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11/15/23 Work Session
Unknown Speaker
I just Stay
Unknown Speaker
Okay.
Melanie Kebler
Good evening, everyone. We're gonna start our Ben city council work session. Our first item is an update on our community development fee and Catherine Norris needs to
Speaker 1
put something on the record. Yes, I have to petition for an actual conflict because of my employment with heating homes and the community development fees that we're discussing right now in this work session items would most likely have an impact on hidden home so I'm going to recuse myself and
Barb Campbell
leave the room for this item.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you. Alright.
Manager King
Turn it over to Sharon WETA.
Melanie Kebler
Yeah. So
Speaker 2
as Colin is trying to get into the meeting to share slides, we're going to it's mostly going to be Colin is going to talk to you tonight with an update on Community and Economic Development fee increases. So if you recall during budget deliberations back in May, we had a lot of discussion on proposed fee increases for building planning and engineering. We adopted the increases you adopted a fee increases July one that were lower than we had projected in the budget. And as part of that fee resolution adoption counselor Riley had asked that we come back with an update and kind of a forecast of what fee increases would be needed over the next couple of years. In order for us to meet our financial obligations and one at that work session in November. So we're here today to follow up on that. I can cover some of the background slides as they're getting logged in. So you have the mic over to us or some anyone said that to me. Um, so a little bit of background when we're able to share slides. The first background slide we had is for the most part an update from a slide we had during budget deliberations kind of explaining how we got where we are and having the speed conversation. You'll see in some of Collin slides where over the last couple of years we haven't had we've had pretty limited fee increases over the last five years. There's only been a couple of years that even had any increases. And that was because we had enough cash on hand or reserves that we didn't we didn't have a solid honestly we'd have a solid justification of doing significant fee increases at that time. Well, fiscal year 23. The year that just ended in June was kind of this perfect storm of the revenues kind of leveling off then we were able to fill a lot of the vacant positions that we had in the department, which is great because that allowed an increase in turnaround times and permit review times. But that happened at a time that revenues were kind of leveling off. And our reserve levels and cash on hand to sustain those operations started declining and we aren't we're not covering our expenses with our annual revenues. So wanted to take a look. We've been working with a stakeholder group, and I'll just start talking through the first couple of slides. We had an internal staff team that was myself Colin Ben Hansen, the Economic Development Manager finance staff and met with carta from the Central Oregon Builders Association Katie Brooks from the chamber, Gary Nora, who is with rnh construction he's also on the bend Economic Development Advisory Board or be DAB West price with a local CPA firm Jim Sanborn with Hayden Holmes. He's also an ex officio member of B dad. And then we had several meetings and which representatives from the State Building Code Division participated. So really working closely we met five times from July through mid October, really pouring through to kind of get everybody on the on the same page in terms of an understanding of this is this is a need not a want. Because we want to maintain those turnaround times and just have prudent financial management to ensure we're covering our costs with our revenues on an annual basis. It's also bringing us in line with our financial policies. So you all have fiscal policies that were most recently adopted or updated in June of 
this year for all of the community and economic development funds and building planning. Building planning and engineering have a minimum reserve target of six months of operating reserves. So that means we want to have enough cash on hand to have to cover six months of our operating costs. If no other revenues were to come in. The State Building Code has a recommended best practice of 12 to 18 months on the building side. So that's just a little bit of framework and background to set it up as Colin will go into kind of more of the details and with some updated graphs that you've seen in some work sessions last spring and budget deliberations showing what those kind of what that financial picture looks like with no infant fee increases and then what it would take going out until 2028 to make sure we're we're looking out over this five year horizon to really have that strong financial planning but also give the development community some idea so they can start planning and building this into our performance. Obviously you're not we're not proposing any fee increases right now. We don't have any fee increases proposed until next July. And you can't bind future councils but similar as the way we handle our utility rate models, doing those long term forecasts, just to give you some idea, kind of what that's gonna look like. So with that kind of covered the first couple of slides. So then I'll turn it over to Colin.
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this year for all of the community and economic development funds and building planning. Building planning and engineering have a minimum reserve target of six months of operating reserves. So that means we want to have enough cash on hand to have to cover six months of our operating costs. If no other revenues were to come in. The State Building Code has a recommended best practice of 12 to 18 months on the building side. So that's just a little bit of framework and background to set it up as Colin will go into kind of more of the details and with some updated graphs that you've seen in some work sessions last spring and budget deliberations showing what those kind of what that financial picture looks like with no infant fee increases and then what it would take going out until 2028 to make sure we're we're looking out over this five year horizon to really have that strong financial planning but also give the development community some idea so they can start planning and building this into our performance. Obviously you're not we're not proposing any fee increases right now. We don't have any fee increases proposed until next July. And you can't bind future councils but similar as the way we handle our utility rate models, doing those long term forecasts, just to give you some idea, kind of what that's gonna look like. So with that kind of covered the first couple of slides. So then I'll turn it over to Colin. Speaker 3
Thank you. Sorry, my apologies for the technical difficulties. But great lead in Thank you, Sharon. So I'm going to start the three main funds within CDD are the building engineering and planning funds and I'm gonna go through them in that order. got quite a few slides in 30 minutes for this item. So I'm gonna go fairly quickly, but I'm going to spend a little bit more time on the building slides just to explain how they work because the other two funds are are organized the same way so this is the building safety fund. And I call this slide the problem statement. It goes back to the fiscal year 2019 where you could see things were looking pretty good. The top line, which is brownish or maroon is our reserves so there were 24 months of reserves back then that middle or that lower line which is greenish is our revenue and and the blue bar is our expenditures. So what you're seeing there in 2019 is where you'd like it to be. So the expenditures are below your revenues and you have healthy reserves. But we had good pretty good reserves and so moving forward, we didn't take some fee increases when we was it was possible. We just didn't because reserves were so healthy. And that worked for a few years until we get to really 2023 last year and started really eating into those reserves to the extent that they are in our in our expenses went up. So you can really see that we have not been covering our expenses with our revenues and we are our reserves are really going down so what we did where we are right now is in that 2024 bar that second bar to the to the left, and we took a 12% increase for building went into effect July one but you can see revenues are still below expenditures and we're still eating into reserves, even with what we've done so far. So what I was asked to do back in June when this the the fee schedule that were in was adopted was to come back tonight and explain our plan for moving forward so the furthest bar on the right actually could you go back to the first bar on the right is the next year of our biennium. So that's that's fiscal year 2025. And that is showing what we are projecting or what we are recommending for the rest of this budget is to a 20% increase. July one followed by a 10% increase in January one and we're breaking it up into two bites during that one fiscal year just to to give people a little bit more time to anticipate it and build it into their performance. Next slide. So even though we're still in the red for the biennium, this slide shows how we can justify that by looking into the future budget cycles. So if we look into fiscal year 2026, which is the first year of the next biennium, we would be asking for a 10% increase July one and a 10 for an additional 10% increase that that January one so it'd be July one of 25 and July or January 2026. Same thing for fiscal year 2120 27 with a little bit lower increase for 27 and 28 at 5%. Which gets us back to where we should be with we're adjusting to cost of living CPI or what we can ascertain during our budget preparations for what our expenditure increases will be any questions on this one?
Unknown Speaker
Let's keep going. Okay, so
Speaker 3
I'm 
going to cover engineering. If you remember from my presentations in the spring, the engineering fund is in better shape than the other two funds, but it still has the same characteristics of not covering expenses and eating into reserves just not as severely as the other funds. So what was happening with engineering they did a 12% increase in July one I think that should be 10%. But it was a double digit increase in on July one. This is what happens if we do nothing if you go to the next slide, what we're proposing for July one of 2024, which would be the first first day of the fiscal year 2025. Fiscal Year is to do a 12% increase and then a 5% increase in January and that gets those lines moving in the right direction at least to get the revenue line moving in the right direction. And similarly to the building fund. We would ask for a 10% July one of 2020 of the 2026 fiscal year and then a 5% in January and then like the building fund out into the out years between 27 and 2028 get more into that maintenance increase that mirrors what our projected or what it what our actual budget increases are we do recognize that we're making a lot of assumptions here. And so we will be revisiting that as we move forward. Just just this is helping us inform the decision that we've been making for the for the fiscal year 2025 To say it is okay if we continue with this plan moving forward in future budget cycles. And we can cover the planning one
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going to cover engineering. If you remember from my presentations in the spring, the engineering fund is in better shape than the other two funds, but it still has the same characteristics of not covering expenses and eating into reserves just not as severely as the other funds. So what was happening with engineering they did a 12% increase in July one I think that should be 10%. But it was a double digit increase in on July one. This is what happens if we do nothing if you go to the next slide, what we're proposing for July one of 2024, which would be the first first day of the fiscal year 2025. Fiscal Year is to do a 12% increase and then a 5% increase in January and that gets those lines moving in the right direction at least to get the revenue line moving in the right direction. And similarly to the building fund. We would ask for a 10% July one of 2020 of the 2026 fiscal year and then a 5% in January and then like the building fund out into the out years between 27 and 2028 get more into that maintenance increase that mirrors what our projected or what it what our actual budget increases are we do recognize that we're making a lot of assumptions here. And so we will be revisiting that as we move forward. Just just this is helping us inform the decision that we've been making for the for the fiscal year 2025 To say it is okay if we continue with this plan moving forward in future budget cycles. And we can cover the planning one Speaker 4
contrast how frequently do we revisit the fee increases per biennium or can we do it more frequently?
Manager King
We do a fee increases every year annually. But what we're talking about here is actually mid year adjustment as well in January for the first to two years and then then look back on an annual basis. Typically
Melanie Kebler
would do just do one time but the proposal is to sort of step up and then step up a little more and kind of spread it out. Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 3
So in this one is the planning fun and as I said this one is in a little worse condition than the other simply because the reserve doesn't have the reserves to support eating into them as much as with the other funds. And so you can you can see like the other funds were, if we did nothing, which is what this is showing for the 2025 fiscal year. We're basically off the bottom with reserves by the end of the fiscal year. But planning did take a 20% increase July one of 2020 fiscal year 2024 which was this 
past July. Next slide this shows actually go back to the previous slide this shows on the very right side is what we're proposing for the last year of this biennium, which would be a 20% increase July one of 2024 followed by a 15% increase in January 1 of 2025. This again, puts us right where we want to be at the end of fiscal year 2026. So it's a playing the long game here like the other funds and then but that would take 10% and a 5% in 2026 Another 10% in 2027 just to keep those reserves a little closer to otter minimum reserve levels are and then by 2028 We're in that yearly sort of maintenance level of B increases. So the here's an example just on a building permit, you could go through hundreds and hundreds of different types of examples, but one that most people want to sort of have a flavor of what does this mean? This would be the increases at the end of fiscal year 2020 Fox we're starting January 1 of 2025. If you added that, that July and January together, currently a building permit for a about a 1900 square foot house with a garage is about 57 and a half $1,000 That would
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past July. Next slide this shows actually go back to the previous slide this shows on the very right side is what we're proposing for the last year of this biennium, which would be a 20% increase July one of 2024 followed by a 15% increase in January 1 of 2025. This again, puts us right where we want to be at the end of fiscal year 2026. So it's a playing the long game here like the other funds and then but that would take 10% and a 5% in 2026 Another 10% in 2027 just to keep those reserves a little closer to otter minimum reserve levels are and then by 2028 We're in that yearly sort of maintenance level of B increases. So the here's an example just on a building permit, you could go through hundreds and hundreds of different types of examples, but one that most people want to sort of have a flavor of what does this mean? This would be the increases at the end of fiscal year 2020 Fox we're starting January 1 of 2025. If you added that, that July and January together, currently a building permit for a about a 1900 square foot house with a garage is about 57 and a half $1,000 That would Mike Riley
go up to sorry. Those homes are really expensive.
Speaker 3
Looking up at the top there so I did pull the October numbers from the beacon report which are a little higher than others but it did say that the median sales price is 735. So with with the proposed fiscal year 2025 On July, one increase that would go up to 6732 which would add almost $1,000 to that, and then the January one one would add another 680 to take it up to a total of seven $7,412. To put that into perspective, that would represent about 1% of today's Dr will last month's median home price in bed up from about 8% If you measured it today, so the 57 up to 74.
Manager King
So today it's point 8% of a value of a home. What this increase represents is going from point A to 1.8 2.2% of the cost.
Barb Campbell
total value of the home no costs, right.
Mike Riley
The buyer immediate
Barb Campbell
exactly that
Mike Riley
percentage compared to other peer communities and the is there any is there any?
Speaker 4
You haven't done the math on that. Did you look at previous years I mean is this in line with where we were at three years ago?
Speaker 3
I'm not sure if we could I could pull that information. It's I mean, the the permit costs have been pretty steady. As you can see we've only taken a few percentage increase as well and prices have gone up fairly significantly. So I would say that it's probably been diverging
Manager King
was a Sharon said you know the bigger picture here is we have a goes back to the general fund. We've got a constrained general fund. A lot of cities will pick it on the planning side we'll take their general fund and buy down those fees. We are pretty much a fee supported service. We have a pretty deep one of the lowest if not the lowest tax rate for a city our size. So we just don't have the luxury to subsidize. So we rely on fees. And if this discussion came out during that little small group meetings where I think they pretty quickly realized we've got a structural problem and this goes to our efforts to look strategically at revenue options for public safety and the levy the fire Levy. Of course we're looking at a transportation, sustainable revenue for transportation, all has all of that has impacts on our general fund. In sort of the root of some of these issues and challenges is that low tax rate so I think this just sort of puts it into perspective though from a transactional perspective. You know, what the cost of processing the the permits really the true cost really is because for a lot of cities, it's very hidden because your substation subsidization. Right,
Melanie Kebler
so comparing to a city that spends general fund dollars to support their staff instead of having a VP support, it wouldn't really be a one to one.
Anthony Broadman
And the cost of not doing this, slowing down, slowing down what our community needs is probably I mean, I would assume outweighs any of these. upfront costs. Yeah.
Barb Campbell
So regarding the fee, these are the these enterprise fun, yes. And so legally, we cannot use money from the one or the other. So if we run out of money and planning we can't use reserves from engineering. We could use general fund money to subsidize if we had any general fund money, but 85% of our General Fund goes to police and fire that's
Manager King
that's where I think you'll you know, these are somewhat academic exercises. As you get into the out years, and that's really the job of council to look at the budget and to look to see what the financial health of the city is. And there might be some ways to balance this out. depending on you know, where things come in with tax assessed value or their revenues into the general fund. We just sort of you know, represented a conservative estimate, as we always do for our for budgeting purposes. So, you know, the other assumption too, is development activity. You know that right now we're in a bit of, there's some volatility in the market, so we don't quite know you're going to go up a little bit more if interest rates start to come down activity will really start to go up and I think our concern is, we want to make sure that we don't kind of fall back into the trap of the last recession where we do cut staff significantly and then it takes one that we're not building so we our affordability problem problem becomes worse. And then we are really caught flat footed if activities returns because it returns quickly and we want to make sure that we are poised to be able to process permit. So we're really trying to manage this in a dynamic environment. And I think that's the other recommendation that we'll we'll talk about with beat up and really review this in real time. It's not something that we just take a snapshot in and say, well, we'll hope for the best. It's going to be a lot of check ins with stakeholder groups. So we
Mike Riley
That's 
the purpose of the reserves is to be responsive in those those times when all of a sudden demand picks back up again and we're able to to not be behind the eight ball. I'm curious why you didn't get to a point where we have at least six months to be consistent with our policies, or the planning thing here. This is still showing me even in fiscal year 28 is going below the target of our own policy. So what would it take? Did you look at what it would take to get to six months at the end? At least that period?
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the purpose of the reserves is to be responsive in those those times when all of a sudden demand picks back up again and we're able to to not be behind the eight ball. I'm curious why you didn't get to a point where we have at least six months to be consistent with our policies, or the planning thing here. This is still showing me even in fiscal year 28 is going below the target of our own policy. So what would it take? Did you look at what it would take to get to six months at the end? At least that period? Speaker 2
I don't I don't know off the top of my head what it would take to get to the six months but I think as Eric mentioned, some of this is kind of an academic exercise like, personally, I mean, you didn't ask my opinion, but my like planning makes me super nervous. I'm just knowing that we're projecting out even with this, to reduce our reserves to go from I mean, four months, which is already not a lot to three months and 25 and 26. But I think a lot of this is kind of a give and take with with the focus group that we worked with in the development community. recognizing those are really those are significant V increases, and that there's a big impact to the community on that. And I so I'm willing to kind of, I think everybody's gonna swallow it down and not be comfortable with it, but recognize we'll continue to evaluate which again is why we're recommending kind of these programmatic every six months because I especially with planning, I think we're gonna have to watch it. I mean, we are watching it monthly and watching it more real time and be prepared that this is just a forecast and it it will change.
Manager King
So we're talking about assumptions on revenue with some of the assumptions on cost. I think this probably assumes fully loaded, we are holding vacancies right now we've got two vacancies that we're not filling. So hopefully this picture changes for the better. So it just, you know, we're doing what we can to make sure that we pointed that upward trajection of how to get there a little quicker than what we are forecasting here. But
Mike Riley
I mean, my inclination would still be to design a model that gets us to six months at least this several years out, understanding that we have several years here where we're dipping quite low. It makes me nervous for the same reasons it's not consistent with our policies, which are also called for reserves that are smaller than what the best practice recommendation is by significant amount. So when you put all that together here, it seems to me that we should be having a plan that gets us to six months knowing that we're going to evaluate it periodically and it's very likely to change. Right. We have several years before we get to those increases in fiscal year 27 and 28.
Manager King
Well, I think what we can commit to is when we bring the budget for FY resolution will give you that option. It will say here's what says rate increases here's what it would look like. And so you'll have some choices going forward that
Melanie Kebler
we don't have control over, you know, 2627 2018, all we have is fy 25. That means those numbers get bigger to put us on the trajectory in six months. So I think I think we need to have that discussion about whether that's something we want to do right now. Or if we want to set us on the right course and we get there. Eventually now it comes down to this.
Speaker 4
Thank you. How comfortable are you with every six months? I mean, would there be a benefit to doing it more frequently? I mean, I can imagine there's it's pretty burdensome to do this, but I can imagine 20% You know, aren't we going to see like a flood of people trying to get their applications in, you know, June 30. And can we kind of smooth it out? Would there be advantages to that or six months what you think you're you're most comfortable with?
Barb Campbell
I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 2
I want speak for Colin that I kind of well, I guess I think I think six months is operationally makes makes more sense. What we've talked about is you know, coming back with the DAB and wanting to have a couple of months that as we work through this with B dad and the development community has, they're able to look out kind of six months, I think for them and for the developers and you can speak to this as their you know, you're working with them as they come into the permit center on the counter. It gets really it's difficult me sure administratively it's difficult to update this on a more regular basis, but I think it makes it more challenging from the development community's perspective as well. And so from that customer service to them, they're going to need some type of certainty without feeling like they're just constantly chasing their tail and they don't know what it's what it's going to be. So I think that's where we kind of landed on that every six months to provide some certainty on both sides. Yeah.
Anthony Broadman
Briefly about what so I'm hearing general consensus. Could you talk briefly about what the community is going to be getting for this like staying up to date? It's
Manager King
like segue. I think we have three more slides to kind of hit to talk about next steps. But both with fees and also some process improvement work.
Speaker 3
So we're going to talk first about next steps for fees and then more. Okay, great. Next steps about process improvements. Yeah. So for the for the fees. We just talked about. We'll be back in front of Council, this coming June with that fee increase that I just talked about for the first day of fiscal year 2025. And we can bring back options for planning fund, as suggested, but then also we will have ongoing meetings with BT actually get presentations divvied up in those off months of rather than doing a fee increase every every three months. We'll do it six months, but then in the three months in between we'll visit with BT app and just go over the latest numbers that we can pull from the budget to to see how our assumptions are working to see if that if that within that next three months, were we the decision that we're thinking about or that we're talking about to the council tonight is still remains a good one. Yeah. So I have some additional information and
Manager King
some 
other other next steps. So one of the things that we talked quite a bit about with these fees is stabilization of our permit. Review timelines. We have October numbers back up I've just this slide just represents building permits. But this is emblematic of what's happening across all of our permitting modules is that we are have are and have been hitting our goals really since last spring for our turnaround times. This is a this is a big priority for the department and what all decisions that we're making are, are intended to to commit to maintaining this this is an ongoing next step. We also have launched a continuous improvement effort. Initially this is going to be an internal effort. We if Council remember, starting about a year and a half ago, we looked really in order to get our turnaround times to the condition that we're in we did some outreach to the development community created some initiatives that we implemented over the course of 2023 They're really paying off. This is going to be more of a look initially internally, to help us define the problems. Observe in and out and analyze what's going on, come up with some ideas about a variety of different things and then come up with a strategy for implementation of that. What I'd like to be able to do is is come back and talk to the council probably at the end of the second quarter of 2024 about what some of those are, but that would also that we're going to start that initially with our staff. We've had meetings scheduled this week that are on the books. I think you also saw the letter that came from the chamber that's intended to address some of those concerns. But we will be looking into that and developing strategy. Yet another strategies languages. I would say the focus here is really putting the customer at the center of it and making sure that as we iterate that we're testing those, those new processes with the customer to make sure that they're effective and making sure that there's we emphasize on those items that have the biggest return to improve the experience with a real focus on integrating the disciplines as well as work time spent on the front end with free application processes to identify issues. So there's a clear path throughout the process.
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other other next steps. So one of the things that we talked quite a bit about with these fees is stabilization of our permit. Review timelines. We have October numbers back up I've just this slide just represents building permits. But this is emblematic of what's happening across all of our permitting modules is that we are have are and have been hitting our goals really since last spring for our turnaround times. This is a this is a big priority for the department and what all decisions that we're making are, are intended to to commit to maintaining this this is an ongoing next step. We also have launched a continuous improvement effort. Initially this is going to be an internal effort. We if Council remember, starting about a year and a half ago, we looked really in order to get our turnaround times to the condition that we're in we did some outreach to the development community created some initiatives that we implemented over the course of 2023 They're really paying off. This is going to be more of a look initially internally, to help us define the problems. Observe in and out and analyze what's going on, come up with some ideas about a variety of different things and then come up with a strategy for implementation of that. What I'd like to be able to do is is come back and talk to the council probably at the end of the second quarter of 2024 about what some of those are, but that would also that we're going to start that initially with our staff. We've had meetings scheduled this week that are on the books. I think you also saw the letter that came from the chamber that's intended to address some of those concerns. But we will be looking into that and developing strategy. Yet another strategies languages. I would say the focus here is really putting the customer at the center of it and making sure that as we iterate that we're testing those, those new processes with the customer to make sure that they're effective and making sure that there's we emphasize on those items that have the biggest return to improve the experience with a real focus on integrating the disciplines as well as work time spent on the front end with free application processes to identify issues. So there's a clear path throughout the process. Unknown Speaker
That's, that's
Mike Riley
one other question. So I think just from reviewing the chamber stuff, it seemed like one of the things that they were asking for, and I don't know if this has been looked at and I was measuring essentially like the pre application process sort of from when they initially submit something to one, an applications and indeed,
Melanie Kebler
this is a bullet their performance data to include more information including the whole life of the program, right before completeness is that's intended for Yeah, great.
Mike Riley
So okay, so adding a metric and what we're starting to measure that
Speaker 3
once we've had the dashboards in essentially the format they're in for roughly a year now we made them a little bit better as we progressed. Essentially, they're in the same form. I want to look at that again and work with our development partners who use those and and see if there are better ways or different ways to present existing information. Or that new information we put in there. That was one of them that came up was this idea of we start measuring some of our review times when the application is complete because that's when it can move through our blanket plans examiner's what what how long does it take between the first file and application don't accept that it's complete? We have all of that data we can we can pull it in and organize it in a productive way. And so I think that's going to be helpful if we can dig into that.
Mike Riley
I mean, I know from other discussions, that is not always a city issue. It's actually an issue in the applicant team sometimes and the reason that things aren't complete, so, you know, we'll tell that story for
Anthony Broadman
everybody. That's pretty helpful.
Speaker 3
You'll be able to say, Okay, this is how much time was with the city, this assumption how it was with the right back with the applicant, which I think is really helpful, because I'm like, That's
Manager King
great. Yeah. I
Melanie Kebler
can just if people can see if that's a very long process, and then our approval is pretty sure Well, how do we shorten that process? Right? I think it's the next step here. So great. That's it. Okay. Any other questions from Council? Thank you, Sharon. And Colin. Thank you. Thanks very, Mark. Do you backyard. All right. I'll get up to North wall or next folks get set up
Unknown Speaker
oh
Unknown Speaker
this is the update on our camping code. It's good.
Speaker 5
Good expose to almost everyone who works at the city yesterday that I had forgotten how to share a screen on Zoom.
Speaker 5
We 
are going to see if I can do it today. There we go. Okay, success zoom yourself. Back in the saddle. Okay, I mean light Heiser city attorney's office. Sherry in the chief can introduce themselves when we get to their hearts. We're going to do sort of a three person presentation. I'm going to talk about some of the background and then come back in at the end about where we think we might be going and the chief and Sherry are going to talk about some data in the interesting part of the presentation and we are in need to be done I think by 615 the latest Yeah Okay. With that, so, some context, and this is I'll talk about this, but this is a long way of saying the city events camp ENCODE is not intended to be a solution for homelessness. It isn't, it isn't going to be this slide has more to do with efforts that are being made to address this crisis. These are city regionals that now include the states. This is represented largely by a new framework agreement that is going to be discussed later. In this meeting between Governor Kotek Deschutes County Redmond and Ben, I know the mayor was involved in discussions with the governor months ago that got this process started that if maybe for the first time formalizing on paper, some shared goals between all these different entities that include managed camps. services and housing prioritizes all these things. Now, I would say these are things that the city of Bend has been working on for quite some time the state has the county has in its own way other cities have but this is maybe for the first time formalizing this collaboration cooperation in a written agreement. Part of this document includes significantly a commitment from the county that is formal in formalizing their support for managed outdoor shelters and also the county. I think acknowledging some responsibility and taking a leadership role in establishing and operating manage outdoor shelters. That's new. That's significant. Let's see adjusting my zoom a little bit. The city has played a role in supporting development and maintenance of over 500 shelter beds within the city. That's something the city had to do. There was really a breach and a gap in an emergency the city stepped in. I think we are all happy to see that we are now having let's say hopefully stronger contributions from some other local partners and that's in part because the city is really busy. cities provide core services like public safety and infrastructure and land use. These are things we are required to provide and that's where most of our resources, time and effort goes in needs to go. So having this collaborative agreement is going to be big progress in a better team approach to this crisis. City's responsibilities, however, do include managing public places under the city's control and that's, that's where the camping code comes in. Even the camping code, though, which was the result of a long process last year, didn't happen in isolation. There are, I'll say more than two sides to this coin, but one of them is capacity. One of them is regulation, the city in 2022. And this actually started previous year. But the city took on the capacity issue first, in undertaking a long process that led to the amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and the development code in spring of 2022 that were intended to facilitate and and ease the path to establish multiple kinds of shelters in the city. That side of the coin that challenge was taken up by the city first and then almost immediately in June of 2022. The month after the the shelter code amendments were passed. The city began is what will ended up being a six month process to develop and create the camping codes. This is something that the city at least arguably needed to do because we did not have what I would call modern code provisions regulating the wind where and the how of people using public places, managed and controlled by the City to meet their basic needs. This obligation that I would argue the city has is one that is reflected in authorized by state law and court decisions which while they do limit to some extent how cities can regulate these issues, they do allow cities to adopt reasonable time place and manner regulations for how people use these spaces. One process started in June of 2022 finished at least the legislative part in December of 2022 when Council adopted this code our code it doesn't criminalize homelessness. It imposes reasonable regulations on use of public rights away controlled by the city and that's important because these are city rights away. These are city streets. These are not parks owned and managed by the bed Park and Recreation District. This is not what a lot of people think of as city streets in bed better actually. ODOT right subway so the city here is input from community members about activities on the parkway for example, the parkway is an ODOT facility council members know this. Our code does not purport to extend our regular regulations to facilities or areas that we don't control. The parkway is one of them. It's not the only one ODOT BPRD other public entities they have their own rules, regulations and procedures for how their areas their places, their public places are used our code that doesn't extend that far. But city adopted code in December and started applying the code in March of 2023. And that was in part because this was a change. This was something the city didn't have before. So we tried to use that times in the first part of 2023 to educate people and prepare them for how to how to deal with and how to comply with this, this new system. So we started applying the code in March of 2023. We've now got information or data based on eight ish months of applying the code. So I'm going to introduce Sherry And the chief and walk through five or six slides summarizing this data and will contextualize it to the best of our ability. Okay, here's the first one.
+1
are going to see if I can do it today. There we go. Okay, success zoom yourself. Back in the saddle. Okay, I mean light Heiser city attorney's office. Sherry in the chief can introduce themselves when we get to their hearts. We're going to do sort of a three person presentation. I'm going to talk about some of the background and then come back in at the end about where we think we might be going and the chief and Sherry are going to talk about some data in the interesting part of the presentation and we are in need to be done I think by 615 the latest Yeah Okay. With that, so, some context, and this is I'll talk about this, but this is a long way of saying the city events camp ENCODE is not intended to be a solution for homelessness. It isn't, it isn't going to be this slide has more to do with efforts that are being made to address this crisis. These are city regionals that now include the states. This is represented largely by a new framework agreement that is going to be discussed later. In this meeting between Governor Kotek Deschutes County Redmond and Ben, I know the mayor was involved in discussions with the governor months ago that got this process started that if maybe for the first time formalizing on paper, some shared goals between all these different entities that include managed camps. services and housing prioritizes all these things. Now, I would say these are things that the city of Bend has been working on for quite some time the state has the county has in its own way other cities have but this is maybe for the first time formalizing this collaboration cooperation in a written agreement. Part of this document includes significantly a commitment from the county that is formal in formalizing their support for managed outdoor shelters and also the county. I think acknowledging some responsibility and taking a leadership role in establishing and operating manage outdoor shelters. That's new. That's significant. Let's see adjusting my zoom a little bit. The city has played a role in supporting development and maintenance of over 500 shelter beds within the city. That's something the city had to do. There was really a breach and a gap in an emergency the city stepped in. I think we are all happy to see that we are now having let's say hopefully stronger contributions from some other local partners and that's in part because the city is really busy. cities provide core services like public safety and infrastructure and land use. These are things we are required to provide and that's where most of our resources, time and effort goes in needs to go. So having this collaborative agreement is going to be big progress in a better team approach to this crisis. City's responsibilities, however, do include managing public places under the city's control and that's, that's where the camping code comes in. Even the camping code, though, which was the result of a long process last year, didn't happen in isolation. There are, I'll say more than two sides to this coin, but one of them is capacity. One of them is regulation, the city in 2022. And this actually started previous year. But the city took on the capacity issue first, in undertaking a long process that led to the amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and the development code in spring of 2022 that were intended to facilitate and and ease the path to establish multiple kinds of shelters in the city. That side of the coin that challenge was taken up by the city first and then almost immediately in June of 2022. The month after the the shelter code amendments were passed. The city began is what will ended up being a six month process to develop and create the camping codes. This is something that the city at least arguably needed to do because we did not have what I would call modern code provisions regulating the wind where and the how of people using public places, managed and controlled by the City to meet their basic needs. This obligation that I would argue the city has is one that is reflected in authorized by state law and court decisions which while they do limit to some extent how cities can regulate these issues, they do allow cities to adopt reasonable time place and manner regulations for how people use these spaces. One process started in June of 2022 finished at least the legislative part in December of 2022 when Council adopted this code our code it doesn't criminalize homelessness. It imposes reasonable regulations on use of public rights away controlled by the city and that's important because these are city rights away. These are city streets. These are not parks owned and managed by the bed Park and Recreation District. This is not what a lot of people think of as city streets in bed better actually. ODOT right subway so the city here is input from community members about activities on the parkway for example, the parkway is an ODOT facility council members know this. Our code does not purport to extend our regular regulations to facilities or areas that we don't control. The parkway is one of them. It's not the only one ODOT BPRD other public entities they have their own rules, regulations and procedures for how their areas their places, their public places are used our code that doesn't extend that far. But city adopted code in December and started applying the code in March of 2023. And that was in part because this was a change. This was something the city didn't have before. So we tried to use that times in the first part of 2023 to educate people and prepare them for how to how to deal with and how to comply with this, this new system. So we started applying the code in March of 2023. We've now got information or data based on eight ish months of applying the code. So I'm going to introduce Sherry And the chief and walk through five or six slides summarizing this data and will contextualize it to the best of our ability. Okay, here's the first one. Speaker 6
Hi, Sherry Mizel, the health and safety compliance coordinator for public works. This first slide is basically talking about the total number of cases that I opened after the campaign code went into effect. A case just is a way for me to track a location, whether it's something I came across or complaint that came through as a service complaint, it doesn't necessarily mean that any action was taken. And this just shows the total number of cases that were opened tents and vehicles. June you might see had a very high number compared to the rest of the months. That's when we first started noticing and giving information to residents on Honl. And so that would explain that anomaly
Speaker 5
and feel pretty graphs data. I mean, I had a lot of questions when I first started seeing this, so please, please ask them if you have them. I
Speaker 7
mean the first thing I noticed is that, especially recently it's been pretty equal between tents and vehicles. So books like for
Unknown Speaker
the number of cases opened.
Speaker 1
Yeah, and then that was low in July, but then the vehicles seem to be a little bit higher. Yeah. Do you think that's also because of Honolulu or is that mean? It could be it could
Speaker 6
also be that as people the community becomes aware of the camping code they may be letting me know about vehicles that are in different places. I will say that once I've noticed a vehicle I don't do enforcement. We don't I don't issue citations and I don't tow vehicles. And so if they don't cooperate, I keep monitoring but I don't open another case. That just becomes redundant. And then some of the other cases including the tent sites, sometimes those are multiple, you know, the at the same locations, so And sometimes the same people. So some of those cases are the same. Sometimes they cooperate. Like I said, a lot of times it doesn't result in any action that's taken.
Barb Campbell
So even though there are 68 cases, there may be more points of contact. You might have gone back to that spot. Numbers. Absolutely.
Speaker 6
This is just when I when I go to a location if there's a vehicle or a 10 psi and I open the case it doesn't resolve necessarily even notice
Unknown Speaker
it's just to start the time clock as part of the time part of our code. Okay, let me find out time can I ask him? What how does the case get closed? Yeah. How does that happen? That happens with me. I have to go back and follow up and either somebody's cooperated and I close the case or a notice was issued. It just depends on the situation. Okay. Can we get it? Have we got a slide about that? No. notices? Yeah, we have notices and it's really hard because trying to go back and close a case. There's so many different reasons. I don't know if that data right now would even be valuable. It won't really tell us anything. Thank you. So this is the total notices that were issued each month and those notices could be to camping 10 sites, or vehicle sites. It could be notices to clean or it could be a notice to move. And Sherry, can you remind me these aren't necessarily unique. So in other words, looking at March where there were 42 This doesn't mean necessarily there were 42 locations there could be multiple notices for the same. Same issue, same location as that right. It could be the multiple notices to one site. So particularly dealing with Hahnel because we were not enforcing the camping code for time. But we were for manner. So if I issued a notice to clean to a particular site, and then they cleaned it up. I may come back a week later and have to issue another notice to clean. So there are duplications in that sentence. And then again, June, was particularly high because we had all the notices that's when we started the notices for the July closure. So we're still trying to get to the difference between a case and a notice. So case is when you first get there you speak to them. You say maybe you need to clean up maybe you need to move, but you haven't given them that official notice actually a case could if somebody isn't even at a location so this will happen. Sometimes I'll get a call about a tent site or vehicle. I will go there if somebody's there. I'll speak to them. I'll give them a packet that gives information about the code and resources and some other information. If they're not there. I still open the case and that starts the time clock. So if they move before that 24 hour or the three business day timeframe is up I go back in there, they're gone. I close the case, and so they didn't have any kind of notice whatsoever. They're not gone, that's when they get a notice. So that's when hopefully I will have been able to make contact most of the time I am able to make contact with people occasionally, you know, I have to just leave a notice. Without that but it has information on it as to what the notice is if it's a notice to clean, I'll put what needs to be cleaned. If it's a notice to move. There's places where I can articulate why they need to move when they went out with you right and so that that's where you would zip tie, and that specific notice may have checkboxes or something on it to let them know Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker
Hey, next data slide.
Speaker 6
So now this slide shows the Monthly Notices to clean versus the notices to move specifically for tent and portable shelters. And so you'll notice that after June we basically very rarely issue a notice to clean because the with the camping code being applied, the they have the 24 hours that they're supposed to move and then if they don't comply with that then they get the 72 hour notice and so that's really mitigated quite a bit of the property and items like that interesting. And then with the vehicles
Anthony Broadman
certainly could you go back where most shared concerns so these numbers are pretty. I mean, I would consider them to be pretty stable the previous slide
Unknown Speaker
this one
Anthony Broadman
do you have an estimate of the unique individuals or people like if it's more than one person using a shelter, like that you're seeing month over month
Speaker 6
so we do not track in the app individuals. We just track the sites however because I'm out here with them. Yes, we do have probably a small percentage of people that take up quite a few of those numbers. Excellent slide. So this is the same breakdown for vehicles the notices the clean versus notices to move in here. You'll notice an interesting difference in that there's much more notices to clean with vehicles. And again, that goes back to once I've issued a notice to move. And right now we're having some challenges with some people complying. I'll still continue to apply the manner part of the code
Mike Riley
and those are those are notices related to just stuff. It's around the vehicle whatever it might be
Speaker 6
extraneous property, garbage, things like that. And so the previous data was based on an app that was developed by one of our city folks. And so I track things in there. This is data by the number of citizen service requests that I get through other kinds of means that gets tracked in our enforce system. And you'll see that that's kind of gone up but kind of remained pretty steady since June.
Anthony Broadman
And in your experience. Do you see people making multiple service requests related to the same issue? Yes.
Speaker 6
These aren't. They're not necessarily absolutely unique. Some of them are the same people making the same complaint or sometimes I'll get multiple calls for one particular site.
Anthony Broadman
And that's consistent with what I think we tell people when we get calls directly. I mean, is that helpful to you that people are making periodic requests about the same issue?
Speaker 6
Yes, because then it keeps it on my radar and it is also a way for us to track the data of you know, where where people are, you know, having challenges or issues and so that makes sure that I get out there and do outreach and make sure that we're able to coordinate some responses. I do try to call back people so that we close the loop so they know what's going on.
Speaker 5
I have a question Sherry bot twist. So these are calls. So just looking at October there were 55 Do we know that all 55 of those I mean, these are how have we sort of pulled these in this doesn't necessarily mean that there were 55 actual violations of our code. No
Speaker 6
and and those are just calls that are coming in through click it through enforce. Some of them are calling the Public Works Department directly and they'll put them in some of them I go out and there's absolutely no violation sometimes I'll talk to people and I do a lot of education with the public because they don't necessarily understand the nuances and the differences between 10 portable shelter timeframes and vehicles for example. So I'll explain you know, the differences there. Sometimes it turns out it's ODOT property or other private property, so I'll have to let people know hey, that's great. We'll try and coordinate with them but this is not something I can do. So I'm glad you pointed that out. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
I wasn't sure the answer.
Barb Campbell
So any, so any of these may or may not have resulted in a case or a notice. Correct. Got it. Okay, so it just kind of shows about Yeah, okay. And
Speaker 6
there's just a lot of different ways that people are sending us information. Thank you. So this is information about when we do have to remove property from a site after a notice whether it's just removing property due to a violation of a notice to clean or due to actually having to remove a campsite. And these are cases where property was stored and then the other lighter bars are where the cases where property had come been retrieved. It doesn't necessarily correlate one to one. For example, there were 16 cases that were opened in June because of Honl. Not all of those eight. Were were people that came and collected property from Honeywell because that kind of overlapped into July. So sometimes the way that the numbers are counted is a little different.
Speaker 4
But it's this property that's over $1,000 in value or is this any
Speaker 6
property? No, this is the property that I store and I secure it store it track it. We have a mechanism for tracking when we take the property we post notices of removed property so people will know how to retrieve it. I will keep it for a minimum of 30 days. If there's something that's over $1,000 That's when I would call one of the chiefs folks and come in store, take it in store that but generally I haven't come across anything that I've recognized that's worth over $1,000 And so and then there's a tracking mechanism for when they come and retrieve their property. There's no charge for that there's no cost. If property hasn't been retrieved, we will reach out to service providers tried to donate or then we dispose of it.
Speaker 5
And we talked about this in developing the code last year. But this is this is an obligation that cities have if they're going to regulate in this area and state law provides a 30 day minimum and we have an opinion here but I think we do I think the city does what it can to get people the information they need and including Sherry's contact information so she can be available to help them get their personal property back but but not not everyone does.
Barb Campbell
Is there enough say have you got enough storage space for property?
Speaker 6
I did get some more space. Okay, so with that it's been working out
Barb Campbell
pretty well. Glad to hear great.
Unknown Speaker
Think this is our last data slide.
Barb Campbell
And here are where the numbers change.
Speaker 8
The numbers change my grants and police department. So I just have the numbers specifically around some parking issues. And I think one of the more challenging mechanisms as code is the separation between a campsite and what we deemed as parking issues, go to the parking code. So we are the folks who take all the parking calls. It set up to where non emergency generally takes those calls. And then they go to our CAD for queue for review by typically our CSOs or community service officers. This is pretty significant numbers, parking and abandoned vehicles. I kind of look at those as one type of call typical complaint around something around parking and vehicles. You can see that's well over 10 A day that we get. And there was a pretty significant jump from 2020 to 2021. The challenge with data is sometimes it's really good. And then if it's not enough data where you can break it down. It doesn't tell you a whole lot. So what we get asked a lot is around as well. How many of these are particularly around you know, abandoned RVs or RVs that are being used for people to sleep in or Campion or vehicles that are people are camping and we don't have that data. All we know there's pretty significant jump in 21 and then that's pretty sustained through 23 and through current. Anecdotally, I'll tell you just from listening and talking to our CSOs, the vast majority of the abandoned vehicle calls or Arby's are already calls that people are using to camp or sleeping. But there's also a good number of other calls in there to people storing their vehicles or boats or snowmobiles or trailers on public streets. So there's kind of a mixed use of the public right away. A lot of times for storage as well. So it's it's challenging to kind of break those numbers up. But it is good data to just understand the I think the quantity of calls that come across for abandoned and parking issues in the city. This is if you combine those our highest type of call that we get to non emergency so that's a good thing. I think overall, if we look at it that way, but it is a pretty significant workload. And
Unknown Speaker
these are not unique numbers.
Melanie Kebler
Now this could be someone calling. Yes.
Unknown Speaker
Important to note. Right.
Speaker 4
And also abandoned vehicle has a technical definition that this may or may not meet right somebody calls in and says I think there's an abandoned vehicle that shows up here. It may not be me. So
Speaker 8
absolutely a lot of a lot of calls may be that someone hasn't like someone parked in front of their house. So they call it as abandoned because they're just reporting to the non emergency. It's an abandoned vehicle. Our CSOs generally take these calls they do some research, they have unreasonableness that they look at it and determine whether it's a truly abandoned vehicle or someone who's parked over a 72 hour limit or whatever the circumstances are. They handle a vast a good percentage of these and address them. Typically by communicating with people and convincing people to move. If they're truly abandoned. For instance, we had one where someone's parking snowmobiles, and they really just talked to the owners and say, hey, you know, this is well over your time on it. You can't park in here we don't want to tell you know, snowmobiles and trailers, and we got a lot of compliance in the city. So a lot of these although some may be repetitive calls, many of them are handled when they're called. So it's not as possibly repetitive as some of the camp calls the sherry was talking about where you have multiple people call them at the same thing. A lot of these get handled and then it's something else so sometimes it's because they moved on the street if it's someone parking or storing their vehicle, or if it's an RV being used, and sometimes it's just unique.
Unknown Speaker
But well, we're done with data.
Mike Riley
There's nothing really distinct that separates these two buckets. That have beamed in versus parking complaints. Doesn't sound like really it's
Speaker 8
it's a challenge around identifying as sometimes the parking plates are more focused around someone's blocking my driveway and someone's parked the wrong way and they're too far blocking the street. Or, you know, it could be even someone's parked in the handicap zone in in a parking lot. So parking is a little more generalized where generally the abandoned vehicle ones are focused around this car has been in front of a house and it's
Mike Riley
just Nope. Whatever is going on with it. It's
Speaker 5
that numbers questions. Always come back. Okay, so I'm gonna summarize where where we think we are eight months and to applying the code we we have few or fewer certainly longer term large tent encampments. Our code allows people to use public places to sleep and exist outside but it was intended in part to I think restrict some of the proliferation of conditions that we've seen with large longer term camps that occupied spaces to the exclusion of others. And things tended to not go well when that happened. So our COVID Does, does and has reduced that in the city. It's given Sherry and others the ability to talk to people about their footprints, the conditions to apply the manner regulations on the code which, you know, I'll paraphrase as you can, you can be here, you can do this for a certain period of time, but there are there are some boundaries to how that works. And it's let us I think formalize a system to remove non compliant property and store it and make it available for retrieval. So these are things that I'm hesitant to say it's working, because I think different people have different 
perspectives on this concept in general, but I think it's been I think it's been effective in these areas. So where does that take us or where does that point forward chief? Talked about vehicles. I'm going to talk about kind of how we do this and identify some challenges and some additional things that we think the city is going to have to work through in the future. Starting with some basic background our camping CO does allow people to use vehicles for shelter subject to those those reasonable regulations on time, place and manner. The when the where, and the how, and we have regulations that are specific to vehicles. We do have the legal authority to tow vehicles that are in violation of code, but I'll be as blunt as I can. We really don't want to use it. Eva Sherry, describe how she engages with people, provides information about services chief talked about the fact that we do tend to still be lucky enough and bend to get a lot of voluntary compliance, or Sherry now has the tools to address the manner regulations and so these are these are always the things that we try to do rather than tow and that's embedded in our administrative policy that accompanies this code. I mean, we we say essentially, we don't want to tow a vehicle that somebody is using for shelter so we try not to. There is another side of that coin though and there may be situations where we do think that's the appropriate and necessary thing to do. If a city is going to do that. It has to meet its obligation to store the vehicle we say we have a legal authority to do it. We are competent that we do but there are practical and operational issues about doing it that city like bend and our size we still need to work on so it's not something we want to do. We do think we do need to be able to do it, but that's going to take some work to do it effectively. We sometimes hear from folks who ask why citations are issued more often and this is an opportunity for me to say we have not issued a citation under the campaign code for violation of the camping code we've issued notices to move notices to clean. We've talked to folks we've tried to get compliance. We have retrieved property and stored it from the right away when we felt like there wasn't another good option. But we haven't cited anybody. We haven't sent somebody to Munich court. And there are multiple reasons for that. But one of them that I'll offer is the citations don't always influence behavior. I mean, the possibility of a citation might influence my behavior but that certainly doesn't go for everyone. One thing that has come up with vehicles is a lack of clarity on a requirement to move vehicles or to move a particular distance. We have received questions city staff have received questions about how far they need to move their vehicles once their time is up our code or camping code points to the time regulations in our parking code. That's a different chapter of our code and and that code generally allows a vehicle to be legally parked for up to three business days except where there's a different time limit designated usually by sight. There is a requirement in the parking code for vehicles to move 750 feet once their time expires, but its application isn't always clear. And that's an that's in part because the way that provision in the parking code is written but there's also some I think there are different ways to read it in terms of its geographic application. Does it apply city wide? Does it apply only downtown? Does it apply only where a street is signed for, for example, to or for our parking? Does it apply to areas of the city where there are no signs and where the three business day rule applies? It's not particularly clear and since we have received questions from people who are just parking their vehicles and from people who are using their vehicles for shelter or our office, the legal department received a call a few weeks ago from an individual who was using their vehicle for shelter and they wanted to know how far they had to move. And where, because they wanted to comply with the code. We don't give legal advice to people to call but we tried to help this person but it did highlight that there was a lack of clarity in the code. So our proposal is that staff return as soon as possible, but probably not until 2024 with an ordinance that would amend the code to clarify that that 750 foot requirements applies citywide to all vehicles whether or not they're just parked or whether they're parked and somebody is using them for shelter. That is one thing that has come up that I think would help Sherry not help Sherry answer every question she gets, but but some of them. So this is the last slide. These are the recommendations that I want to finish and a lot of time for questions. That's the recommendation that we come back to you. I don't think we needed another work. session. But we come back to you with an ordinance with what I hope would be the simplest code amendment possible to make that clarification. And then longer term in the future. This is a chance for me to highlight. We have a big project coming in 2024 And that's kind of I call it a teardown and a rebuild of our parking code. That's a big project. A lot of these questions whether there are these parking writ large, not just parking by people who are using their vehicles for shelter. We are embarking on a big effort to re rethink this citywide and figure out how to do this in a modern way. A lot of these questions about vehicles that come in or people living in vehicles we think are at least related to this bigger project. That project is going to take our experience and hopefully some data and through that project there may be opportunities to think about things like is there are a density requirement, we have a density requirement for tents. We are not proposing that for vehicles, but that is something that may come up. We just don't really have a basis to consider that now. And we think if if the city is at all going to look at that it has to be in the context of a different project. We've also got the capacity issue. As I alluded to, we we need specs and we need space and we need personnel and we need the ability to apply our code and that's not something we're going to be able to solve through a code amendment but as part of a bigger project so short term clarification and then some longer term ideas for down the road.
+1
perspectives on this concept in general, but I think it's been I think it's been effective in these areas. So where does that take us or where does that point forward chief? Talked about vehicles. I'm going to talk about kind of how we do this and identify some challenges and some additional things that we think the city is going to have to work through in the future. Starting with some basic background our camping CO does allow people to use vehicles for shelter subject to those those reasonable regulations on time, place and manner. The when the where, and the how, and we have regulations that are specific to vehicles. We do have the legal authority to tow vehicles that are in violation of code, but I'll be as blunt as I can. We really don't want to use it. Eva Sherry, describe how she engages with people, provides information about services chief talked about the fact that we do tend to still be lucky enough and bend to get a lot of voluntary compliance, or Sherry now has the tools to address the manner regulations and so these are these are always the things that we try to do rather than tow and that's embedded in our administrative policy that accompanies this code. I mean, we we say essentially, we don't want to tow a vehicle that somebody is using for shelter so we try not to. There is another side of that coin though and there may be situations where we do think that's the appropriate and necessary thing to do. If a city is going to do that. It has to meet its obligation to store the vehicle we say we have a legal authority to do it. We are competent that we do but there are practical and operational issues about doing it that city like bend and our size we still need to work on so it's not something we want to do. We do think we do need to be able to do it, but that's going to take some work to do it effectively. We sometimes hear from folks who ask why citations are issued more often and this is an opportunity for me to say we have not issued a citation under the campaign code for violation of the camping code we've issued notices to move notices to clean. We've talked to folks we've tried to get compliance. We have retrieved property and stored it from the right away when we felt like there wasn't another good option. But we haven't cited anybody. We haven't sent somebody to Munich court. And there are multiple reasons for that. But one of them that I'll offer is the citations don't always influence behavior. I mean, the possibility of a citation might influence my behavior but that certainly doesn't go for everyone. One thing that has come up with vehicles is a lack of clarity on a requirement to move vehicles or to move a particular distance. We have received questions city staff have received questions about how far they need to move their vehicles once their time is up our code or camping code points to the time regulations in our parking code. That's a different chapter of our code and and that code generally allows a vehicle to be legally parked for up to three business days except where there's a different time limit designated usually by sight. There is a requirement in the parking code for vehicles to move 750 feet once their time expires, but its application isn't always clear. And that's an that's in part because the way that provision in the parking code is written but there's also some I think there are different ways to read it in terms of its geographic application. Does it apply city wide? Does it apply only downtown? Does it apply only where a street is signed for, for example, to or for our parking? Does it apply to areas of the city where there are no signs and where the three business day rule applies? It's not particularly clear and since we have received questions from people who are just parking their vehicles and from people who are using their vehicles for shelter or our office, the legal department received a call a few weeks ago from an individual who was using their vehicle for shelter and they wanted to know how far they had to move. And where, because they wanted to comply with the code. We don't give legal advice to people to call but we tried to help this person but it did highlight that there was a lack of clarity in the code. So our proposal is that staff return as soon as possible, but probably not until 2024 with an ordinance that would amend the code to clarify that that 750 foot requirements applies citywide to all vehicles whether or not they're just parked or whether they're parked and somebody is using them for shelter. That is one thing that has come up that I think would help Sherry not help Sherry answer every question she gets, but but some of them. So this is the last slide. These are the recommendations that I want to finish and a lot of time for questions. That's the recommendation that we come back to you. I don't think we needed another work. session. But we come back to you with an ordinance with what I hope would be the simplest code amendment possible to make that clarification. And then longer term in the future. This is a chance for me to highlight. We have a big project coming in 2024 And that's kind of I call it a teardown and a rebuild of our parking code. That's a big project. A lot of these questions whether there are these parking writ large, not just parking by people who are using their vehicles for shelter. We are embarking on a big effort to re rethink this citywide and figure out how to do this in a modern way. A lot of these questions about vehicles that come in or people living in vehicles we think are at least related to this bigger project. That project is going to take our experience and hopefully some data and through that project there may be opportunities to think about things like is there are a density requirement, we have a density requirement for tents. We are not proposing that for vehicles, but that is something that may come up. We just don't really have a basis to consider that now. And we think if if the city is at all going to look at that it has to be in the context of a different project. We've also got the capacity issue. As I alluded to, we we need specs and we need space and we need personnel and we need the ability to apply our code and that's not something we're going to be able to solve through a code amendment but as part of a bigger project so short term clarification and then some longer term ideas for down the road. Melanie Kebler
Okay, so to start with the 750 feet, what is that like a city block?
Unknown Speaker
It's longer
Melanie Kebler
city blocks is anyone let's just start with that as the kind of short term recommendations. Anyone have questions or discussion about that? But only
Speaker 4
because I feel like I asked the same question. And it wasn't really clear. I pulled up Google Maps to figure out like, well, some blocks are shorter than others. Sure. You know, 750 feet is it's so hard to know what that is. And I'm just wondering if we want to say two blocks or something instead,
Melanie Kebler
I just think so. Yeah.
Speaker 5
What's my take on this? So I mean, I said the application of that existing 750 foot requirement isn't clear but it but it's it's something that we are at least somewhat familiar with as we rethink the parking code. There may be different ways to do this. Some cities will say you've got to move to a different block face. Maybe that works better in some cities and others to me. This is something where we need the big parking brains to weigh in as part of that other project if we're going to rethink how we communicate what somebody needs to do. So I'm I'm reluctant to recommend that we consider a different metric for this, but on in the other project. Maybe So for now,
Speaker 4
you're saying let's do 750 Because it's in the current code in other places for parking purposes. And maybe we revisit it right here.
Speaker 7
Yeah, that's as long as there's that clarity, and community engagement. Porsche does, you know to be can't be followed because people no one has any idea how many 700 feet is then, you know, let's make sure that we're actually providing clarity
Melanie Kebler
for staff on the ground for sharing. You know, I think Sherry can kind of figure out what some 50 feet is if we were doing different things in different parts of the city that makes it complicated for her to communicate it. So. Okay, any other questions on on that short term? And then is there any objection to that or do we want to address that all
Speaker 7
vehicles whether there's someone Yeah, living in or not? Yes,
Speaker 5
this is what I would emphasize. Correct? Yes, primarily, we need to make sure that can't be code of the vehicle code sync. But this starts with an amendment to the sorry, the parking code, I can't say won't involve amendments to the camping code, but only so they sink and work together. Not what I would consider a substantive change to the camping code or those regulations. So hypothetically,
Speaker 4
though, this means like if you if you have a vehicle that you don't use very often, but it's parked in front of your house and your neighbor is really annoyed with you and they make a complaint under this. You would have to move your vehicle up to, you know, potentially two blocks away in order to comply with it or
Speaker 9
drive it or put it in your once a day essentially, which I think is
Speaker 5
there is there is perhaps some could say an arbitrary aspect of that. But again, to me this this feels like how do we regulate parking in general and that's that's that future project. And
Anthony Broadman
I think your point is, it's important this is this is a parking issue. This is has really nothing to do with homelessness. And I think that's been the focus of our regulation of the right of way, which is parking, not homelessness. So I think this illustrates that
Speaker 4
but could you comply with it like, like Councillor Riley mentioned, if you moved it once a day, does that mean that you don't have you're not you're not in violation anymore, so you don't have to move it. So
Anthony Broadman
yeah, the rule right now is 72 hours for
Unknown Speaker
three businesses,
Speaker 1
which is currently no permit in place where if this vehicle was parked on the street for numerous days,
Melanie Kebler
not unless you're in a parking District, which is part of the parking code update, and something that we can use in lots of places to do more restriction beyond the 72. But the baseline is, is the three business days. 750 feet, that's the baseline correct? And it makes sense honestly, it makes sense to clarify our code, which maybe was trying to do that anyway. And it's not clear. I think we should be clarifying it. So there's
Speaker 5
been I mean, I would say there's been a lack of consensus or clarity in the parking code since off on this topic since before we had a champion code, right. So let's take care
Barb Campbell
of that. From that perspective. That's it 72 hours instead of 48. Because we didn't want to catch people who had left the vehicle for just like a three day weekend even because as Councillor Perkins said, this applies to all vehicles. It is nothing we are not targeting people living in their homes. We're trying to have a consistent code. For those of us who do park a vehicle on the streets. How long can it stay on moved in the same location? It's 72 business days, 72 business hours.
Melanie Kebler
I'm not hearing any objection to having you come back with that code amendment. And then are there any questions about some of the future consideration ideas that will come back to us later as part of that parking? Please, looking forward to that conversation?
Mike Riley
And that's expected when
Manager King
the council will work plan. So this was again something that we had anticipated as part of a, you know, needing to happen both from a code and an operational perspective as it gets noted within police, you know, we really want to look at how we're using our police resources. Looking at Animal Control parking, of course, we looked at alternative responses for folks in the mental health crisis. That's something we've made some progress on. So we want to continue to make sure that we're responding to the right call with the right resource. So this is a part of that there's an operational component, as well as the code really helps us to tackle the operational issues that we have. So I would say it's about a year long project.
Barb Campbell
Okay, I would like to hear from Sherry And from the chief. It's a lot of numbers. What is that looking like on the ground? It seems to me, like your numbers for Jason, Jason, Jason, about that per Sheree and Jason combined. It looks to me like maybe four or five per day cases notices. Maybe it's more that to me sounds like you might be able to manage that.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And
Melanie Kebler
then for the CIO, would you like Additionally,
Speaker 6
I would not turn down additional home force
Barb Campbell
and then for the chief, you know, Tanna that, you know, 1000s Absolutely freaks me out makes me you know, feel like that's just an overwhelming number. Until I get okay 10 A day. Yes. Seven officers out there. Do you feel like you know, are we up to the point where it's affecting response times for you know, maybe a more emergent call or, you know, that's what I would like to hear as a summary is, how are things going out there? And
Speaker 8
I'm gonna just jump over sherry. She needs help. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Good. You know, I think the challenge around parking is is a couple things is that we're not as responsive to to our communities. I think our community is asking us to be we have a limited resource. Generally our community service officers are the ones who take parking complaints. There's nine authorized positions. Right now, there, they were two sides of the week. So there's four or five working, not including at a time or anything off. So you have maybe three out there on average, our CSOs do a tremendous amount of work. They take accidents, completions, low level crime reports, they take a lot of resources, all animal control, which is our other highest call for service. But the to take 10 to 15. Really, when you're talking about almost 5000 a year, calls a day and parking. That takes a tremendous resource. Yeah, and with a convoluted parking code that's a little bit challenging to interpret. And in fact, this distance issue has been has come up through CSOs over and over and over. How do we apply this where do we apply it citywide? Is it not? They can't even answer the question and they're really the subject matter experts on enforcement of it. So there is you know, there's some clarity that could assist in efficient operations for enforcement around the parking issue city wide, and then there is some potential that we can have some movement around, how do we do enforcement, and should that be CSOs that have a whole bunch of others or should it be something else? And that's for that later Congress? Yeah.
Manager King
And so you know, there's work do we have code enforcement looking at private property we're looking at, we do enforcement on rights of way, then there's the CSOs, we feel it and then there's of course, parking. We think there's some opportunity for some synergy and some different ways to deliver those services in a more efficient way. But it's going to take some overhaul of the code to help us get those operational and
Barb Campbell
to hear from those folks, whether 750 Makes sense, sort of two blocks would be better. You know, how is that now that we've changed now that we have given them some certainty? Is that still a good thing for Okay, great, okay. We
Mike Riley
expect to start if it's going to be maybe up to a year of work, we expect them to start that and we start next
Manager King
year significant workload over the next three months, we had our compensation STCs transportation fee. So we need to get through that work over the winter. And then we look to start this project is we're going to do some prep work in January is the intent and then probably try to protect legals time and get it kind of prepped a little bit and then get legal involvement. Later in the spring. Yeah,
Mike Riley
quarter too. Quickly.
Melanie Kebler
Yeah. Final question here.
Anthony Broadman
First off, thank you, Jason. Thank you sharing on thank you to all the staff who's compassionately police, carefully enforcing this camping code and I want to remind ourselves that this was a check in that we talked about when we were passing the code. So thank you for everything you're doing. Also remind ourselves that we talked about additional help during the staff and council during the budgeting process and we are strapped so but I think it's important that we remember that in the next budget deliberations. how important this work is, especially with the numbers we're seeing that are going to police on parking and abandoned, is there. And I'm also mindful of you know, the context here, which is that through all of the work of council the mayor, the governor, the county working together on really delineating roles and responsibilities that we're moving towards some of the solutions we need, as a community, number of shelter beds, etc. All of that said and independent of the homelessness issue. I think that colors all of these conversations is part of is it possible or do you see any legal impediments to using something like what Gresham has done with RV Sprinter van? I'll call them recreational vehicle permitting as part of this larger parking conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 5
I'm not a city attorney progression. So take this with a grain of salt but as I at a high level understand this aspect of Greshams code is they they don't allow how the city of Gresham defines recreational vehicles which last time I looked at it I think would probably include not just big boxes on wheels, but sprinter bands you know that I don't know that most common vehicle and van and city of Gresham says Arby's as they define them in their code, and it's a fairly broad definition. cannot park at all. on public rights of way and less. Three Day permit is obtained and that permit has to be connected to an address. In other words, if you want to park your RV on a nobody aggressions watching because I get this wrong. If you want to park your RV on a street in Gresham, you can do so for three days if you get a permit and if you park it in front of an address to which that permit is connected, so maybe it's a relative, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's your address, but there's got to be some connection and I think I think Gresham allows maybe up to six of those three day permits per year, but I mean, it's an interesting way to look at it. You can't look You can't park these things on on our streets except for except for camping in momentary Well, except for momentary loading or unloading. You can't you can't you can do that. But otherwise you can't park them without a permit and you can park them in front of the the address that the permit is connected to it. This system does not allow anybody to live in their vehicles. It is just a parking regulation. So interesting approach
Unknown Speaker
six per year six per address or I
Speaker 5
think six Yes, I think well actually, I don't know if it's per address or per RV, and it's not available to apartment residence I believe. I believe it's not it's maybe single family, maybe maybe duplex.
Melanie Kebler
This is something that we can it's an example of some more it's but I also wonder how many staff they have enforcing and administering that program. So this livability
Manager King
team that has it's a different program, and we can give you more information, we're going to look at the parking code, but yeah,
Melanie Kebler
looking at RPAS and I think that's important to mention that yes, it can take up that conversation as well.
Speaker 5
So it definitely fits in that parking code. Project.
Unknown Speaker
Great. Okay,
Melanie Kebler
thank you so much. For sharing.
Speaker 6
Can I just ask what so I know a lot of you have done ride alongs with either Jason or I or both of us and I know we have some new counselors. I just wanted to extend the invitation that if any of you want to come and do a ride along again or for the first time please just reach out and let us know. We'd be happy to have you. Thanks.
Melanie Kebler
Oh, yeah, um, we got to sit down, Counselor. Perkins was gonna go so give us an update on more of this collaboration around solutions that's happening. So
Speaker 7
as we're talking about people that are that are living out of doors I just wanted to give a quick update. Over the summer I asked the collaborative houses Response Office to convene a conversation about the emergency that we're having with outdoor camping in incredibly unsafe conditions all over the county. And the idea was to bring together government bodies like the cities, the counties, ODOT, for service, etc. To talk about needs and also what we can all offer to help alleviate this emergency and thought that the CHR o was a perfect fit for this as this really is about regional solutions and partnerships. So what has been happening over the last few months is that a technical committee of city events staff city of Redmond county staff service providers CIC, etc. have been in the state through the governor's office have been offering up a list of properties and the idea is that these are diverse properties for RV camping, some may be safe parking, you know, outdoor managed camp supportive camp. And they have been sort of honing these properties based on you know, feasibility can actually can you actually you know, make something work there and have come up with a set of collaborative values for outdoor camps, best practices for community engagement and best cross processes for neighborhoods based on examples like Central Oregon villages. And the CHRO has sort of approved the work to date and in the new year, hopefully in January, we will be having a public conversation about not only these properties but also what basic supports we can be offering to people that are living outdoors and just wanted to let you know that the the that is happening and to look for that in January. Great. Thank
Unknown Speaker
you. That's good news.
Melanie Kebler
Okay, so we're gonna go into Executive Session. At this time then City Council will hold an executive executive session pursuant to Rs 192660 II to conduct deliberations with persons designated to negotiate real property transactions and H to consult with attorney regarding legal rights and duties of a public body with regard to current litigation or litigation likely to be filed. This session is closed to all members of the public except for representatives of the news media and represent only the news media are specifically directed not to report on any of the deliberations during the Executive Session, except to state the general subject of the session as previously. Announced no decision may be made in Executive Session. At the end of executive session. We will return to regular session we're a little bit behind we might come out five minutes late. All right.