. but it's having profound effects on the housing market, both within Bend, but I think relating to some of the conversations that were had earlier, it's reshaping commute patterns, right? As the Bend housing market becomes too expensive for local wages to support home ownership and rental, folks are commuting in, over half of the folks who commute in for jobs, over half of our local employment pool is commuting in from other parts of the region. And so it's reshaping not only the housing market, but the entire commute shed as well, right? The regional housing market as well. Again, not unique to Bend, but certainly Bend has a particular flavor of it. And this just pulls that apart a little bit. So the sources of income that are driving the local economy have shifted over time and increasingly shifted away from local wages towards things like pensions and investment income. So that just puts a fine point on it. Driver three, growth is slowing, aging, and diversifying. So again, a national and international trend that has specific ramifications for Bend as childbirth and fertility decline, that's an international phenomenon. That means that places like Bend and other places are increasingly reliant on in-migration rather than people having babies in order to grow. And so as of this year, people having babies is no longer driving population growth in Bend. Not at all. And going forward, it'll be below replacement rate. And so in-migration from other places is going to be the source of population growth. And what does that mean? Well, this is a graph that shows if we were sitting in this room know a decade or so ago we would have been planning for a city that was growing to 260 000 right so this is sort of the magic of compound interest right you know so but now we're planning for a city that's going to grow to 150 000 so um it's amazing what a little change over compounded over time makes And then as we think about who is driving change, the composition of that population is getting older. Retirees and migrating is still a sizable portion of folks driving population growth, but it's also Latino immigrants moving into a bend as well. and so how do how does that changing composition of our community mean the plan needs to respond right um if if the population is aging just as a for instance and there's a chronic undersupply of housing in the healthcare industry like how how does the plan contemplate um playing a part in in that conversation it's challenging So driver four relates to climate change and how fire and water and power and insurance increasingly are reshaping the cost profile of growth. So these are kind of sleepers when it comes to the way we have traditionally talked about affordability. Historically, they have not been a meaningful part of affordability for most folks, but they are and will become more of an increasing part of what's driving the affordability question. Electricity up 60 percent, home insurance, suppliers of insurance are pulling out of a lot of West Coast markets and home insurance prices are escalating. And, you know, you step back and you ask those folks why, and it has a lot to do with the costs associated with hardening the grid, preparing for a future where wildfire season has doubled. And that just poses a lot more risks, both to, you know, the electric providers and also to homeowners. So how is climate change likely to, there are myriad ways climate change is likely to touch down and reshape the future of Ben. Just to hit a few of them, the increase in wildfire, not only is more of the year at wildfire risk, uh but there are the intensity of those events are increasing as a result of drought and also the invasive species that have crept in and also years and years and years of um suppression and and sort of doing things that you know pre-historically this was an area that burned and so we've sort of managed for us in a different way a lot of reasons warming oh sorry yeah warming temperatures and drought So that's another issue. So just to skip ahead for a second. So Bend is in the top 20 cities for the highest urban heat island intensity. And if we think about the trajectory we're on from a temperature perspective, Bend is going to feel a lot more like Reno, Nevada than it what Reno, Nevada feels like today is sort of the heat path that Bend is on as a result of climate change. And then just the general unpredictability of weather is what makes it hard to kind of price some of the insurance and hardening of the infrastructure around it, as well as reduced snowpack. So snowpack's down 20% since 1950. know the migratory pattern of birds there are a lot of implications of climate change uh that are unique to ben's ecosystem uh that cut across human health cost of living economic prosperity etc uh you know and there are unique ways some ways that the plan that ben made can help to respond to some of those and some That other initiatives will have to focus on and so helping to map those to the appropriate policy location and understand the priorities is what today is about. We talked about this, but there is a fair amount of certainty about the escalating temperature to 2050 at least, but the modeling really varies quite significantly after that. So there is a certain amount of predictability in where we'll be by 2050, which is the planning horizon. But what we do now and before 2050 will shape sort of which path we're on after that. The last driver is the knowledge economy and the potential of AI to reprice some of that. That's a national conversation, obviously, but then has some unique, its labor pool is uniquely exposed. At least the hypothesis is that white collar knowledge-based work is more exposed because it exists in the digital world and it's automatable potentially. That's the hypothesis. We don't know the answer. We don't know the story. This is very much an unfolding in real time phenomenon. There's also other areas where Ben's economy, it might stand to benefit, which is as the population ages, can automation and AI help to uh overcome some of the chronic labor shortages within health care to deliver more health care with fewer people and is that a possibility right the focus and emphasis on biotech and the success that ben ben's economy has had with some of those high-tech industries can those augment and actually help those industries be a tailwind right on some of those industries and can that land on accelerate growth and ben so this is very much could cut both ways we don't know the answer here but it's at least something for us to consider as we move forward and this just puts a fine point on it we have an over exposure in office and knowledge work uh 71 compared to the us average of 63 and the inverse is true for hands-on and in-person work OK, cross-cutting forces, things that really could exacerbate some of those other things. They touch some of those other drivers or make responding to some of those drivers more challenging. The fiscal straitjacket, Oregon's jurisdictions are uniquely challenged when it comes to raising revenue compared to other states.

So- Alex, when I looked at this slide, I thought about Eric telling us this every time we go to the budget.

He's happy to let me tell it this time.

There are just some real constraints that are unique to Oregon that make no sales tax, no real estate transfer tax, measures 5 and 50. We've heard the culprits before. Just to tie these two things together, and in a bend that is growing slower and cannot rely as much on new residents and increasing uh STC revenue through new growth right this is where this starts to cut harder right because there's not a lot of alternatives um so the growth model uh and the changes to population growth can sort of like bring this into focus more over the planning horizon um okay and then there's the widening divide so this is a a phenomenon nationally as there is a sorting of people based on disconnected land uses political ideology whatever it is there is a there is a cultural and physical divide emerging that is sort of pulling at civic trust um the the disconnected land uses are having public health implications um you know the amount of physical activity people can have the car dependency this shows up nationally it's not a ben thing but it does show up in ben too so there is We talked about earlier, if 53% of our labor pool is commuting in, they're commuting in from places that are really hard to bike from or take transit from or walk from to get access to their job. As well within the city, there are pretty stark divides from east to west. So median household income is almost half as much on the east side as it is on the west side, right? Residents of color. i'm sorry just on that one i was looking all over for what the asterisk was on the slideshow oh this has a pretty low margin or excuse me high margin of error in the data because it's just a rather small um okay number of of uh respondents so just it's a caveat right but like all indications are right okay um and then just so median household income again kind of two to one east to west and the parkway is the the divider here just in case you wonder and then renter sharing homes residents color so there is this has implications both in terms of people's lived experience um but also sort of the When we think about those people who own and can participate in shaping Ben's growth, you talked about Bendites before, right? Like the Bendites who actually live and own and kind of call Ben home is a small and shrinking share of those people who actually work here on a daily basis, right? So that divide plays out in the city. Just a special thanks. We talked to a lot of very smart people. We did a whole bunch of research. They were very generous with their time, and this product wouldn't be what it was without having those conversations. Okay, so that's a lot of things that hopefully are are uh make you make you think about how the plan should respond and we have three questions i would say maybe the third one is probably the the one to emphasize but uh are we missing any forces is there anything obviously missing that you think is an outside force that could reshape them by 2050 or beyond which forces can the city actually influence right this may be just a difference of opinion on that and then which forces should the plan prioritize to respond to Right. That's a decision to make.

Okay.

So, um, the exercise. Or do we want to do a little discussion or you want to do the exercise?

I think let's do the exercise 1st, and then come back to the discussion. Okay. Let's just. Okay, what you've shown us here, so there's a physical version of the slide over here.

You have 3 stickers again. Hopefully everyone still has their stickers. They didn't get lost in the shuffle. The colors don't mean anything. You can, you can. Decide the top 3 forces that you think the plan should respond to. Try to respond to right, you can put them all on one force if you're super passionate about that force or you can. spend them how you want basically.

that's it share a little bit. here.

We're going to have a discussion once people, we could do it either way, whatever you prefer, but we're going to have, we are, we do have plenty of time for discussion.

The discussion is kind of how I like to start. Where are we all thinking right now? And then how do we talk to each other and figure out, oh, maybe that makes a lot of sense why you put your sticker there. and then we can dramatically move the sticker yeah we could totally throw out stickers yeah new route too yeah compelling yeah move my dot yeah let's put the stickers up and then have a discussion and kind of say okay maybe maybe i've moved my opinion after that okay a couple minutes to put the stickers up yeah great yeah so you can move it

everything on the thing right just on the paper there yep and I think we know which one it goes like I saw that three percent yeah I was like there's Eric man just tell me that every time right yeah and remember it's the ones that the plan should most directly respond to which is a little bit different than what you might be concerned about more like AI students

Terrible. They don't want to hear about that. You know, when he didn't really had never seen a library. So, oh, yeah, after my nursery.

Oh, OK. And I was looking. Yeah, well, that's what we're all about.

And you kind of get back to that.

First of all, here's my people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, don't say this. yeah i'm surprised okay wow wow looks good interesting all right did everyone put your stickers on looks like we did we all agree i'm not even sure we should be doing this plan i'll just freak out but i see it okay

So what do we see here? So we have four stickers. Let's start from the top. We have actually seven stickers on fire, water, power, insurance, or climate change. The widening divide has five stickers. Imported wealth reshaping housing markets has four. And then state and federal whiplash has one. AI, excuse me, I missed the fiscal straitjacket has two. And then the only one that doesn't have any is AI. Okay, so there's some consensus around a few things I would say, or more folks are interested in at least, I would say three of those things. I think we want to learn why. Learn why people made the choices they made.

yeah um i'll start i would i would i really am concerned about the fiscal straitjacket i just don't think this plan is the place to address that for us i think we're going to have to use some different tools so that's what i was thinking about there i think um i put two on the widening divide i really think this plan can help us with that as as much as we can talk about how we build neighborhoods and how we plan for growth and how we use the tool that we were shown earlier to really consider the impact on folks. And then I think my other one was around growth, flowing, aging, and diversifying. But I also agree with other dots around fire, water, power, and insurance. And I do see the connection with how this plan can help us think about some of those things. So those things, I think, are out of our control. I think I've stayed away from AI and the whiplash, because while we need to be cognizant of those, I don't think this plan can really effectively respond to them. And also, especially AI is sort of far outside of our city influence, I think, as far as the macro discussion around that. That's something our country is going to, maybe the world is going to have to figure out in coming years. So that's where I was at with mine. Who wants to go next? Steve?

I doubled up on number four, no surprise to folks. But I think one of the things, can you pull up the heat island slide for me? Man, that one hit me. Did that surprise anybody else, the heat island?

No, because when was that study, Alex? There was a study a few years ago. I'll go back. Or you passed it.

That one just really hit me right there that it's getting worse here. And so when I was looking at those dots, I was thinking these are, I mean, I was thinking back to our tree code discussion, right, last week. And I'm thinking these are things that we have a little bit of control over on some level. A lot of it is macro that we don't have control. We did our climate pollution fee. Thank you for that. But I really feel as though some of these we can have a small, impact on, certainly how we build out, where we build out, the walkability, the housing types that we choose. It really feels that we have an effect on that. And then the widening divide was where I went with my other remaining dot because, man, that one hit me when I looked at the one slide that Megan has up where the east-west divide, I was just like, wow, that was really impactful to me as well.

yeah yeah yeah who's next i can go um yeah i mean i i i put my one of mine on this one too um I'm sure it's no surprise. I mean, I talked about divisions at the beginning of, I thought a lot about what people talk to me about when I'm walking around in town and know that I'm a city councilor and I hear so much about West versus East and all of the other divisions that we talked about. And so I think that sort of our moral obligation to tackle that as much as we can in the growth plan. The other thing I hear about all the time and we all hear about all the time is my utility bills are going up. I can't get insurance. And so and I'm terrified that my house is going to burn down. And so I think that again, that is like our obligation to to focus on that.

Defensible space. Defensible space.

Yeah, all that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah. And then I guess the other one is the imported wealth. And I just think it's more like, you said it's not a unique problem to Ben, but it is a significant issue in our community. And again, we're always talking about, particularly in the philanthropic community, how do we activate people who don't have a real stake in our community? How do we activate them through this plan? And so I think that's something that the city council can help with and potentially the growth plan as well.

Yeah, I wanted to just add on the widening divide, because our slide shows the east-west divide. But for me, it's bigger than that. When we were coming out of the pandemic, I remember Carolyn Egan telling us we could have a K-shaped recovery. People who are kind of doing OK, they're going to be fine. People who are on the edge, they're going to go down. And I feel like that is part of what has happened in this country in general, but also in Ben. So to me, it's the divide just between the top and the bottom, right? Oh, yeah. How do we integrate? our neighborhoods, so that those folks have great opportunities and also interact across incomes. So we're not just staying in our own little bubbles, and everyone is having the benefit of that. So I think about it. Maybe I'm obviously concerned by East-West, but that figure talked about him also concerns me.

And some of that is also like old bend, new bend, right? Right. I mean, that's a huge component of that. All right, let's Mike.

I put mine on the widening divide, imported wealth and fire, water powered insurance for mostly the same reasons that people already talked about. I think we have a pretty big adaptation challenge in front of us, I think, and I would put that lens, if you will, sort of on climate because I think it's driving a lot of the other parts of that. And we really need to be focused on that. I mean, what are we doing to prepare ourselves for this hotter, drier, more intense storms, more heat, all those sorts of things, and really thinking through how the plan can help us adapt. And so be prepared for the worst case scenarios because they're, in my opinion, they're coming. It's just a question of time and how frequently. I think... something that came up as I was reading through some of this is just how do we think and this isn't necessarily easily relate to one of these but I'm just going to say it now because it's in this reading that's where this came up for me and how do we think about our workforce and and making sure that we're thinking about how we plan the community in a way that assumes over the medium and long term there is always going to be a significant portion of our workforce that is commuting into bed we will not in my opinion we will not solve that problem we are never going to have all of our workforce live here and so what does that mean for infrastructure especially transportation infrastructure how are we making it work um so it's easy for people to get to where they need to go for their employment uh and bend and get back home John Pimentel, wherever that might be, and we can influence you know a lot of that within the city limits, but then I think it also begs the question of how much. John Pimentel, More regional engagement has to happen around issues about growth and transportation, and I know that we're doing that in a variety of ways, and I can reflect that when I first moved here i'm. John Pimentel, There was a lot of concerns from certain parts of the Community about somehow something like metro starting and then it kind of came up surprisingly around the way stuff because I actually think to some extent that's how metro started. John Pimentel, In its early days way back when and there was a lot of fear about that we don't want another form of government, but I think the reality for the. John Pimentel, Our region to thrive, including band and its role as the economic Center is for us to think more regionally so um. Mike SanClements, That if you think is really important and I can influence the infrastructure, especially coming from the north and to some extent coming from the east, because that's I think where most people are using those routes to get into Ben, what does that mean for transit in particular. Mike SanClements, couldn't agree more Mike yeah I think that that's it's just it's just really important. We don't pretend that we can solve, provide housing for everyone who works here and then. It's not going to happen. Some of the forces up here are not going to change. We are very much an amenity-driven community, and I think there's some parts of these forces that are gonna stay present in a way that shapes Bend and makes it somewhat unique.

Okay, great. Who else? Ariel, yeah.

So I put dots on firewater power and insurance imported well reshaped housing and the fiscal straitjacket and I put. The fiscal straitjacket because I think it's in my mind it's linked to the imported wealth reshaped housing there's like it's a. City Council Chambers, it's not just a fiscal straitjacket it's a legal and institutional straitjacket but I also think of like I don't know. City Council Chambers, David copperfield or someone who we need someone who's really good at getting out of straitjackets and what that would look like in terms of policy, I know the memo is really. I appreciated the comments about the ban on real estate transfer taxes and the constraints that measures five and 50 provide. But I want to know, I want to have, I just, I mean, it may be the answer is there, but it, this can't be, you know, it feels like driving towards a turn and the steering wheel is locked. Like it can't be set in stone. We there's gotta be another way around it. And so maybe like we can change state law if that's what, if that's what we need to do. then I want to have a conversation about that. Because fundamentally, I do think that wealth inequality is probably one of the biggest challenges of our time. And it's not just our country, it's in a lot of other countries too. But what does that mean for us locally? Well, we have a lot of constraints and we also have a lot of people who can't afford it to live here. And I think if we find the creative way to invite them to pay for their fair share, maybe we could make that happen. So that's why I put fiscal straitjacket on there because I feel like that one's really, I don't know, we gotta figure out a way around this. And yes to everything that everyone else has said, especially on the fire, water, power and insurance front. I think the one thing that I would like to see a little more focus on is per capita indebtedness. Sometimes I'll look at other cities to see how we compare. And the information is in our comprehensive annual financial report. But to me, it gives us a snapshot of kind of like, how well are we doing to other peer cities? And sometimes it's peer cities in other states. Carmel, Indiana is a fun one because it's a similar population size. They have way more roundabouts than we do. Totally different kind of economic environment, but they also have a lot more debt than we do. Um, so anyway, that's, I think one part of the conversation that I don't want to lose track of that I think is an important fiscal, um, metric in terms of carrying debt that the city is, is, and you know, the city is just one debt owner, but, um, I'd like to see, I'd like to learn more about that outside of the comprehensive annual financial report. Thanks.

Gina and Megan, any thoughts? I put two, three, and four that imported well, three shapes housing. I mean, I think housing is just a fundamental thing that folks in our community need. I do think housing is a human right. And I think it's something we really need to focus on. To me, the growth slows, ages, and diversifies. That kind of connects to the fiscal straitjacket. I think someone else said that. So I kind of went with that just because I feel like the fiscal straitjacket can. And also growth, I mean, growth is sort of the foundation of the whole plan. So I think it does kind of, and whether or not we are, you know, personally, I wonder if even the 150,000 by 2050 is accurate, you know, or if next year we're going to get another population forecast and it's going to be down even lower. But this is like a three-year process or something like that, right? So we'll have some time to kind of adjust that number. But I think that is a really important one to get right, because that is, you know, kind of the reason why we justify bringing in new land, you know, into the urban growth boundary. And that's a, it's a really contentious topic. So, and yeah, fire, water, power, insurance, for all the reasons why everyone's already said it.

Okay. Will those numbers being updated annually during, so we'll get another one in the first quarter next year, is that?

From PSU.

John Potter, yeah from from psu I think there are some subtleties here with respect to establishing our planning period so at some point, and I believe. John Potter, That that i've been researching this a bit with the department land conservation development about at some point, you have to kind of pick a number and go, and so we can have that conversation but. We'll have to see, of course, when new numbers get released. And I guess what I try to remind people is it's a 20-year plan. Within a 20-year plan, numbers go up, numbers go down. So if you're off by 1,000 or 5,000 people, it means maybe your 20-year plan is a 21-year plan, right? Or a 19-year plan. But we do our best. And at some point, we have a legal structure we have to stick within. So we'll probably have to pick some numbers and roll. Yep.

Okay. Megan? I put the fire, water, power, and insurance, and then the widening divide just for, I mean, I will echo what other people said. And then I was the lone state mandate in federal whiplash. And I think the real reason is, I mean, a lot of why we're here today is because of the state mandate. And it just seems to be that it's going to drive a lot of what we have to do. I understand that it's hard to plan for as we grow. I guess it goes back to that discussion that we had with having a plan that's flexible enough to be able to address what's going to be coming down the pipe but um you know just has driven so much of our housing policy and um a lot of our social policy moving forward so let's lay a place okay

All right. So I think that was super helpful. And I think we're all very close together in agreement on a lot of these things. So I hope that's helpful for staff to see as well. One, I want to open it up just because we have time if folks want to opine on other forces. I know that Alex has looked into data and sort of helped us to create this list. One thing, and again, these are not necessarily things that we have control over, but I think maybe you should acknowledge. One thing I want to acknowledge was just the situation in our country with what's going on with the federal government, what's happening in different states does affect Oregon and people looking to come to places like Oregon where they maybe now have more rights than they have in other states. And also looking at Bend and seeing how we show up for our community and who we honor and who we step up to protect and saying, maybe I should live there. and then saying how do i afford to live there or i'm coming here because i'm i need a place where i have more rights but i also need a place to live right and so that's just something that has come up for me of thinking about migration of folks across our country who might be looking to move to places that they feel more welcomed and i want us to be one of those places but it is something we might just need to think about as we move forward with this process that we want to be welcoming and that means John Kane, Beyond doing you know resolutions and proclamations people need to have a place to live in neighborhoods that they can thrive in so that's part of the plan, but. John Kane, i'm not sure how much overall influence we have around the national conversation and what might be driving folks to move here in that area so any other thoughts on sort of driving forces yeah.

I appreciate when the memos reference other cities in certain contexts. And of course, Oregon is not really that big when it comes to finding other examples. But if there are other examples of cities that have the similar characteristic of being a high demand destination, especially for affluent people who move here and drive up prices apart from the, you know, in a way that decouples And of course, I would like to learn more about those other cities, especially if there might be some lessons that we can leave them when it comes to fiscal remedies or even if it means changing state law that's necessary. I find that helpful to see, well, this worked for this other community and we just need to find a way to adapt it to work here.

Just to be honest, I think the mayor of Flagstaff or the mayor of Butte, they're probably going to be looking at us and like, what are we doing? Because I think we're all kind of in a very similar place. But I agree with you, like, especially, you know, you talked about Boulder and Bellingham. You know, no one's figured it all out, but maybe they figured a piece of it out, right? Maybe they figured a piece of it out. And that, I think, would be really helpful to hear about them.

HAB-Jacques Juilland. : I mean i'm not the national economic climate, especially around interest rates and what that means for the ability of projects to go forward the cost of capital and and cost of being in debt on a home. HAB-Jacques Juilland. : worries me and I think just you know we're seeing a lot of signs right now around Treasury monster all these different things that. are very macro. But are they going to be persistent in a way that shows up that makes it harder to get some of our housing stuff goals accomplished? And what does that mean for what we need to do as a community? I mean, if we're if some of that is about local resources that we have control over, especially to help with the parts of the housing spectrum that are harder to build, that's not a question per se for this plan, other than it might be part of a financial strategy or part of a funding strategy. and on transportation, but those forces, I just don't know how we talk about those, because they're always present in the context, whatever you're doing at the time, you're doing one of these plans, right? But do we need to be somehow talking about those explicitly and just thinking about them or putting them in the drivers or influences?

HAB-Juliette Boone, What about Mike also like people who are stuck in their home because they are, they have an X percent interest rate and if they can't go anywhere. Right. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people.

HAB-Juliette Boone, I can't move. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Moving there. Yeah. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Stock.

Yeah, Steve, I think the one that I saw when I was thinking about this missing forces was I'm going to call it trust in government.

Yes.

And and I think because it is a macroscopic force, but I think it's one that we can influence here. We've talked about this on the dais before. We've talked about this amongst each other. So if folks trust. what we're doing we can move the needle much more much more effectively here and so that includes things like transparency that includes things like having our having our stuff as available for pot as long as possible ahead of time so i think it was i think it was maybe ari i can't remember mike who said earlier about that about the the stuff organized on the on the website and available or earlier and that kind of stuff i mean even that is small things but it all matters for us because if we do build that through the communication of this of this growth plan and and building our streets and closing our roads and people are seeing they believe in what we're doing and we're going to be more effective and that is entirely within our control i really feel like that the ways that we shape that it's not going to be 100 but we really have a lot of effect so that was one i was thinking about yeah great

So that's about what metrics we choose to focus on for the plan and making sure we're regularly reporting on them. And, you know, giving ourselves a fair grade. Are we doing we up medium or, you know?

Okay. Any other thoughts on this topics before we wrap up?

Okay, great.

Throwback to you guys.

Next up.

So let's talk next steps. So we have a workshop like this, same place, similar time next Wednesday on the 23rd. And we are striving to launch our social point engagement platform. Like I said, it's not going to be an exact one-to-one in terms of the questions, but to mirror as many of the questions here that we're asking you with the community so that we can get a reflection back. and so next in terms of talking about the content for next week the packet will be smaller we're going to get this packet out on wednesday so it'll have a couple different pieces to it i think the most important piece to cover is just is the presentation so the presentation that we'll deliver here i'd recommend going through that then there is a very robust technical appendices which will provide more detail on kind of how we are how we built the analysis that is going to be reflected in the council presentation and then I think there's another it's pure cities which is a real short piece for you so in terms of the agenda It's going to start off a lot more technical. So yeah, this is the soft start. And then we're going to go technical and then make a transition into visioning and values and visioning. And Alex, I'm sure you have more to share on that, but I just want to kind of helping you get ready for next week. I think that's really a plan to do some reading. And then I think there are some questions that we're asking in the packet that you can think of ahead of time. I'd recommend giving some thought to those questions. And Alex, maybe you can just share more from your perspective.

yeah i think just in a nutshell the next workshop will continue the discussion around the future we dipped our toes in the water of the future with the drivers of change conversation we're going to be talking through what we're calling hypothetical futures one of which as i mentioned earlier is what's the path we're on compared to two other paths right and how do they perform across some of the expectations of the state um And I think that will be really illuminating and it will also probably make for some great conversation. And then Just to emphasize what Brian said, we're gonna pivot from a technical conversation about what do you like about these things and what don't you, to what do we actually want Ben to be in 2050, right? The vision. The visions are rooted in a sense of shared values. So what are the shared values of council? Right, and that's step one on a many step journey through a visioning process that will be probably the part of this process that the broadest cross section of the community touches and engages with and shares input on because it's, thinking of asking people what do they want for their kids in 2050, and it's accessible, right? And through that, we will develop a shared set of values that will be the set of vision statements that become the touchstone for everything that happens later. So if we do a scenario, how is it in service of that vision? How does it perform on the metrics associated with achieving that vision? So it's a commonly held set of expectations about what this plan needs to deliver in 2050, but in more plain accessible language that relates to people's underlying values.

Awesome. That's great. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Well, thank you everyone who came in sat with us through this or watched online and we really appreciate you being interested at this point, and this is just the beginning much more to come. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Much more fun discussion of many levels of this plan and then in all the Community being involved, we hope, as well, so any other final thoughts.

HAB-Terry Palmos- Would you be reporting back to us and sort of the outcome from this one for next week or at some point is it sort of over the two workshops what's what's the plan for that.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Like a summary of the notes.

ashley and i might need your help there are typical meeting minutes for this uh we have notes um that we'll have to write up and present to you i i wasn't i'm not sure if we'll do it before next week but i know we are meeting in october the last week of october so i'd like to buy a little time if we could so we can get our packet out to you uh and we have another i thought i saw someone in the packet but like that's the next work session

towards the end of October.

We'll have a work session in October, primarily around, and Beth, who you see on screen, will be working with you on that, focused on the contextualized housing need and employment opportunities analysis as well. So yeah, we'll need to get some of your input pretty quickly on those topics to keep moving.

I think it'd be helpful for us to see, like, here's what we think you said, we get it right. Yes, yeah, we're happy to do that, absolutely.

Yeah. And thanks, Brianne, for taking all the notes. Yes.

That was helpful.

Thank you. Thank you, council. Thank you.

All right. We'll be adjourned for this meeting. Thanks. Nice to see you.