and her pronouns, and I am hoping that we can look into having a Youth Advisory Council for the city of bends. I handed out an illegible paper for you. And I did not hand out I think it would have been seven or eight illegible papers in order to make the point that two high school seniors approached me with this idea. And they have already been working. And this document came from them and it is pages and pages long. And it just lays out every youth advisory County in this in the state 23 Other cities already have them and how they're organized, what kind of a format they run by the other bits. I received an email from someone with campfire USA, and they say that they could organize a team event to talk about city government and encourage them to join a youth advisory council if it was passed. So the reason I gave you the papers is because this is not in our goals. It's not on our work plan. But we have this bit of energy and momentum from specifically to high school seniors who are going to graduate at the end of the year. And now we've heard from camping or USA that they would like to be involved. So I'm hoping we can have a work session on this me by the end of the year, and hopefully get this ball rolling next year and that is my request.
Okay, any questions from anyone? Or any comments?
I like the idea. I think it's fits with our council goals of looking at innovative ways to engage with our community and youth young people. are historically a really important but challenging boys to engage with and hear from so I like the idea of of exploring it.
And my question for Eric is to have a work session by the end of this year, would we need to remove something else or how would we have staff be able to present something to us?
I mean, I'm looking for staff to present something for this work session. I don't know if we can do it by the end of this year. If you're looking to have a forum for high school students that are doing research to share that that's probably something that we can do. I just would need to look at the schedule to see what's available. It probably be that last meeting in December. And I think we're pretty booked up until then with work sessions.
And obviously, the general request is could we have a work session? And yes, if we can get it somewhere on our schedule, you know, way sooner rather than later. That would be appreciated by all of us and certainly last week in December sounds well,
as long as we're not I'm gonna guess I just wanna be clear with counsel that we're not asking for staff support for something like this at this time. If it's just if it's just high school students sort of presenting research that is fine, but we are just really but we have a compensation committee. We've got our just many things on our workplace that are all converging right now. We've got some pretty big policy work with a tough the SDCs and I just want to make sure staff stays focused on those projects.
I think that if there's a way for us to I agree with what Councillor Mendez said about it aligning with identify new ways to reach out and engage the community. I mean, is there a way to sort of cut to doing something a little bit faster and have sort of a roundtable kind of format as a first try? Yeah, and you know, without having to do a full work session, but that is us having a listening session and talking about both issues as well as what they see as potential ways we might continue something like that and just try something in the first quarter of next year or the second quarter of next year without too much investment of staff time. With preparing for
our game for a central Oregon, our local campfire, they reached out, which is an organization I'm familiar with, and they have great team programs where they're already engaging with teens. So I think what I would support is maybe not a work session, but if we can get a partnership with them to set up a listening session and to talk about some information and what might be meaningful phrase ways for them to engage because I'm not sure that a traditional committee as much as we do them is the best way so there may be other ways that they think would be best for them to talk with us. And I'd also love to talk with the school board. They have a youth group that is communicating with their leadership and I want to hear how that's going as well. So
that'd be something that could make it faster. We have a stewardship subcommittee which you're a part of. That might be just that might be a great venue over the next couple of months. Councillor Riley is as well and they could just have a calm, you can just have a conversation there, versus a full on work session and all of that. So if we just do that, that might be a little bit easier. And let's start the conversation. That's great.
Yeah. And then we can have these students actually telling us what they think. About the eight page a list of other Yaks and how they operate and what might work in Central Oregon. And yes, Mayor, I think that in some level school board, school district would be involved. But whether it's a single central committee, or the schools have their own, you know, are sending reps have their number of different ways to do it. But I think that's a great idea. How about Stewardship Committee?
Everybody okay with that? I think sounds good idea. Okay.
I think that's great. Everybody, appreciate it. It's great.
All right. Next schedule request is from Councillor Mendez.
Yeah, thank you, Mayor. So the city was one of several sponsors of a safe streets for all workshop focused on transportation safety issues and in particular, safer, biking issues back in at the end of July. And I think the workshop was well received and had a lot of participation that generated a lot of really good, interesting ideas. And I would like to ask for a formal debrief and to hear some of staff's ideas for how to best essentially codify some of the best recommendations that came out of that. And I think this fits with our goals, focusing on transportation safety, as well as a lot of the projects that that we're looking at over the next couple of years.
Okay, any questions, comments,
because there was error report of some kind that was produced or some something they'd like images or something that we would be able to see like, even before
that Robert Lewis in the slideshow created? Yeah, so I think some counselors were able to attend some of the event. Yeah, it would be great for us all to get the same information about what happened and kind of the ideas that came out of that. So I think I would support that.
So it may this might be I don't know if this is a good item to have debrief for the council or
I was going to suggest some are similar to the previous item. That the community building subcommittee which has been talking about the bend bikeway and just our items in the TSP and other things that actually we can do a better job of connecting it there and have maybe have a more intimate conversation and a debrief there. That will lead to something that will help us maybe shape a full council discussion if that if that works for then then I'm just concerned with our schedule. We've got a lot of things going on. It's pretty packed. So maybe that
happened before the end of the year anyway, so probably if we want to move a little faster, we could start at the supplementing
Barbie Do you have a question?
I was gonna say that the benzene P O. We also helped sponsor this event and that's another place where we might want a debrief or to just invite the NPO to the debrief hearing. So one way or another I think we want to do that with the MPO as well. And yes, I support this and just even larger than this, why don't we try and get that information that we learned out to the larger public?
No, that's a great point. So start with community building subcommittee. Drum and then and then go from there.
Sounds good. Okay. Okay. Great. Um, okay, so similar to that topic. Our next work session topic is a follow up from the ebike roundtable that was held earlier this year. Welcome representatives leaving commute options Brian Caitlyn, and then Councillor Perkins. been working on this so she's going to hop down and help present some of the information here
there's only one mic there. So if we can make sure it's it's put it in front of you when you're speaking so people online can hear.
You. You want to start I'll start us off
it's on can you hear me? Okay. All right. Thank you for having me for the record. Emerson Levy, State Representative for House District 53 And I'm really excited to be here with you all this evening alongside Mayor Pro Tem and our colleagues that have been working on bike safety and specifically ebike safety as it pertains to our children. So I've already submitted all my comments for the record, but I will briefly go through them. Our goal has been threefold which is to clear up our laws and to really put that clarity in the laws that haven't been updated since 1997. educate our students bike and ebike safety and then work towards long term solutions towards infrastructure and community. Think tonight we're really talking about those the clarity and the law and the education piece. I heard of discussing the regulations My office is proposing. I want it to make it clear that I think our kids should be outside. I think they should be moving and biking. But the goal of these regulations is to put sunlight on the situation that we have now so that we can manage it more effectively. And this will take community effort and it will take community compliance. So heading into the short session, which is in early 2024. I'm going to reserve one of my priority bills we get to to address the lack of the clear clarity and Oregon State statutes regarding electronic bicycles. It's clear that this is really important to this community and something that needs to be done so the first part is bringing the Oregon statute in line with the IGA, the infrastructure investment and jobs act, which also just updated their definition of ebike. So this will tie us completely to federal law which will be helpful on a number of fronts. And then second to that which is kind of a significant change is a proposing legislation that kids 16 And above can be on pedal assist only kids 16 And under cannot be on a throttle bike specifically the throttle and and the current law for the record is that any any child under the age of 16 cannot be on any form of electronic bicycle. We know that's not being followed, but I think it's important to state just for clarity what the law is. Because when we look at the speed and safety and ability to modify it is the throttle that can be modified. It is also quick to jump on that first one which even matters if you're you know 12 and weighed 90 pounds it's actually quite significant in the safety risk. If you look at YouTube or go down or Reddit rabbit hole like I have done recently, you learned that it's very very easy to modify a bicycle I went to see how much it costs to modify a bicycle. Turns out is free. There are many, many, many modifications it is very easy to do. And right now the top speed of the HPC revolution bike has a top speed of 74 miles per hour. However when it shifts the How will you get around the regulation as you ship it and match Oregon law but then you switch it to Off Road. And then that's how you go to 74 miles per hour. And so Secondly, I'm proposing an enforcement statute to make sure our streets are safe as possible. A throttle is more readily identify when it comes to enforcement. However, we discussed at the roundtable we don't have the police force to be able to commit the time for enforcement and pulling over a kid is can be really unsafe and maybe that's not what you want to do. But I believe the statutory mechanism should be there and right now it's it doesn't exist at all. Right now the most expensive find that you have without wearing a helmet is $25. And so that would be the biggest fine for you could be right now too, if you're breaking any kind of bicycle law. And so lastly tutori age limits we're looking at convening an electric micro mobility workgroup to ensure any real regulations are helping to achieve our desired safer safety outcomes and address all the inconsistencies because so many of the statutes work together. We are working with ODOT we have offered a spot to Jim Elliot within bikes and he's accepted or keeping a spot open for Hood River who's also experiencing the same issues we are with kids on bikes for fourth, mobility which is a nonprofit focusing on access to electric micro build micro mobility and mobility ODOT and then we certainly open that up to anyone who wants to be involved. We welcome their their input. So we are working with us speaker refills office on that right now. And we will circulate the list of people on it and we will be moving quite quickly. So I'm happy to answer any questions and thank you for your time.
Thank you Rob levy any questions from anyone? Could I ask?
Thank you so much. What do you mean by it's free to convert a bike
Americolor a councillor Campbell. The way is there's a lot of different ways that you can change a battery pack or snip a wire. Certainly a trip down YouTube, we'll show you how to do that quite quite easily and that overrides the ability. So the speed legally tops out at 20 miles per hour to be considered roadsafe It's quite easy to modify it. So if you go on and you click I want to go 40 miles per hour there's a YouTube video that will show you how to do that.
If I miss him misunderstood, I thought you were saying converting a regular bicycle into an E bike that would take my product costs money. Yeah, okay, I understand. So modifying one type of ebike any bike that is being that has been modified, so that it will be safe and legal in straights is just a snip of the wire to turn that into something that might go 75 Did you say that the
top speed right now in the market is 74 the modifications are there. To do that. I would say that based on again my rabbit hole is it seems like a lot of people were trying to hit the 4045 mark not a lot of people were really trying to go 74 But it is not difficult but this is specifically the throttle bike. Right having the throttle not the pedal assist right. Thank you.
Can you repeat the legal part? That you think you mentioned the IgG I was trying to open something got behind what you were saying so just to catch me up.
I need to go through you in there
so yes, counselor it's AIGA updated the class one class two class three and that was the first time in federal law you saw that E bikes being called out by class
and and so the rules then for different age groups and what they don't exist on the federal level. They don't so what you were talking about under state law and so under
state law our our definition of an E bike goes it is our own definition, which was created back in 1997. And I would say I would say it kind of lines up with what you would call a class two bike but not really because the horsepower is quite high actually up to a level that doesn't even really exist in the market. And so what we would be doing is taking that part out where it has this kind of definition that doesn't completely make sense for E bikes and we would tie it to federal law. So basically any place where we are defining what an E bike is the goal would be to tie it to federal law, and then the age restrictions and specifically to Oregon okay.
We also have cheat Krantz here, when I'm talking about
how put them up on the mic, whoever's talking. You can go there chiefs. Yeah.
Thank you. Share what you're seeing this year. Yeah, I think what we've all seen is a massive explosion of E bikes in the community since May of this year. That really was the big turning point. I don't know what more manufacturers or what but we saw that. Along with that. We saw a lot of enforcement questions about what did the police do about it? And then also we've seen obviously more collisions between bicycles, e bikes and vehicles so you know, our concern is around safety. So around the enforcement question, much like what we've seen bad behavior in bicycle riders, car drivers, even pedestrians sometimes we're seeing the similar thing with ebike riders. So we always look at the most really dangerous act. For enforcement. Or if we have time, which is a lot of questions come to the community as well. You saw that Why didn't you do anything? Well, the officer was in route to another call. So they're not going to stop and, you know, talk to any bike rider when they're in route to another protocol. So resources for enforcement specifically are limited. I think that's the question we get from the community a lot. Why are you enforcing this? It's the same thing as when we have resources for traffic enforcement. We really prefer to Parkway or other high speed where that's really a 6000 pound missile going down the road, which is more likely to cause severe damage to people in our community than an ebike for instance, in a collision so we're troubled by the enforcement mechanism. Part of that problem is is the challenging of trying to find enforcement mechanism that exists and that's we're we're appreciative of our legislative partners to try and address that this coming session. But there are some things that we do try and the challenge also comes in the fact that we've had a couple of times where young writers, early 20s late teens have turned a simple violation stop into a felony elude. So because when you run on it, you are in a vehicle and you have then committed a felony elude for a police officer. So it changes the dynamics of that entire connection. We prefer not to chase those folks, we really aren't going to put them in danger put our officers in danger. But the willingness to to run from the officers is quite challenging as well. So there's a lot to allow with the likes are our primary hope is that through enforcement, limited when when necessary, but really through education. is where we ask for compliance in the community and in kind of as we move forward as a community with the growing, what's just probably the base trend of E bikes, we can only expect that it's going to continue to grow, that we have some sort of change in law and then education around voluntary compliance. So we look for great, thanks.
I just want to on the record, thank Chief Krantz. He was actually the first person that figured out that our statute did not have any enforcement mechanism for E bikes. Pretty much I think, the first in the state, and then we went to our attorneys and they confirmed so I think that just shows how nascent this issue really is. Yes.
Great. Thanks. Around so
just to as we sort of moved from the enforcement side, before we start talking station, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the roundtable that we did have in mid July. It was a it was a really great group of people and a really robust discussion. We had to have our state representative. We had two superintendents from both Redmond and Ben lupine School District, the chief of police from Redmond Commissioner Phil Chang, we had a firefighter. Three counselors were there, our city manager, the assistant city engineer for the City of Bend. The deputy chief was there from the Bend Police Department. Then Parks and Recreation was their individual from Ben bikes and then an individual from ODOT. And we actually ran the roundtable very similar to what we're doing tonight, which is really focused on the three things right so there's the legal and the enforcement side. And we asked you know, what are some gaps what are some what are some ideas you have, what are some things that you need to to enforce in your respective roles? And then we moved on into the education, what are some ways we can do more outreach? How can we get more education in the community about bike safety, and then we finished up talking about the very important infrastructure. So we'll kind of follow that same pattern tonight and I will pass the mic to Brian Rankin from commute options. Part 101 I'm sorry, Brian. Brian's
Good evening. My name is Brian pot when I'm the executive director of commute options. Thank you for having me here this evening. We really appreciate the effort and prioritization of this specific issue that we're having in our community. I wanted to focus on education this evening with you as far as what we've been up to, and future plans for ebike safety for not only youth with the Safe Routes to School program, but also adults as well. So we hosted in September and ebike law webinar that was hosted by Chris Thomas and Associates, really went into great detail about some of the gray areas that we have now that we're trying to clear up. It's hosted on our website accessible to anyone to view at any point in time and we after hearing some of the questions at the roundtable, felt like it was a proper thing to really dive into some of those legal aspects and provide that information. We, as you know, wrapped up our ebike rebate program, which created a excellent collaboration with the bike retailers here. We've since moved forward with that to collaborate them with them about educating folks who are coming in buying bicycles, only youth and families and adults, but everyone who comes into their shops. And so first step with that is we literally have posters up with QR codes that go to our online course. So it's not a fix all but it's a good first step in that direction. Something easy for the retail shops to say here go to that you can learn about ebike safety. We have been specifically Councillor Perkins and I have been working on collaborating with Ben lapply in school district to talk to them about some of the safety concerns that they're seeing as well. And how the Safe Routes to School program can address those through education and also encouragement. We want to talk about that piece too. It's not just the education it's all about how to encourage people to ride bikes and I really appreciate representative levy stating that we do want children and youth on bicycles. That's really important. So another part of that too, is that I approached our contacts at ODOT about expanding the E bike online course we created that in collaboration with the ebike rebate program, because one of our values is safety. And so we weren't going to just provide rebates and just say go for it. We want to provide safety education as well. I want to talk about that in just a moment. As far as the details of the course. But ODOT is wanting to contribute to expanding that statewide and turning it into part of a micro mobility program as well focused not only on E bikes, but scooters and other mobility devices for that first to last mile that's increasingly becoming becoming popular not only in Bend, but across the state. So we'll be collaborating with them in the future on that that's kind of a new direction for them. And some of the work that Representative levy will be coming directly back to commute options to do that work. They're excited about it because we're doing some of the work for them. Which is kind of great. And then another piece upcoming is that we will be on the back panel with city clubs to talk about some of the larger issues. I know that's not formally planned yet but I've heard rumors that represented together doing during the panel and I'm not sure if we're also be there. So that's coming up as well just to talk to the community. And I want to talk about the Safe Routes to School program as well. So we're really thankful to city of Bend we just finished sending like a two year contract for Safe Routes to School, and it's really important because it enables us to go into new places and new schools. The ODOT funding that we are still operating underneath really limited us to Title One schools and so we could not specifically go to the schools that are more fluent that had ie bikes abound and we were restricted by actually speaking to them about this through our contract. So once again, we thank you for expanding our reach. There is potential Surface Transportation block grant funding for Safe Routes to School. It's a RFP that will be coming up. That's in two years. We're definitely going to be applying for that funding. But the city contract ends at that point in time. So I urge you to think about how the city can continue to expand and fund the Safe Routes to School program. After the two year contract is over with. Also circling back to the online ebike safety course. A little bit of background with that beyond how we developed it is it's literally sitting on a development site called articulate. It's not sitting on a hosting site. We created that in collaboration with our Oregon Philly driver program. And the license for that will expire February 22 of 2024 and then it will be off line. We feel like it's important to move it to a learning management system. We don't have any funding to actually do that. We've been working with our web developer to to study and figure out how to move that and the cost associated with it and how to actually get it up so it continues to be online. I want to point out that the League of American Bicyclists and also people from bikes have created a curriculum that's online. The reason why what we've developed is different is literally the class system that they articulate in the online class that does not adhere to what's actually going on in the city of Bend or in Oregon. So that's why ours is slightly different but important. We're not linking to that because of that discrepancy. And what we want to do with this is the only have it served the city of Bend but also all of Oregon and adapted to Oregon laws and what actually gets changed through some of the legislation that Representative levy is doing. So I urge you to think about the future of Safe Routes to School funding and where we can go with this ebike online course. Thank you. Great thanks.
Just to clarify what you were saying about the the other organizations that have bike safety programs, people for bikes and League of American Bicyclists League of American Bicyclists, you're saying they do refer to the class one, two and three. But since the state of Oregon does not that's why you see a need for a separate channel to sort of
tag on to that about communications from the city level and from the school district. Last believe it was last spring. If I'm correct. The police department and the city did do some increased social media messaging about E bikes and there are two billboards planned for October. I've been told with ebike safety messages on them. You know, Brian briefly talked about the school district and the work we've been doing with them. For those of you who have kids in the bend lupine school system, I'm sure you saw this year there was a lot of increased messaging before in in those first days of school about ebike safety. So we're really grateful for that. I pull it's kicked off because of that roundtable that we had in July and the conversations that followed. I guess the one asked that I have tonight before we before we go on to talk about infrastructure is is to see if the city of Bend could sort of be this this communications hub this hub resource hub for information about ebike safety from what we've seen in other communities. Best practices are that the city holds holds this information on on ebike safety on on where you can ride the bikes and and where these these you know safety you can take these safety classes and you know just information in general about about E bikes. But knowing that most of that information is in partnership with other organizations in fact like a lot of this is it's already out there and commute options is doing a lot of it you know other other organizations are doing a lot of this work, but for the city to sort of hold that on our website as as an E bike. Just basically just center of information. And I to see if we what type of resources time it would take to do something like that and potentially also maybe host this this E bike safety course on the city's website.
I don't see any issue with just putting being a hub for the for resources like especially with commute options. I mean you do a fantastic job. We don't need to recreate that. We just need to help promote it. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, I mean, I'm comfortable with that. I think the key thing is what we're going to talk about next and that's the actual work that we're doing. And that's really important that information on the bikeway Safe Routes to School is front and center. I think it's great to have all the more information to them. I'll work with our communication team to make sure everything is tied together so that way, we aren't seeing disjointed, it's all connected right? The same thing but how you're connecting this conversation with enforcement and education and actual projects. To to see if we can.
Great. Okay. David up next. We got 15 minutes. We're good afternoon. Good afternoon, early early evening. Beautiful afternoon early evening out there. David abbess, director of our transportation mobility department. Infrastructure efforts that we do are for all users, e bikes included. So I'm going to talk kind of infrastructure broadly shocker, but it's delivered and maintained by a variety of departments. So our departments across the organization have been working on improving bike infrastructure for years within our the available resources. And we've tried and continue our efforts to get vehicle speeds to slow down have a safer transportation system. work towards that vision zero goal. Chief Krantz talked about the resources there, you know, for speeds that it's not only e bikes, it's in my mind all users so I would make the pitch in support of the needs for the the enforcement side that's a piece of this for sure. And what we see through CSRS and all users in town, to really try to change that that culture and get speeds to slow down. Overall, our system, you know, we got to accommodate every user from freight all the way down to the pedestrians, and therefore it's a safe system approach for all users. We've moved forward with some efforts in that direction and with some standard specification code updates, requiring more shared use paths on collectors and arterioles. You know, the buffering of bike lanes there's intersection treatments and striping standards or options now in the standard drawings, specifications and our standard drawings. Really, you know, trying to look for that safety enhance, try to eliminate right and left conflicts for example, with vehicles and bikes. Were a roundabout first city as everybody knows, you've seen us move forward with a kind of our first protected roundabout at night and Wilson, efforts are in progress to update that roundabout design guide. And, you know, look at those protected type treatments, some more as the option where they're appropriate. It's not a one size fits all for every intersection. But basically, we have the vision in our tsp and we have a lot of puzzle pieces to deliver that. What I mean by that is there's a variety of funding apartments. There's private development engineering projects CIPD and the capital improvements in the geo bond projects. There's our maintenance and operations side. So each project is kind of a little piece of that puzzle for our overall system for all users including the bikes the discussion here tonight. So basically you know, continue those efforts, continue that work that we've been doing embedding or you know, kind of institutionalizing, I'll call it that approach, say street approach for all into codes and specs so that they do apply for whether it's a private development engineering project, CIP, or bond maintenance, kind of all those pieces of the puzzle, and you're starting to see some of those efforts, I think, was some of the geo bond projects, you know, being delivered with with some of those enhancements, that more separation of the vehicular traffic from shared use paths or Bike Ped, is, you know, there's safety benefits there as well as more challenges and operations and maintenance of those facilities. And we'll continue to bounce that move in that direction. Wayfinding project for an example, you know, trying to help guide folks to improve safety, safer routes, more separated or protected routes. And so we still got some work to do. And we're and we're working towards that consistently to try to have all pieces of that puzzle. I'll call it all projects, building upon or connecting in and tying in with each other. And, you know, the transportation fee that's under discussion will help in that engineering, programmatic and operations and maintenance side so that when you talk infrastructure, conversations about E bikes, but it's it's infrastructure for safety of all users, including the bikes. Thank you
Okay. Anything else? Councillor Birkins. Any other discussion? I have a couple of minutes but anybody else? Anything? Anything? Go ahead. Campbell.
I wanted to let Emmert and I'm sorry. Representative Levy. Mayor, if I may speak to the I'm sorry. The formality. tz Thank you Representative. I've been thinking about this problem of not having consistent legislation rules laws all of that for a while. I sir. I'm the chair of our local MPO. And then the chair of the statewide MPO is where as well as being I think, as of this moment, I'm chair of that or CO act, but I brought this up to those levels as well. Think the Oregon MPO consortium in particular, we together represent something like 80% of the people who live in Oregon, and I have in this last legislative session, we were able to put together legislative priorities. So I'm I see that as a place if we need more support statewide, that I would be more than happy to bring that up to this group. If you can, let me know. How can I help? I absolutely think it needs to be statewide. We can't have one rule in Bend and another in Redmond and another Ben parks for exit you know, so I just support this so much. And just want to offer How can I help? What can I do?
Thank you. I can provide a memo of all the proposed changes and we're presenting to the judiciary in November. And state law for this particular would pre empties but it doesn't again, we have what the law is and then we have the reality that we're dealing with and I think that they're just so different. Hopefully we can all get in, in one lane, wondering intended if I could
this is more of question. Another thing that I have thought about and spoken about is just the idea of some sort of license or registration, not as a way to get money, but just as a way to educate people and get them because right now, the excellent work that commute options, does it we're hoping that they click on that they, you know, go there, but they're not required in any way. So I don't know if you have thought about that part of it. If you have any comment about that. I think
we absolutely have thought about that. And I think the barrier to entry is a little high. New York is looking at this for their class three bikes that are on the road. I think we'll let them take a crack at it first, but okay, I think the feedback we've received is the barrier to entry is too high.
Right? I'm with you. We weren't people in these weren't people outside, we want them getting exercise. And then if you don't mind, I was at a neighborhood association meeting last night and someone spoke up about the fact that the vast majority of injuries and deaths are still happening with with cars and and, you know, why are we spending so much time and efforts on what statistically are fewer of the traffic deaths out there? And I certainly have the answer. for that and for myself, but would you mind speaking to that question?
Absolutely. I think that we can, we can do many things at once and when we have our most vulnerable youth on very what can be dangerous but what what also wonderful machines that demands our attention and I think to say that we shouldn't address cars is also incorrect that we can do two things at once. I think both of those things can be true and we can we can attack them separately. But our the safety of our youth will always be a priority for me. And I think it's a priority of the legislature
as well. Absolutely. And then honestly for myself, it was because yeah, we do see a gap. We do see a place where there's nothing and there needs to be something in there. With traditional if you want to say car collisions, there just is not, you know, a clear state legislative thing that we all believe. So thank you. Thank you for your work. I really appreciate this. Do our own counselor and to Brian. Thank you
and our comments questions. Brian, you have a comment? Go ahead.
Thank you. I just want to follow up on your licensing and barrier to entry question. So from our standpoint, we look at it as an encouragement opportunity, providing these resources and education but how do we encourage folks to do it so in other words, not using a stick but using a carrot? I think there's lots of different ways to go about doing that. And I would encourage council to explore using encouragement coupled with education. Thank you. Thank you.
One thing I just would would add is just that when I talk to people in the community about this sometimes there is kind of a disbelief that that something like e bikes can be safe and I think that's in part because maybe they haven't experienced it. If you've had the good fortune to visit other countries where cities the size of Portland, have zero fatalities on their road cities like Oslo. They're the same size as Portland, but they're safe. And part of that is is education. A lot of that is infrastructure. And so having this legal framework to allow age appropriate access, can be safe, can be fun, can be invigorating. We can do this and I'm so grateful to Representative levy for your leadership on this. I think it's it's going to be great and very, very grateful. So thank you and thank you to commute options for also taking the lead on providing the important education piece of this too. Yes. Okay.
Well, thank you so much. I think I think we have a lot of good things to support hopefully going forward, including none but as wills had the pleasure of biking to school this morning on walk and roll the school day was and they were on their cute little elementary kid bikes and that is something we definitely want to encourage and foster and make as safe as possible in our city. So okay, um, we are going to go into executive session now so nobody move at this time the bend City Council will hold an executive session pursuant to NRS 19260 to discuss deliberations with persons designated to negotiate real property transactions. The session is closed to all members of the public except for representatives of the news media. Representatives of the news media are directed not to report on any of the deliberations during Executive Session except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made an executive session at the end of the executive session we will return to regular session and we'll be back for our business meeting at 7pm. Thanks