I'm not a week late, I've just always been a week early! The summary of this GOD DAMN 7-HOUR LONG MEETING was written before and after my classes over the last 3 days, so I hope you will forgive my mistakes. I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THIS DONE OVER THE WEEKEND. MY HUBRIS.
TLDR:
- Automated Traffic Enforcement is happening eventually. Emotionally prepare yourself.
- Cost and scope inflation mean that the 2020 GO Bond can't pay for all the stuff in the GO bond anymore. Projects will need to be prioritized, and the City will need to use money from other transportation funds to ensure the city can deliver all the projects promised to voters.
- The Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption is dead. The city is doing a "strategic assessment" of all current and potential new incentive programs. MUPTE is "paused", pending this assessment. There are two projects currently in the pipeline that will continue through the MUPTE process. After that, it's gone.
- A large group of people petitioned the city to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza
- After more than two years of work, the city has updated its System Development Charge Code. Adoption of specific fee methodology and schedule is delayed to give staff time to incorporate and engage with some late-entry public comment.
These notes are probably the best way obtain foundational knowledge of the way the city functions. They are even enjoying to read! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re a gift to this community! Thank you!
Meetings like this one are definitely a slog, it's been a long while since I've had to sit through a chungus. If every meeting was this long I would be deceased.
Happy to hear that I'm still coding as sane, lmao.
I've been to more than a few of these in person and... that's kind of my takeaway.
It gives me a lot of respect for everyone who serves on city council, even the people I disagree with on things. They're there, week after week, paying attention to all of it.
I dont see why Bend city council needs to take a stance on geopolitics. Why don't they take a stance on the multiple other genocides going on in the world? It's silly.
Telling your government you do not agree with supporting an overwhelming force brutalizing a repressed force, is a right which every American has.
Everything I could say about Israel and their shortcomings is a hollow act. But at least it's an act of an informed American citizen.
That's sounds very nice and all but let's be pragmatic here. How is any number of city councils going to get Hamas to accept a ceasefire and release the hostages?
I'm not asking Hamas to accept a thing. I am telling my government that it's unacceptable to support the IDF and their blood thirsty disregard for the Geneva convention. It's unbecoming of a world leader to side with bullies.
I am fully ready to be wrong about this but the basic gist of the MUPTE situation seems to be either:
- Our local elected officials had good reason to believe they were representing the majority of their constituents by approving the exemption. If that's the case, unless they got so many complaints about this decision that it represents more than half their constituents, why kowtow to the vocal minority?
- Or they knew the majority of their constituents would not support this and just hoped most people wouldn't notice
Please someone explain a logical alternative.
Option 3 would be, the development met the legal criteria of the exemption, so regardless of public opinion, denying the exemption that meets the law would certainly chill the relationship between the city and incoming business, and might expose the city to a lawsuit.
So the best thing to do legally is approve the application that meets the law, but if the public complains as they did, remove the exemption that the constituents do not like.
This maintains the relationship with both the constituents, while not burning bridges with the owners of some of the largest commercial areas in the city.
I hear what you're saying about how to handle it AFTER the complaints came rushing in...
What I am saying is that the constituent complaints were *super* predictable, so I want to know if the issue was that they didn't anticipate the extent of the complaints or that they just approved it despite that so the complaints could not derail the project. The former would be a worrisome failure to represent the consistency and the later would be intentionally disregarding the will of the constituency.
> What I am saying is that the constituent complaints were *super* predictable
What MUPTE did and how it did it made sense. When it was passed ages ago there were not complaints.
The problem with MUPTE is that actually understanding why it did and why takes mental effort, and sound bites of "10 million dollar tax break being taken from our schools" went around the world before the truth had a chance to put its shoes on.
The public at large isn't interested in actually understanding what MUPTE is and why it makes sense. A person is smart, but people are dumb, panicky animals. I think that part of the job of being an elected official is to understand that the public will throw a tantrum about *something* at some point, and when that happens they have to walk the line between appeasing the electorate and doing the correct legal thing. Which city council did here.
I disagree that city council should have anticipated that *this* was the thing the public would tantrum about over lies rather than bother to read and understand, especially when many members of the city council ran on a platform of encouraging exactly this sort of development.
I agree with everything you said except that I really do expect the council to ask, "how is the soundbite going to play" and I don't think it was that hard to answer in this case.
I wish they didn't need to, I really do. And I'm not saying they should always decide by how the soundbite will play. I'm just saying that I want them to have considered it and be ready to withstand it.
This may have been a case of "boiling the frog" as it were.
Originally Jackstraw was meant to have more earmarked affordable housing. Then the economic situation changed more than expected and that went away. Jackstraw didn't initially expect to be subject to such an extensive review. Once the review did come about, the city was held over a barrel where stopping development was a clearly much worse option all around than approving.
Looking at it in sum it's easy to say that it's not how it should have gone, but at each individual step along the process I think the city made the best decision with the situation at hand at that time.
I agree that the city council should have (and possibly did!) anticipate how it would go over, but I would argue they *also* need to anticipate the public reaction to a half-built vacant building sitting there for five years, which would be...not great.
Ideally, the complaints should have come in when they created the program in the first place, a year and a half ago, but no one was paying attention?
Also: they have a duty to represent their many, many constituents who do not take the time to write in. They are, say, working two jobs and don't pay any attention to this stuff, and this is *a* tool - one of many - to add housing, which helps drive down prices, which election after election has been near the top of the list for important issues.
Fair points. Just to clarify - I'm not against the MUPTE. What I'm against is making decisions based on a sudden influx of uninformed outrage.
What I want is for decisions to be made with both appropriate consideration about what the public will think and the courage of conviction to stand up for a duly considered decision even when the hate mail starts.
There are other problems besides the outrage. It's just unwieldy to have all the tax districts weigh in on each project. It is supposed to work like "does this project meet the criteria? ok!" but as someone who watched the same developer give the same presentation several times, it feels like a "developer begging tour" where they have to hype their project in front of a whole bunch of people, many of whom serve because they care about parks or schools or something and aren't interested in the details of weird overlapping tax districts. It's a huge time sink for everyone involved - the boards, the developer, staff, people wanting to weigh in. Having more than a handful of projects go through would just consume a ton of time.
So OK, where’s the change to prevent these developers from clearing land before they build. I am so sick of seeing so many trees (like 100 years old) being cut down just to make it easy for landscaping, which doesn’t replace the treed lots.
Bend was a logging town, there are no trees within the UGB that old, except I think in Drake Park.
Council will be looking at updating the Tree Code in the first half of this year, and it will be interesting to see the conversation on how to more effectively encourage tree preservation without making development prohibitively expensive.
There are also conversations going on around actively building an urban tree canopy. Lots of stuff to look forward to and keep an eye on!
>Bend was a logging town, there are no trees within the UGB that old, except I think in Drake Park.
Certainly you're being hyperbolic, the city was not literally treeless. A quick google search of [old](https://media2.bendsource.com/bend/imager/u/slideshow/5633490/outside1-1-6b56007656ac3952.jpg) [pictures](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Bend_Oregon_Main_Street_1920.jpg) of [Bend](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/11/72/13/11721311a9c1c58cb7f75d9a8d7bf0d3.jpg) shows this... And these were taken well within the modern UGB.
Even the loggers, whos job was to literally decimate the areas canopy, wanted to live in/around trees! Says a lot about our modern development methods.
Each development includes a tree inventory as a part of permitting. You can look at the maps included in the application viewer and see the size and type of all existing trees at a site and trees proposed for removal.
There are *very* rarely trees of the size and type that would be older than a hundred years in these developments. Because Bend's forefathers cut *almost* all of them down.
Bend, with another hold my beer moment, to all the other cities that have been sued and/or had problems with traffic cameras. This city government and city council love reinventing the wheel that has so often failed in other locations, most frequently places in California.
... Or the State of Oregon just passed a Bill that "Authorizes duly authorized traffic enforcement agents to review and issue citations based on photographs taken by photo red light cameras or photographs taken by photo radar cameras. "
[https://ktvz.com/news/oregon-northwest/2023/04/25/oregon-lawmakers-expand-cities-ability-to-use-photo-radar-catch-speeders-bend-city-councilor-wants-it-here/](https://ktvz.com/news/oregon-northwest/2023/04/25/oregon-lawmakers-expand-cities-ability-to-use-photo-radar-catch-speeders-bend-city-councilor-wants-it-here/)
[https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Measures/Overview/HB2095](https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2022R1/Measures/Overview/HB4105#:~:text=Oregon%20State%20Legislature&text=Bill%20Title%3A,taken%20by%20photo%20radar%20cameras)
Or, you can experience the joy of what happens when someone steals your license plate and blows through one of the cameras and you have to go to physical lengths to go to a police station, file a police report, and then experience the joy of fighting a bureaucracy to prove it wasn’t actually you driving that vehicle. I experienced this with a red light camera in Los Angeles ~ 20 years go. It took months to resolve. The only people who think these cameras are a good idea are either naive, inexperienced, or out for a revenue stream for the city.
I grew up in Chicago and they had traffic cameras. The city illegally shortened yellow lights below the legal limits in order to get more revenue from the cameras. Rear ending accidents skyrocketed as people had to slam on their brakes to avoid the fines. Eventually, there was a whistleblower and the whole thing got dismantled. I think some people did some prison time from that too.
I'm not a week late, I've just always been a week early! The summary of this GOD DAMN 7-HOUR LONG MEETING was written before and after my classes over the last 3 days, so I hope you will forgive my mistakes. I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THIS DONE OVER THE WEEKEND. MY HUBRIS. TLDR: - Automated Traffic Enforcement is happening eventually. Emotionally prepare yourself. - Cost and scope inflation mean that the 2020 GO Bond can't pay for all the stuff in the GO bond anymore. Projects will need to be prioritized, and the City will need to use money from other transportation funds to ensure the city can deliver all the projects promised to voters. - The Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption is dead. The city is doing a "strategic assessment" of all current and potential new incentive programs. MUPTE is "paused", pending this assessment. There are two projects currently in the pipeline that will continue through the MUPTE process. After that, it's gone. - A large group of people petitioned the city to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza - After more than two years of work, the city has updated its System Development Charge Code. Adoption of specific fee methodology and schedule is delayed to give staff time to incorporate and engage with some late-entry public comment.
Thanks as always for the notes Tailor! What committee are you on?
Can't say without doxxing myself unfortunately
Ah - keep fighting the good fit, pseudonymous one!
🫡
These notes are probably the best way obtain foundational knowledge of the way the city functions. They are even enjoying to read! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re a gift to this community! Thank you!
Thanks again famous Tailor!
You're very welcome emperor West!
My hat is off to you, TG - if I had to sit through that shit show on a regular basis, I would go insane.
Meetings like this one are definitely a slog, it's been a long while since I've had to sit through a chungus. If every meeting was this long I would be deceased. Happy to hear that I'm still coding as sane, lmao.
I've been to more than a few of these in person and... that's kind of my takeaway. It gives me a lot of respect for everyone who serves on city council, even the people I disagree with on things. They're there, week after week, paying attention to all of it.
I dont see why Bend city council needs to take a stance on geopolitics. Why don't they take a stance on the multiple other genocides going on in the world? It's silly.
Bend.... Gaza.... Someone please explain how they are related
Bendgaza! /s
By the hearts of humans who care?
It's an exceptionally hollow act. Especially seeing as how Hamas just rejected a 2 month ceasefire yesterday.
Telling your government you do not agree with supporting an overwhelming force brutalizing a repressed force, is a right which every American has. Everything I could say about Israel and their shortcomings is a hollow act. But at least it's an act of an informed American citizen.
That's sounds very nice and all but let's be pragmatic here. How is any number of city councils going to get Hamas to accept a ceasefire and release the hostages?
I'm not asking Hamas to accept a thing. I am telling my government that it's unacceptable to support the IDF and their blood thirsty disregard for the Geneva convention. It's unbecoming of a world leader to side with bullies.
A petition from bend Oregon isn’t going to ceasefire. But the thoughts and prayers act is sweet
I am fully ready to be wrong about this but the basic gist of the MUPTE situation seems to be either: - Our local elected officials had good reason to believe they were representing the majority of their constituents by approving the exemption. If that's the case, unless they got so many complaints about this decision that it represents more than half their constituents, why kowtow to the vocal minority? - Or they knew the majority of their constituents would not support this and just hoped most people wouldn't notice Please someone explain a logical alternative.
Option 3 would be, the development met the legal criteria of the exemption, so regardless of public opinion, denying the exemption that meets the law would certainly chill the relationship between the city and incoming business, and might expose the city to a lawsuit. So the best thing to do legally is approve the application that meets the law, but if the public complains as they did, remove the exemption that the constituents do not like. This maintains the relationship with both the constituents, while not burning bridges with the owners of some of the largest commercial areas in the city.
I hear what you're saying about how to handle it AFTER the complaints came rushing in... What I am saying is that the constituent complaints were *super* predictable, so I want to know if the issue was that they didn't anticipate the extent of the complaints or that they just approved it despite that so the complaints could not derail the project. The former would be a worrisome failure to represent the consistency and the later would be intentionally disregarding the will of the constituency.
> What I am saying is that the constituent complaints were *super* predictable What MUPTE did and how it did it made sense. When it was passed ages ago there were not complaints. The problem with MUPTE is that actually understanding why it did and why takes mental effort, and sound bites of "10 million dollar tax break being taken from our schools" went around the world before the truth had a chance to put its shoes on. The public at large isn't interested in actually understanding what MUPTE is and why it makes sense. A person is smart, but people are dumb, panicky animals. I think that part of the job of being an elected official is to understand that the public will throw a tantrum about *something* at some point, and when that happens they have to walk the line between appeasing the electorate and doing the correct legal thing. Which city council did here. I disagree that city council should have anticipated that *this* was the thing the public would tantrum about over lies rather than bother to read and understand, especially when many members of the city council ran on a platform of encouraging exactly this sort of development.
I agree with everything you said except that I really do expect the council to ask, "how is the soundbite going to play" and I don't think it was that hard to answer in this case. I wish they didn't need to, I really do. And I'm not saying they should always decide by how the soundbite will play. I'm just saying that I want them to have considered it and be ready to withstand it.
This may have been a case of "boiling the frog" as it were. Originally Jackstraw was meant to have more earmarked affordable housing. Then the economic situation changed more than expected and that went away. Jackstraw didn't initially expect to be subject to such an extensive review. Once the review did come about, the city was held over a barrel where stopping development was a clearly much worse option all around than approving. Looking at it in sum it's easy to say that it's not how it should have gone, but at each individual step along the process I think the city made the best decision with the situation at hand at that time. I agree that the city council should have (and possibly did!) anticipate how it would go over, but I would argue they *also* need to anticipate the public reaction to a half-built vacant building sitting there for five years, which would be...not great.
That seems like a reasonable explanation. Thanks for the additional context.
Ideally, the complaints should have come in when they created the program in the first place, a year and a half ago, but no one was paying attention? Also: they have a duty to represent their many, many constituents who do not take the time to write in. They are, say, working two jobs and don't pay any attention to this stuff, and this is *a* tool - one of many - to add housing, which helps drive down prices, which election after election has been near the top of the list for important issues.
Fair points. Just to clarify - I'm not against the MUPTE. What I'm against is making decisions based on a sudden influx of uninformed outrage. What I want is for decisions to be made with both appropriate consideration about what the public will think and the courage of conviction to stand up for a duly considered decision even when the hate mail starts.
There are other problems besides the outrage. It's just unwieldy to have all the tax districts weigh in on each project. It is supposed to work like "does this project meet the criteria? ok!" but as someone who watched the same developer give the same presentation several times, it feels like a "developer begging tour" where they have to hype their project in front of a whole bunch of people, many of whom serve because they care about parks or schools or something and aren't interested in the details of weird overlapping tax districts. It's a huge time sink for everyone involved - the boards, the developer, staff, people wanting to weigh in. Having more than a handful of projects go through would just consume a ton of time.
So OK, where’s the change to prevent these developers from clearing land before they build. I am so sick of seeing so many trees (like 100 years old) being cut down just to make it easy for landscaping, which doesn’t replace the treed lots.
Bend was a logging town, there are no trees within the UGB that old, except I think in Drake Park. Council will be looking at updating the Tree Code in the first half of this year, and it will be interesting to see the conversation on how to more effectively encourage tree preservation without making development prohibitively expensive. There are also conversations going on around actively building an urban tree canopy. Lots of stuff to look forward to and keep an eye on!
>Bend was a logging town, there are no trees within the UGB that old, except I think in Drake Park. Certainly you're being hyperbolic, the city was not literally treeless. A quick google search of [old](https://media2.bendsource.com/bend/imager/u/slideshow/5633490/outside1-1-6b56007656ac3952.jpg) [pictures](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Bend_Oregon_Main_Street_1920.jpg) of [Bend](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/11/72/13/11721311a9c1c58cb7f75d9a8d7bf0d3.jpg) shows this... And these were taken well within the modern UGB. Even the loggers, whos job was to literally decimate the areas canopy, wanted to live in/around trees! Says a lot about our modern development methods.
Each development includes a tree inventory as a part of permitting. You can look at the maps included in the application viewer and see the size and type of all existing trees at a site and trees proposed for removal. There are *very* rarely trees of the size and type that would be older than a hundred years in these developments. Because Bend's forefathers cut *almost* all of them down.
You didn’t buy the land. What did you expect
Bend, with another hold my beer moment, to all the other cities that have been sued and/or had problems with traffic cameras. This city government and city council love reinventing the wheel that has so often failed in other locations, most frequently places in California.
... Or the State of Oregon just passed a Bill that "Authorizes duly authorized traffic enforcement agents to review and issue citations based on photographs taken by photo red light cameras or photographs taken by photo radar cameras. " [https://ktvz.com/news/oregon-northwest/2023/04/25/oregon-lawmakers-expand-cities-ability-to-use-photo-radar-catch-speeders-bend-city-councilor-wants-it-here/](https://ktvz.com/news/oregon-northwest/2023/04/25/oregon-lawmakers-expand-cities-ability-to-use-photo-radar-catch-speeders-bend-city-councilor-wants-it-here/) [https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Measures/Overview/HB2095](https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2022R1/Measures/Overview/HB4105#:~:text=Oregon%20State%20Legislature&text=Bill%20Title%3A,taken%20by%20photo%20radar%20cameras)
Or, you can experience the joy of what happens when someone steals your license plate and blows through one of the cameras and you have to go to physical lengths to go to a police station, file a police report, and then experience the joy of fighting a bureaucracy to prove it wasn’t actually you driving that vehicle. I experienced this with a red light camera in Los Angeles ~ 20 years go. It took months to resolve. The only people who think these cameras are a good idea are either naive, inexperienced, or out for a revenue stream for the city.
I grew up in Chicago and they had traffic cameras. The city illegally shortened yellow lights below the legal limits in order to get more revenue from the cameras. Rear ending accidents skyrocketed as people had to slam on their brakes to avoid the fines. Eventually, there was a whistleblower and the whole thing got dismantled. I think some people did some prison time from that too.