Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
We are ready to get started.
Welcome everybody here to our wonderful Ben senior center that is now part of the whole marks for community center, which is a great amenity for our neighborhood here in southeast Merritt Bend.
We're really happy to have this presentation for you all tonight, recommend have a roundtable session with some representatives from some neighborhood district boards, and then we've left time again for counselors to come and talk and answer questions as well as we'll have
a round edge these tables to help answer questions as well around all the growth activity and change that is happening in this corner of town.
And that's going to be a lot of what we're talking about we know people are concerned about growth and change and people are concerned about wildfire and other topics that we're going to touch on tonight and just kind of have a discussion on here and then be able to talk
about what's going on in the crowd and help get questions answered. And so some of those questions might actually be answered by our staff and Bryce is going to do this off with a presentation, kind of give us a mystery and what's going on in the neighborhood.
Thank you, my name is Russ Grayson, I'm the chief operations officer for the city of New York City, assistant city managers and with me is Brian Reinhardt who leads our great management group that makes it all of our long range for the city.
So, tonight's presentation is really going to be about how do we plan the city, how do we do that with Brian's going to go over all the components of that and we're also getting ready to select the next 20 years, the big North Way I'm bringing the hot ice map and then I will give you an overview of all the current things that are going on in your neighborhood, which is just a couple of things, including all the developments going on and the infrastructure that's coming just to prepare you up for what you see over the next five years.
After that, as Melanie, as Mayor said, there are tables, after we've done the round table, she knows you'll talk about that. At the end there's also a fishbowl in the back for just any general comments, grab, drop in concerns and questions from the neighborhood or just input that you want to provide to the city, please do that in the back.
So please as we go through this, I'm not going to take questions during the presentation but there will be times where you ask questions for staff so please jot those down and then I will give you kind of operating instructions after that. So with that, I'm Jimmy McGrian.
Thank you. Well, God gave Russ the height and he gave me the hair.
You don't usually get all the things.
Actually, no.
So let's advance the slide. So, Reagan, I get to leave the city's long range, it's an honor, it's privilege, and it's a challenge to lead the long range planning program with the city so this rest site all started out, and then Russ is going to go.
Finish up this presentation, we'll get to the more fun discussion.
So first question for everybody. Is there anyone here who was born here or moved here before 1975. Oh wait, put your hands up.
And that's awesome. Okay.
So, I have a friend who's local, and she's like well if you're born, if you're born race here especially that long she like her unicorns.
We're like magical rare management animals are just hard to find part of spot.
But that means the rest of us.
I moved here after that point.
And I know it's gonna be hard to see the details this is not about the details I don't even think I have to explain this to you, but this is a chart of our population growth here in bed from 1975 till today.
And we're going from about 20,000 back in the day to over 100,000 now.
And I just want to share that because we have to think of growth is something you know it's the next time that's coming into town, and it's rarely ourselves.
Right. But we're all part of this process of growth that has occurred over this period of time, and it led to all the changes in our community and it's also.
We also reached our families, we have friends, if you look around this room I'm sure there are a lot of friends and family here as well.
And so that's part of growth as well. And so I know there are a lot of difficulties as we're going to talk about those we're not shying away from them or trying to shine you on, but also to offer that, you know, two sides to the same point here.
Right. Sometimes there's really good things and how long this growth and changing.
So maybe let's, let's switch the slide.
Next slide, please.
Thank you.
All right. Again, you're not expecting to see the details of this.
This is a picture, an aerial photograph of the southeast area in 2014.
So I just 12 years ago, and that 12 years ago you look at that you go well okay I see a few subdivisions, and if you could look closer at the roads you see rural roads for the most part, right, rural roads two lanes, shoulders no sidewalks, no roundabouts down here.
Very few new schools, not a whole lot of new parts, but you can see is the internet, there's no sewer system for the most part down here.
Let me ask a question, how many of you wish the, it can just look like this again.
Fair enough, and there's no wrong answer here.
We're not going to this, this is real let's be honest with each other, the challenges.
All right, well how many things. Okay, this is this is really the city, the city is making this growth happen it's a city of developers they're making this one time they wanted to happen.
As soon as you're nodding heads. But don't worry, we're not, you know, we work for you, you know, so it's okay.
And then how many of you might think there's just no plan because it doesn't feel like there's a plan right now.
There's no plan for this it's just happening around this time hazard.
And so what I'm hoping is it tonight.
At least with this, this presentation that you can come away and maybe have a good perspective on some of the answers that that you are just providing to yourselves to to your friends.
Next slide please.
First and foremost, we all live in the grand state of Oregon.
And in this state, we have what's called statewide planning. We have a very robust system of planning in the state, very unlike other states.
So we have state law and we have administrative rule. And I'm not a tall guy. It might actually be a staff that all up, I think it would be taller than us.
But we have just pages and pages volumes of how cities are supposed to plan.
These are not just men if you want to. This is, this is how you must plan and this is how they plan to plan. And one of those major features I'm sure a lot of you know what a growing growth boundary is.
I've been here for a long time. This photograph here is kind of an illustration of that there's kind of a hard line it's invisible line that's the line that says in this urban growth boundary.
This is where we put our urban need for housing and jobs, and we have to plan 20 years out.
So we have to have a supply of land for housing and for jobs in that urban growth boundary.
And so about once every decade, the city reevaluates this to figure out if we have enough land for that urban growth boundary.
Another feature of that is that we are all under a plan right now. I just want to assure you there's a plan, I'll give you some more details here, that is guiding the development of your city's buildings.
In addition to that, after we do our land use planning, we figure out how we're going to grow in terms of commercial areas, architectural areas, industrial areas.
We also do similar plans for our transportation system, sewer system, water system. So you have, ideally, it's a really well aligned package but I had said it would be 20 years into the future.
So that these things make sense over time and can occur logically.
Next slide please.
Another feature of this is that there's these laws always change. So there's a new law that just asks Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. We don't have to get technical and I don't expect to see the pie chart.
But here's the punchline. This new law requires us and Ben together, this is a city thing, the city is responsible for doing these plans.
But we do these plans with the community of course. And this new law, so instead you have 34,000 new dwelling units that you have to plan for the next 20 years.
34,000 new dwelling units.
And more importantly, this number, it's a mandate.
We have to figure out how to accommodate these. And they also provide an affordability levels.
And so this pie chart shows you generally how the affordability levels are so we have about 9000 units, close to 10,000 units that have to be affordable to people making under 60% of the areas median income.
And to put that into perspective for you, an average house in the market now is going for $800,000.
We have an obligation as a city as an organization as people within this community to come together to figure out how we are going to divide for 9000 dwelling units that are priced at what a home would be about $250,000 to provide for space.
As a mandate for the state. We're going to talk more about that is being a driver of some of the change you're seeing here in the southeast, and also that's been influenced by the plan for.
Also, it is not it's so when we're talking about providing a greater variety of housing types to meet a variety of these kinds of that's why you see if you move to say 20 years ago like houses used to look this way, it wasn't as much density, they're going to be larger or single unit detached homes
and you're seeing more and more dense housing, you're seeing more apartment complexes, you're seeing more colleges, townhomes, and the reason is to meet the state's requirements as well as our obligation as a little database to provide for a variety of housing, people with different incomes and needs.
So next slide.
So, I took that picture that Aaron photograph 2014 keep that data much. So, it was pretty quiet in the southeast for a long time.
And something I forgot to mention too is back then.
Back before then in 1998 there was a hub was here for the annexation in 1998. Okay so a lot of folks there, right. So in 1998 these parts were added to the city.
And it must have led his center for a long time without a lot of public investment. I think it was a lot of animosity, folks in these neighborhoods at the city, they have not invested here, you brought a city or city, but you haven't built roads.
We're still on septic systems, you haven't built sewer systems yet. Where the parts where the schools like what's the deal we're paying the taxes but we're not getting any of the buildings that come with it.
So, in 2016.
After that arrow photo that I showed you is taken the city did a forward looking plan, up until the year 2028.
And this was a process to meet our state requirements to provide for land to support our economy, as well as land to support our housing needs, as well as parks and schools and public public uses that you see around town.
That plan is approved. It was about 2380 acres plus or minus.
That was added to our city after the city went and met the laws by assuming that almost every property within the prior urban growth boundary, they could be developed, we develop, which is staggering when you think about it.
So in order to expand your growth and you have to demonstrate becoming more efficient before you expand, you have to assume that the land that can develop will in that in that urban growth boundary.
So, that took place in 2016.
Part of that proposal also made a lot of changes, in particular to the areas in the southeast by providing greater makes of uses. So, planning for parks, planning for schools planning for more commercial areas, especially in the areas that were added to the urban growth boundary.
The reason being is that it's really hard to go into existing areas of our commercial center. You all know that. If you don't live here, there's no way in heck you would want that to happen.
So they were added to the expansion area in order to provide those amenities, not right next door but within a comfortable distance at the fringe of the city.
So try to make those areas inside the existing urban growth boundary where you were living, have a greater access to those amenities.
We also work with them parts. And we also work with school district. We do some of their land planning. We do land for schools and land for new parks as part of this as well.
So we do land planning for those two agencies. The idea being that when we're expanding, we're going to try to provide greater makes of uses to increase and improve the livability and function of the city in the southeast and other parts of the city.
So, next slide please.
So, back to that lack of public investment.
So, this is a photo of a giant sewer pipe.
It was constructed to serve the southeast area.
I couldn't I couldn't remember how many 10s of millions of dollars were spent but it's in the 10s of millions of dollars was 2030 something in that range to provide a sewer system for the southeast area.
That is the thing where is it, it goes more or less down the place for us, please for us to keep kind of from north to south and once north to south and connects to our sewer plant and other systems of to our sewer plant in the northeast.
So, that occurred. That was a huge improvement. Now you can get off something over time here in southeast. Next slide please.
Another big public investment was Murphy the Murphy for those who remember that.
And that was probably the first and biggest public investment that was made in the southeast in terms of transportation facility that transportation facility now you see okay it's my claims and sidewalks, you know, tracks is providing that great east west connectivity.
And next slide please.
When you put those things together.
When you have become the ingredients for the vacant land, it was sitting there for a long time in southeast of all of a sudden, become available and ready for development.
Without those public investments.
You couldn't really develop which is one Southeast state relatively stable, but other parts been like Southwest West Side and northeast, we're going nuts during that big growth period in the early 90s and early 2000s.
So in 2020 the city said well we need a new transportation by that new transportation plan is a citywide plan.
It seems that pretty much every major road in band in southeast we're talking southeast here, someday, is going to be upgraded from a rural system to ways shoulders no sidewalks and bike lanes to a complete system of roundabouts or some kind of intersection improvement.
But mostly roundabouts were roundabout first town roundabouts so you major intersections sidewalks, bike lanes, and travel lanes. However, a 20 year plan to accomplish that end of a complete system does not happen overnight.
So Russ is going to share a little about that.
So, just some quick slides and maybe a bit of reassurance. There's a lot going on is disruptive, it's changed, it's changing areas for a long time.
I'm a bed resident.
I feel the same thing, even though this is my job. So I understand that and I feel that as well with you. But at the end, after build out, where are we going with this so part of our analysis of the build out of the plan that we're under now, also about 62% of the plan.
62% of all households in the city being within a half mile of school because of our coordination in the school district. So basically, more than half of the kids could ideally, do kids still want to school them.
I don't know, it's like they're zipping around on things and skateboarding or electrical, you know, they have better options for the impact.
So we'll have a majority of majority of households within a half mile school next slide please will have will have about 86% of households within a half mile of commercial thing.
And this is also including the southeast. There have been concerns about the loss of commercial land.
I've spoken with a few folks here earlier tonight, because of your concerns, I think in speaking with our city council city council directing staff from our lobbyists to begin working on a change to the law that allow that conversion of commercial land for affordable housing.
And there's still an allowance for it but in essence that bill is just recently passed in short session to provide protections for a commercial and some of these commercial areas can still provide some affordable housing, but not all of this going to be used for affordable housing and
for commercial. Just to give you some quick, if you had 10 acres of commercial, the idea is that you have 10 acres of commercial in one of these areas, you can use two of them for de-restricted affordable housing and you preserve eight acres for 80% of it for the coverage and all intended commercial use.
So that is a big change that just occurred. And that is now all those.
Next slide please.
I think really cool things. This is one of the things I'm most kind of excited about.
Denmark's migration is because fantastic job of acquiring sites. They do a great job of running and managing their park system. We were coordinating them on a number of fronts in terms of providing open space.
They acquire their own sites by themselves. First of all, so they bought by land. This is a photograph about a little park.
But we also coordinate with them, providing open spaces part of large development. So any development that's open 20 acres.
It comes to the city. They have to dedicate or buy some form 10% of that land for an open space and usually that goes in concert with them parts of our creation district who will partner with the developer to only maintain that park over time.
So these bigger developments will provide these parts over time. The city also protects open spaces to work on various special interests, knock out properties and things like that.
The city also just recently adopted a new tree protection code and ordinance in order to protect trees that are outside parts because of a lot of concerns raised by the public.
So this council has taken these direct actions in response to these concerns to try to keep this place more in line with what people are hoping that becomes open time.
Yeah, let's go to the next slide. And ultimately, just this picture, I don't know why you but that library is incredible.
It is incredible. I think it is, in a sense to me, this is just being gripping. I think it's like it's a statement of what the south east.
It's like this is where the south east is. It's a huge public investment.
And I think a sign of what's to come in terms of vitality, it continues to show up here in this part of town.
But I think there's another point, remember two sides of the same coin that with the development, come some of these public benefits. It's hard to separate two things.
So parts schools library district are all aware of the development potential in this area, which is in part why they have made some of these sightings sightings just to provide a new school and to provide a new part of the library.
So it's a good investment because people are going to be here and use it in this part of town easily.
Next slide.
There are two developments in urban growth library expansions you probably heard of these. We have called our ranch and legacy village. So all their branches off the top roads in the south.
And then the other one is the expansion area that will provide a variety of housing types and school as well as a small commercial area.
And then legacy village which is east of Stevens range. Another one you probably heard of.
And then the other one is the
downtown.
And downtown.
A little commercial core.
A 30 acre park.
And housing units as well as employment.
So again, a concept of making those uses is speaking and manifesting these new developments.
But the most important reason why these developments I think were something that council, the public, really or hoping could happen and are going to happen is because of the fact that we have a lot of people that are going to be here.
And the reason why this is going to happen is because of these will provide what's called the restrictive housing is for.
So, there are upwards of 800 units between these two developments that will be the restricted which means they happen to have to qualify based on your income to be in this unit, and it is pointed towards people who are of modern to lower incomes in order to be in it.
And then back to that slide I showed you, that is something the city is under city and we are under an obligation to try to provide for our community.
So these are two really important projects, because without those expansions is really difficult to provide that level of affordable housing on its own in an existing building.
In addition, these areas were designed build.
So, we have our fire standards for fire resistance.
The city council has recently just passed, it provided direction to use a new building code to create so units are now more fire resistant in terms of materials.
They're also going to be discussing vegetation landscape management. We have our fireman, we're still fire fire fire tables over there.
I'm not going to say fire in a large group.
But point being that Carrie is doing fantastic work with her team in terms of increasing our awareness emergency preparedness clear zones.
She's doing a fantastic job of doing that so please don't worry about that.
The last slide, because we're going to say we're going to have to keep doing these plans the state requires us to do these plans. So we're about to head into another planning effort.
And that planning effort is going to look at the next 20 years, the webin is going to become.
So, get used to the hair and the height.
So we're going to be back talking about that plan. And I think what's really important and I love this so much in this occasion is that we, this is a conversation we need you, we need your ideas in order to make this plan work in order to make it then the incredible place it is make sure that continues through time into the future for our children and the children's children.
Because, you know, I think in this, I'm going to be alive.
Listen, it's
But, you know,
back to the original side we all built this we built this community together, we're part of this growing community and I think you get the right hand. And I hope that when we're doing our plan, looking forward, that you might a hand in that and it's my job to try to make that easier for you and more meaningful, which is my intention.
And I hope that we will be more details involved and we will make this easy for you to come into the future. So thank you so much.
I'm going to go, I'm going to try to go a little quick here just a time to say, so I'm going to talk about all the great activity going on in this area of town.
So first of all, say thank you for putting out the ball the construction today and it's happened in this work on the back line.
There's been a lot of activity. I will say this is your breath moment right here. Take a breath, because we got a whole other way on coming and I'm going to go over.
So everyone's got this, this exhibit right here and this one I'm going to go through, we're going to build that together as we do this. So quick, quick fun fact between the recession and COVID.
How much, how many dollars do you think the city invested in infrastructure for the city?
Big guess.
10 million, 20 million? A billion dollars.
That's what the city built just the city. This isn't development everything else. The city invested a billion dollars in the same year period.
So we got a whole other round of that right now. So let's go to the next slide, Brent.
So if you look at the map, all the areas in green, these are all the current developments that are going on, major developments.
There's a bunch of other things going on in the Senate that are not marked. These are all major master plans.
If you have any questions about any of those master plans, which you can correlate with Brian saying about how they were planned and how they were all supposed to relate to each other, schools, parks, walkability, all that kind of stuff.
You can go to this table over here. They're raising their hands. That's our current projects table. That's our current planners.
We'd be more than happy to talk about that.
What I'm going to do is talk about infrastructure. I'm going to use transportation because that's something everybody drives and feels everyday.
So next slide, right?
So there, that's all the recent infrastructure that's been built in this part of town, I would say the last five to 10 years. Murphy corridor, 15 kind of improved, not 15.
The roundabout from the high school, 27 improvements just happened in front of Stevens Ranch.
We did the Murphy interchange and some other improvements around town, including Billson and County. Next slide.
Here is what is planned in the next five years by the state to be built in green.
So now we're starting to build out bikeway systems. You're going to turn big bikeway.
That's so you can continue north, south, east, west, across town in the safe system.
We'll be building roundabouts at 15 in Ferguson. We'll be extending the roundabout at Green Market in 15.
As well as we are planning a major, major event for this part of town in probably late 27, where we're going to do the remark over crossing over the ramp.
That means we're going to probably have to shut down, remark it for a significant amount of time over a year, possibly two, between year to two years.
If you have questions about that, I'm going to turn over to our engineer.
We'd be more than happy to take your questions on that.
That's a major project of the 2020 General Aviation Bot that everyone has. Thank you very much.
But what we've been doing is we've been building out the system, all this stuff to be able to do that project and be able to move around as effectively as we can.
But still, a lot of growth, a lot of development going on. We're not having to talk about it. We're going to keep moving for time.
So next slide, please.
So what you see now, kind of in that blue, this is all the infrastructure that the developments need built.
We require them to mitigate the development as Brian said, when we brought in this area back in the 90s.
You mentioned they didn't bring the infrastructure with them. We now require them.
So it's things in the next 10. We require them to build all the supporting infrastructure not only for the development, but also to mitigate some impacts in town.
So you start to see a system evolve here, more roads, more roundabouts.
This is what we call this all coming out of our transportation system plan.
It's all part of these plans of how do we build up the network over time.
Next slide, Brian.
And then what you see in yellow are additional improvements that are in our transportation system plan, but we don't have funding for you.
So when we did that plan, it showed another billion dollars in the next 20 years that need to be invested in the transportation system and capital improvements and also operational costs.
At the time that we did that plan, we had funding for half of it.
Council's been working hard, general obligation bond, transportation fee.
Those are things that would become a line to help fill that gap and we're still short.
We're still trying to build out the additional ramps to go north and south coming off of Murphy.
At least we don't have the funding to do that.
China Road improvements and we are fully aware of the re-market third, highly 97 interchange route.
That is probably a $20 million, $35 million investment we did not have funding for.
The other thing I just want to mention real quick before we wrap this up is the re-market.
We heard this question a lot.
Why didn't we just do the bridge when we did the re-market last time?
They have the funding.
That bridge is where it's geared $30 million, $40 million to build a bridge.
The general obligation passed at the time.
We didn't have the funding.
We actually have a federal grant to do that.
We chase federal money wherever we can.
I would tell you the majority of the infrastructure that's built in town is built by the developers
and it's built by us.
We've got our utility bills, the general obligation bond.
We always try to balance what's the affordability and how much things are sustained with what's
needed and what type of improvements we go around the city where we're building.
That's how this map is built.
If you have questions around that, there are a lot of people around here to help answer
those questions and I will point that out in a second.
Next slide.
If you have questions, we're going to talk to you about any questions.
We have several tables that after the round table with the counselors and the neighborhood
districts, we'll wrap that up and then you'll be able to read a little round of ask questions.
If you don't know what to ask, there's a push-pull of the map again.
Next slide.
We have five tables.
If you're interested or have questions for transportation planning, how do you plan the
system, how do you do that?
This is that table in the back.
You might raise your hand over there.
That's where you go for that.
If you have questions around all the infrastructure projects the city's going to build, go talk
to Eric and the team over there.
If you have questions around wildfire and what we're doing and just kind of emergency
management, we have Carrie in the back.
Over here on this side.
Great planning, great questions.
This is the middle table right here.
We take the show.
In current projects, you go over here and you can ask questions over here.
Myself and Brian and the counselors will probably be milling around.
If you don't know where to go, you can help direct traffic for you.
So we've got a lot of information.
We really appreciate you sitting through that.
We are here to answer your questions.
So please keep that and let us know what we're doing.
After that, I'm going to turn it over to you.
What's the hand for reference?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm Brian and I'm with the counselors in our neighborhood district.
Representatives come on up to the table at this point so we can sit down and
have our discussion.
And we have a lot of computer, which is amazing, but we cannot have a direct
discussion with all of you.
I know it's going to be frustrating to not directly participate here, but we do
ask for you to just listen in.
And if you have questions, write them down.
It's a great question.
If you have questions, write them down.
If you have ideas, if you're excited about something, there's a series of
questions, the same questions we're going to be asking our district
representatives up here that we're going to write down your ideas, your
concepts, your inputs as well.
So please do that if you have a guest.
And then we'll be time at the end.
We're going to do this discussion, but then we're going to fan out.
We'll be able to talk directly with you.
And we'll be able to answer any questions as well.
So appreciate everybody here tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And the other little pickup we have tonight is that we only have two
mics.
So we're going to have to pass mics back and forth.
There is hand sanitizer for everybody at the end of the meeting.
If we can set that one down to the end of the table,
I'd like us to do introductions.
It just comes down from, from council Perkins all the way around.
And then we'll get started with our discussion.
Hi, my name is Megan Perkins.
I'm a city council.
Ross.
And so.
And so.
I'm a city council.
Ross.
And so.
And so.
And so.
And then we'll get started with our discussion.
I'm a city council.
Ross.
And so.
And so.
Ross.
And so.
And so.
And so.
And so.
Or you'll have the city council.
And.
Thank you everybody.
Dan.
Or large bird.
We're.
Okay.
That's a.
That's a.
And additional communications and engagement officer.
City.
Like at the senior assistant.
City.
General felt that he's been.
There was.
Like Riley.
And I've also been introduced.
Thank you,
thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think that's going to be better.
We really want to hear from you.
We're going to try to talk as little as possible and have our
neighbors be the ones who are talking as much as possible.
Sorry, it's hard for me to see the screen.
You can read the question, of course, for me.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Sorry about that.
So the first question we'd like to go over is around fire, safety and
prevention.
So we'd love to hear from the three neighborhood districts.
Questions, ideas, perspectives, that each of your own neighborhood
districts have around fire, safety and prevention,
such as what actions would you like the city to consider?
What additional support or resources would help you feel more prepared?
So we have a mic right there next to Southeast Bend.
If you want to take it off.
There's no one.
We're just going to have a discussion.
So tell us your thoughts.
Okay, great.
So there we can hear you.
It's good.
All right.
So just, um, I'm going to ask you to take a moment to
talk about the safety and prevention of the city.
So I'm going to ask you to take a moment to talk about the
safety and prevention of the city.
So I'm going to ask you to take a moment to talk about the safety and
prevention of the city.
And then we'll go over to the next speaker.
So we'll go over to the next speaker.
Okay. So we're just talking about.
So I think one of the issues that for questions that's come up
concerns maybe around that.
It's just.
You know, if there is an event.
How do we manage that as we just have, you know, not go just there.
So.
What can we do as we think about that,
or maybe you could let us know what you're thinking about.
Yeah.
All right.
So the first thing we've been talking about is like,
what would be helpful to hear from the city?
Not necessarily what the answer a question, but.
What kind of information do you think people want to know about evacuation
routes for.
You know, about the fire response.
Things like that. I mean, if your neighbors,
if you were expecting to your neighbors,
what do you think they would want to know?
As far as what we need the city should be providing.
I think it's exactly that.
Just number one in awareness, like appreciation.
What's happening and where.
You had a couple of calvary ranch with China hat road
and just that concern about fire and our precious waters.
So just an appreciation of the warriors
that you already have about that
and that you're thinking ahead
so that like you said, around evacuation routes
and planning for that.
Because I think sometimes it feels like
the planning happens in isolation.
Just looking at that big picture
and that you've got that coming for us.
Jim, do you have anything to add from some of these neighbors?
Especially we've been really trying to help people
prepare their own property.
So anything you think that would be helpful
for your neighborhood and the city can do
to help people be aware of it,
prepare their own property to be wildfire safe.
And that's a good thing I believe.
I guess the other thing I've heard
from people in Southeast area,
also people south of Knott Road,
that they're not in the city,
is the cost of home hazard insurance.
And there's a big here that Calvary Ranch
is gonna cause an increase in home insurance rates.
Which means that all the homeowners end up paying a lot more.
For example, my home insurance
integrated more than doubles in the last year.
And they go higher next year.
So that's kind of a big concern.
Yeah, that's an addition to what Sarah's also mentioned.
Thank you.
If you wanna pass the mic this way
and we can come to large spur.
And just to reiterate something that
I've heard of this Brian Orus said
that we council didn't just direct staff
to adopt the R237 code, which is the home hardening code.
And one of the benefits that potentially is
maybe some insurance savings.
We know where it is building in those materials.
I was just saying that's one of the things
I really appreciate.
So I feel that those are adopted.
However, that doesn't help us more
than the system database, right?
So that's what they've been for me
having resource pages.
And I mentioned this in a lot of other stuff,
but I know there's free inspections in the same form.
So that's great.
And then where you're beginning
to turn your own contractors
to be might be not being
to be something similar with upgrades.
I would also like to see some support
for maybe neighborhood cleanups or events.
How can we actually get including this stuff out
through the happy and so on community.
I know there's free,
you can take a vegetation with dump on certain days,
but not everything has to be able to transport it.
There's other options that you might be able to use
and have those as a indicator.
And then evacuation routes,
that's great, I know that you guys are getting
to come and leave your software for that.
So to that, and maybe a way for people
that can't evacuate from stuff
that really need extra help and to have that
and some kind of thing that neighborhood districts
who have access to, so you know who those neighbors are
that would actually help if there's the big event.
Thank you for that.
And I'm going to take the opportunity
to plug for the shoots alerts.
Everyone in this room should be signed up
for accounting to shoots alerts
and you can actually indicate things like disability
or other things on that so that people know
that's something that's going on here in house.
Right, other things that we can do to help your neighborhood
feel prepared for Wildfire?
I was part of the brainstorming session
at the Wildfire preparedness session we had recently.
And one of the things, a couple of things
that come to mind is with a variety of income levels
of people we have in our neighborhoods,
they're people that have black physical ability
to do their own remediation projects.
There's financial constraints.
People don't have a way to haul their materials
or don't have the funds to pay for the total.
And I did a little spreadsheet
that showed what their needs based on their abilities
and financial position would be.
And I don't know if the city would be in a position
to subsidize some of those that are lacking resources.
And one of the options I listed
was the possibility of, it would be basically
a kind of a loan program where the city could set up
an application process and if they fell into
a certain bracket, either physical inability
or funds availability, the city could conduct
with remediation teams to come out and help
or get their properties correct.
And then we do that to pay back what we're timing on
as a utility, add on to their utility bills
or what have you, but it's not a brainstorming
ways to help people.
And also in labor, it's helping laborers.
I do that myself, so I've got a pat on my back
but I'm physically able to stay out.
So I don't have any problem even then.
I have some resources to help some.
Okay, yes.
I'm looking at the past and I've heard about the
public funding, it's a new one here
in the fire-wise community,
the local city-based communities.
That's going right to you, the dirt.
So for the same question to you about how we can help them.
Could be sure, Jocelyn, you said
significant areas of growing space, very large trees,
which is educating, developments can be built
in the local space and the,
but we produce a lot of fire.
That, I just got a number of words from our
1780 yards since February 2nd.
So last year, we got rid of about 450 pounds of material.
We created a, we became fire-wise community.
We had a volunteer committee and one of our board members is
where we acted with Melissa Steele and a lot of the other
resources, the city and county and state.
We got certified on a number of different trainings.
There's a lot of available information in help
for communities that want to organize and fight.
One of the things that we wanted to ask the city about
was in areas like Culvera Ranch, where,
I'm not going to put a piece in the presentation,
there is an affordability,
they're trying to build a new neighborhoods.
That has been zoned as far as,
which one was five foot setbacks,
that seems on the edge of town,
did not be the best idea of fire safety.
As an example on the west side of town,
the last, I think I've heard a lot of that,
the west side of the city was,
I think it was never in West, yeah, perhaps.
It was on RL and they had much bigger lots,
some of it was hard to afford them.
We're just curious, as we start to develop
on the edge of town,
should those things be considered?
Thanks for that question.
Rossard, here, anything else you want to add to the poll,
for the matter of question?
We're just asking.
Well, you're the AO and you're doing something else to say.
Okay, I mean, I have a,
yeah, I'm gonna reflect back on some of the,
starting with Sarah and also anything else
you want to add on the after hearing?
No, we're good, okay.
Thinking about evacuation routes and awareness for people,
thinking about communicating with people
and things like health and our language
and how we're incorporating fire safety
into those types of clinics for the employees.
Concerned about insurance and how that is affected
by how we build our town
and how we prepare our town like this.
And then resource pages and administrative,
and I just thought I'd be talking about
pages where people can find resources
that they can then hire to make their,
okay, to make their property.
Or build the materials.
Okay, but the events in the business
and we encourage people to help the neighbors.
And maybe I want to reflect that in the back a little bit.
Maybe I'll start back a little further.
If we're talking about how we can help the neighbors,
what kind of families can the neighborhood districts,
what projects the neighborhood districts can play in that
and then how can the city support that as well?
Well, I'll keep the mic up to the many ones,
but I would say all of your committees,
the neighborhoods, the district,
you can kind of help organize those things.
Make use of all the available resources
that are already out there for grant money.
As far as that's available,
if you look for it, you can organize groups of people
that can go get that money.
Again, in my HOA, we have a lot of volunteer help
that helps other elderly that can't do their own thing up.
Or we get free assessments
and we put Melissa Steele on some of those assessments too
where people can find out if they have a risk.
Okay, you're passing the mic this way.
Does anyone in the audience have one
of those wildfire assessments from Melissa Steele?
A few, okay, great.
Do you have any other ideas around how we have
any other districts could help with the standards
and how the city could help with that as well?
This one thought is that
the firester doesn't have a lot of HOA,
so we might need to make sure the place has,
but that makes it hard to find kind of the common
defined space that other people can get.
Great point.
I'll call the question to the answer
because basically Southeast Bend is an anchor right now.
But it's so common.
We're kind of in line here right now
due to recognition, several board members.
So it's very difficult for us to do a lot of stuff right now.
In fact, I'm the only board member right now.
So we'll call the technical gaps,
maybe Sarah's got some ideas.
Well, I'm very interested in helping people get a board
and refer to the board and get that going
and then maybe you can help us out.
Sarah, you agree?
I wouldn't agree with that.
Yeah.
All right.
All right, so I want to open it to Council.
I'm not here.
Yeah, but I think we finished my sentence.
I was going to bring it back to you.
So there you go.
Yeah, and I want to, I'm going to be sure
we have a time for everyone to talk,
but before we close out this topic,
I wanted to ask Councillors if there's anything you wanted
to add or questions or anything else.
I just want to make that one for Southeast.
I'm the Council liaison to Southeast Endere Farm.
And I think we would like to see,
as it is, you know, some more activity down here
and more ability to organize and, you know,
dress together some of the things we talked about tonight,
but it's going to take a few people that will be willing
to step up and maybe get a little bit more involved
in that neighborhood district.
So if anyone's interested in that,
and I encourage you to talk to both Sarah and Jim,
or myself as well, just so we can start to collect some names
and try to generate some interest there.
I would like to give an observation,
having lived on the west side,
I live on the west side of town,
and while it's not an apples to apples comparison
between my part of town and your part of town,
I do think that there already is, to some extent,
a bit of a buffer with the development that happens.
It's just outside, for example, of Caldera Ranch.
That didn't exist on the west side.
It was pretty much raw land over there.
And so there was a big effort to say,
how do we organize that transition between very lengths
to less dense to less dense,
to no development in the actual forest?
And when I drive around down here,
and when I look at the maps,
I see that transition already existing.
So I think some of that buffer already exists.
It's not to say that we don't need to think about that
going forward, but I do think some of that
already exists in that spot.
Yeah, and if we can pass the mic back to us,
because I'm gonna start both of them next month.
Some of that too is working with our rural fire
just to partners for the folks who are outside the city
to help them make sure they're prepared
and have the services they need as well.
All right, and how do Council comments before
we move on to the next one?
Okay, so our next question,
which I hope is appearing on the screen,
is around that sort of growth infrastructure,
all those things that Brian and I were talking about.
And so we would love to hear your perspectives
and ideas and questions around growth and development.
But specifically, some things we'd like to hear about
are what types of commercial amenities
would you like to see added?
What are those types of commercial nodes
that you wanna have with neighborhoods?
What are those specific kinds of changes
to our streets and sidewalks that would make you feel safer
when you're traveling, including when you work or school?
And what types of open spaces, parks and recreation opportunities
would you like to see here being your bed?
As to the stately one of the parks and rec board,
what were close to if anyone wanted to hear from you
about the new homes back from Venice
that you met as well?
So we'll throw you over to Old Farm to start.
Well, I'm open that the stations will gather
a lot of information about what kinds of specific
commercial development that folks want.
We did do a survey and sent some questions out
for folks about what was most important
and we didn't ask specifically about whether or not,
what kind of commercial they wanted,
but I'm hoping that you'll be able to gather
some of that information at the stations.
We are very curious and hopeful about preserving
the space and the passage of HB 4037
is doing, we're very excited about that.
Thank you for logging in for that.
We're curious when we might see some of that
being reclaimed in the south end, southeast area.
In terms of other things to make the roads safer,
everyone's concerned obviously about congestion
but already have a lot of congestion
in the south and east end as well.
Or so we build an analysis close down roads
through in the past.
But what can the city do to kind of
improve some of the transportation
arteries that exist in the southeast?
That's one question.
Also, I mean, if you talk about cyclops,
these people, I don't know if this is possible or
enforcement of kids riding bicycles on the sidewalk
going the wrong direction.
I mean, you look at one direction as you get ready
to pull into the intersection,
it runs in front of you on an electric bicycle
with no helmet going all the way.
And it's not just kids.
I mean, there's a lot of people
who actually don't follow the rules
and are more enforcement.
That's a saving issue.
Anything else, Ross?
Yeah, a few things.
With the commercial that has already been converted,
thanks.
With the commercial that's already been converted,
I think it's great that you guys are working
to basically restore that.
I don't know exactly how that's going to work
when you're stealing from here to pay Paul
kind of a situation or whatever it happens to be.
And I don't really wanna see 20%
of all of our commercial plan
by the city planning department
converted to affordable housing.
I would rather be an actual complete community,
be completely planned,
that includes affordable housing in that plan.
But I understand there might be some state laws
that prevent that from happening,
which is unfortunate.
Hopefully we continue to push for that
to improve over time.
I'd also like to see some incentives given
to help push commercial land
to actually be developed in the Southeast end.
It is lacking and it's just kind of widely accepted
that it just gets built out like 10 years later.
Whatever the city can do,
whether they're reduction STCs or tax breaks,
whatever happens to be to get that incentives in place
to get the commercial built out,
I think would be something great to learn as well.
Thanks, Ross.
I'm gonna ask a follow-up question
on incentives for commercial.
And that was sort of what we were getting at
what type of commercial,
because we don't want to incentivize just anything.
We want to incentivize what's gonna be really good
for the neighborhood,
it's gonna build communities, it's gonna be in place.
So if you have any ideas,
like if you were to incentivize certain types
of people to come up with those fee.
Oh no, that context is important.
Well, again, I hope you're gonna get some of that idea.
I hope.
I'm looking for the room grocery store.
Yeah, I think you can just say it grocery store.
We don't have so much money.
We don't have time.
We're not gonna get those amenities.
But we're happy to do another survey to the South Coast
to see what kind of specific people it's going to be.
Yeah, we would love to have that information.
We'll pass the magnet so we can ask rather than your friends.
Just because if we are considering what kind of incentives
we need to do, we wanna make sure
we're targeting correctly, right.
So, all right.
Well, I'm giving you an example.
We went through this with Wildflower.
There was 6 acres of any zone.
Land and that development and.
And developer.
Present it to the city that because of the geography, the photography of the property.
It wasn't really sustained that much commercial.
So it would drop down to what the net result is about usable is about a half an acre.
And that development started at 571 units and is a drop since to 538.
And it's all rentals. So that many units.
I could see as an example, what commercial well, how about a daycare center?
How about a combination bakery deli?
How about a little light shop or repair shop or people are trying to promote writing bikes more?
There's if we get even a third of those people writing bikes is 538 units.
Yes, there's two cards per unit.
The traffic is coming out of that.
So, we don't need commercial.
Buildings like, I mean, now further southeast, I can see a safe way or other center.
A grocery or someplace like that, but little markets expressway down that the corner of remarking 15.
Something maybe bigger than that could have gone in there.
But yeah, the city goal of having these complete complete communities.
That hasn't been attained yet. So that's what we need to focus on. I think.
I think there's like three different things. So I think just heard a lot of really good information about what kind of commercial identities changes the street sidewalks would make you feel safer traveling to work or school.
And what types of open spaces and opportunities you must as well.
Open space.
Okay. To continue kind of on the theme of commercial. I was in discovery west this morning and I went into the little corners.
You're going to like, oh my gosh, this is what we need more of that.
I really like what's happening with housing that has a lot of that kind of corner store.
Plus some of those other businesses gathering places that we can go there that you can walk or to.
So seeing more things like that would be really, really nice.
Also for advocating, listening, advocating for how to use legislative changes.
Making such a must and making huge commitments.
I would like to see also more corner stores and businesses.
And I know that then some kind of talk about that where you just take one house or something on the street and that gets turned into some kind of community business.
So that would help those existing neighborhoods.
And my big concern is not necessarily.
It is with the new ones and having crews put down.
But those amenities in those existing neighborhoods and how we start building those in work.
As far as getting to those places like everything new is so great with all the transportation and trails and parks and everything.
But existing neighborhoods, how do we get to those new resources and trying to fill in those gaps between the trails or between these big projects that you're doing?
I would love to see more education and enforcement for everybody.
Beyond just like kids on the bikes going the wrong way.
Cars do not stop when people stand in the street corners.
Like there is so little education and understanding of that.
I would like to see more education be great.
But it's forced that sucker.
Some people get pulled over from doing stuff like that.
They're going to start paying attention.
So I would love to see that.
And then I was just overarching.
And I think that's a huge question.
But how can we make transportation improvements faster, especially faster?
It's causes so much disruption to have things shut down and really, really worried about the new market and construction.
Because it's already bad.
Like I take a little similar alternative and that hard.
You can see two or three light cycles across.
And so I just that's my way to work.
Very worried about that and how we can make it more cost effective.
Because I know part of it we all talk about is using the market to do that railroad crossing
for is because it was really expensive.
It will help me try to make things faster, more efficient, more cost effective.
So that we get more money to the buck and it does move less disruption.
Great.
Yeah.
I just add, I'm being concerned with the remark of COVID pass.
You know, that's going to force a lot of traffic on alternate roads.
And it would be nice to have some sort of, I guess, information about, you know, how to get around the city quicker.
Instead of getting in situations where six lights get through, I've had that on the street already.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe a website or something like that, you know, but it would also require, you know, having basic traffic counters
at all of the roads around the market like Wilson, Murphy and Knott Road.
So I think that might be a good thing to do for the people who don't help them out.
I know it's going to be a huge disruption.
This remark is such a big matrix that we'll do.
And secondly, yes, what kind of businesses do we want?
You know, a market, you know, we had a situation on Murphy and Rostron House where people
wanted a gas station and we didn't want it.
But, you know, we could arrange it so that we could like market a daycare center, a bakery, a restaurant, you know, things like that, that wouldn't be so auto dependent.
I think that would be a good thing.
I think that would be very much appreciated for the Southeastern community. Thank you.
Sarah, what else can you add?
One last add to that, because so many great ideas were raised and so much consistency ideas, I think.
The only thing I was going to add is just on that, you know, Rostron House being 35 miles per hour and Murphy being 35.
And then there's that school zone that is very small somehow, right in the middle of life.
So as a neighbor, it seems very hard to figure out how to change that.
There's so many parties involved in that.
But I know just in Kansas City in the neighborhood that there's a lot of support for that.
So I don't know how we can show that support, get behind you and do that or take more action around making that happen.
But it's just there.
Great, great perspective.
And I think a couple of things that I'll add around the speed of the school zones and speed in general, that's something that we're looking at within our streets.
So we're going to be working on this year and we're going to be writing the community to give feedback as well.
It's how do we change our standards?
So we're designing roads for slower speeds going forward and then how to be perhaps look at retrofitting current roads,
super new speeds as well as an overall safety measure.
But really good information hearing a lot of good listing out of different commercial amenities.
A lot of you around, you know, essential services like daycare or food, like deli market, you know, coffee shop, those type of things.
And I really like to thank you for folks to make sure that we're supporting that as well.
And then hearing a lot around concerns around and I heard this from folks I was talking to before too,
around that closure of the Green Market Bridge and just really having good communication around that.
Thinking about how to lessen that impact as much as possible.
Thinking about how the construction is also an impact and congestion in this side of town.
Thinking about how we're educating people on bikes and cars and also enforcing the rules of the road.
So to make everyone safer.
And then the idea that someone mentioned sort of trail maps or even sidewalk apps that might need to be filled in and exist overheads.
So any other thoughts on this topic before we monitor any council comments around that?
Yes, it's really, really helpful information.
I'm hearing a lot of especially when we said big rebellion.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
So that's really helpful as well.
I did want to dig in maybe a little bit on the open spaces and I just want to, I'm just going to brag and say I think Alp and Blow is the best park we've met.
And I'm super excited that it's in our corner of town.
I'm wondering if there's any, if anyone wants to just think for a minute, any other kinds of parks or open spaces that you think we need more of?
Or do we need more dog parks?
Do we need something?
I know some amenities for like kind of bike riding amenities that the parks has done.
Anything else we can gather as far as thinking about open spaces and parks?
There's a lot of amenities for little tiny kids.
You know, my kids have gotten older and they're like, they've gotten going all the way around so we don't go to the park.
So maybe some like teenage or adult like challenge types of things.
I mean, we've got something different.
Yeah.
For older ages.
I'm not a big player to this, but I know I have a lot of neighbors that would actually love pickleball courts.
I know.
There it is.
Just the space trails kind of like the corner trail, archway trail through the southeast.
I have to say that the meat market closes on neighborhood bike down the St. Louis again.
I used to do it all the time, but the traffic there is so bad that it's not safe.
And that's why they're so open.
They have a grocery store called the old market.
Down called the old high school.
Yeah, it is.
I know the city wants people to drive more, but it's scary.
And then it's still, you know, forget it.
But say biking, and it is most important to learn from them.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Okay.
We still have a bit of time left and so we can get into some other discussion.
I do want to drop off just to hear what else it is you want to share.
And but I do want to ask and I always want to try to ask folks what it is you're excited about that's that's happened or is going to be happening in the southeast area town.
So let's start with that give us something you're excited about and then
feel free to share anything else from your neighborhoods perspective that you want to share with us.
And if you're excited for the week where there's to be done, that's it.
Okay.
I'm actually pretty excited.
I was pretty close to 15th and Ferguson and pretty excited about there being a round about being put in there.
Everybody kind of helped move that up.
Really very much appreciate that.
I also listened to enough noise on 15th from all that traffic.
It will be nice to have that be pretty subtle for free for miles.
I'm excited about some of the traffic improvements that I see on those activities that are coming.
I need one question.
I didn't see any in this presentation about more public transportation.
Yes.
Right now there are more across the south.
That's a tiny question.
We just had a presentation from CET.
Our past case is transit last night and they talked about how to how they're going to be
adjusting some of these southeast routes to get some more frequency for the routes to go down
and remarket so we can easily follow up with you and everything about that.
But we I hear that and we hear that that is something that southeast needs.
I want to congratulate CET for the beautiful bright blue bus seats that they're putting all over.
I think that is a huge improvement and it's a great thing to have.
One thing that hasn't been brought up or they don't want to
give huge kudos to the city for doing this is the flashing lights in the school zones.
That's a huge improvement.
Also the roundabout at 15th and Wilson that was more overview.
More overarching thank you again for helping act on listening, helping act on the commercial
and listening to affordable housing.
I am super excited for the main library to be in the draw area.
And Stevens Ranch in Legacy Village with the commercial and the parks.
I'm excited for the remarket for the price of the
awesome and the affordable housing that's going especially like I know it.
There's a specific teacher affordable housing.
I know I'm very excited about getting the roundabout at Knopf Road and Crimson Club Drive
because I've had the coldest getting on Knopf Road from
the
I'm also like to see the remarket overpass done in such a way that it kind of minimizes
the congestion on other roads. You know, it's such a huge intersection and it's
a big road. So that's a couple of things I'm really excited about.
That's long this already but I guess I'll just settle down on the library. That is incredible.
We've got this large for community centers amazing and health glow and we have a lifelong
person. So I guess the underdogs underappreciated. There's so much happening.
Great. Well, I want to open it up now for counselors. If there are any reflections you
want to have back to our neighborhood members kind of go around. If you can start with you
might see some the microphones down there. Okay, let's come around and I'll pass it
this way and we'll start with you Mario.
Sorry Councilman.
Hey, well thanks everyone. I really enjoy hearing everyone's ideas and everybody brings a different
perspective which is fantastic. This is really what this is all about. So I have three kids.
They all go to school here. A lot of them are not very Greek and now I'm spending time at
High Desert and also Caldera. I love Caldera. I think that they've done a really good job of
basically starting from a clean slate a couple years ago and creating a whole new community.
This is where my kids, their friends, their classmates, they're growing up.
This is their childhood memories and I do hear from a lot of people who don't feel safe
when they can't get to school. There's no school zone at High Desert Middle School.
It's pretty rough if you're a driver and it's downright frightening if you're walking or biking.
Working with staff within the confines of state requirements is really challenging. So things like
school zones can only be installed when there is a walking facility and since there's no sidewalks
on 27 there's no school zone on 27. One of the things that I've been really happy about with
the library and some of the development nearby is that 27 is becoming more accessible. There's
a multi-use path that is running up and down almost all of it. Almost all of it and it's up
to us to make sure that we get those last little segments connected and that's really where the
rub is. That's the hard part is getting it and a route is only as good as the entire network is.
So making sure that you cross, making sure that it doesn't disappear into our shoulders,
something like that. All of that is on our radar. I just want to say also one last thing on transit.
So we did hear last night from our Cascadesis Transit Executive Director.
Transit is huge. It's a huge priority. Council gave direction last night to create a working group.
Councilor Riley is the chair of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council that oversees
Cascades Transit. I'm the chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization which is responsible for
regional transportation planning. The two of us are going to be spending the next several months
figuring out what does it mean to have a more bend focused transit system. We have a regional
transit system. It would be fantastic if the entire region improved but we're not going to
wait for that. So we're going to figure out in our existing budget what are some of the changes
that we can make that will improve transit and that means more frequency, more hours.
So we're going to be working on that and I hope more good things to come. So I'm going to pass it on.
Great. I just wanted to thank everyone for coming tonight. Just appreciate all the change that
you wrote that is happening. It's so important that you don't engage with the community and make
sure that your voices are heard. So we really appreciate you showing up and just keep up the
end of the neighborhood associations and get involved.
I see five and the thing I want to let you know is I'm an old military guy. I've been tired
after 25 years in the military. One of the things the military does pretty well is
most of the time plan for the long term.
I said that was a great place.
You can't even go exactly where I was going.
As an old flight pilot, the thing that I want to say though and what I want to talk about is
what Brian talked about and what Russ talked about this year which is we're on a long-term plane.
It's informed by the people that require the community at the time that guided some of the
awesome construction and things that happen here in the southeast and also around our city.
We're at the beginning of another one of those times now. We're setting another 20-year plan.
Right now what we're talking about is adding 80% more housing to this city.
For what's right now 80% more that 34,000 more homes 80% from our current stock.
It is going to take folks like yourself, folks like our growing team to smartly consider how
we want to shape that future. I'm going to echo comments from Russ. I appreciate you being here.
I appreciate you walking to these tables and giving your thoughtful inputs to help us shape
that future. That's what we're trying to do and that vision is real world trying to shape
it tonight. Thank you and please, please, I have all these folks in heads up. Thanks.
I actually checked in with Bob Townsend. I'm not the member, I think we're the same counselors.
The ones that are casting these transit today with this question about transit because we
kind of knew ahead of time when we were talking about this. I consisted with Councilor Mendez
that we're going to be looking at how we can improve transit routes going forward with resources
that we do have. We're going to need some additional resources if we really want to make
dramatic improvements. I think while the reintroduction of fares recently has been
difficult for those who rely on the bus regularly, it is going to give us some different additional
revenue to make some incremental changes which I think will be important here and then in other
parts of the region. There is a route now that does serve 15th Street just called the
Air and Ice School. Unfortunately, it is a 45 minute headway which means that's how frequently
the bus comes and you do have to go back to Hawthorne Station before you can get
out to the hospital. That's an example of some of the kinds of changes we hope to make in the
not too distant future and maybe shorten those headways up a little bit and it is going to
be very soon, shorter time to go from Hawthorne Station to the hospital than it is today.
Finally, starting in roughly May, there will be a bus route that's going to get altered and will
come down to the new library when it opens. So there are some changes that are coming and
they're going to be digging into the lot more and it is a really important part of what we need
in terms of our transportation system. I just want to echo what everybody else has said. Thank
you so much for being here. As the light is on to two of the neighborhood districts that are
represented tonight, I've heard for quite a while just about the amount of growth that's coming
and I don't want to pretend it's apples to apples comparisons and I live on the west side of town.
We've gone through a lot of growth over there and I understand the pain that comes with it
and all the change that's coming and you know it's a big deal and I think there is going to be
a lot of good that comes from it and help us meet our housing need and our employment and job need.
But I understand your pain and the difficulty of having to live through that process of
road closures and the noise and the dust and the sort of constant change and disruption. So
appreciate your patience and I appreciate you leaning in to help us make sure we develop
an even better plan than we have now in the new home corridor. Thank you, Mike. So I'll close us
out just speaking as someone who grew up in the Kings Forest neighborhood. Just actually met some
new folks today that are living on the street that I grew up in as a bedside grad as someone
who now lives in the southeast and it's going to be going through all this with you. I'm just,
I'm really proud and happy to represent this community and I'm so thankful for you all to be here.
Your ideas are great. We want your ideas. We want your input in how we plan this neighborhood and
we want to answer your questions too. And so this, I'm baffled by this turnout. This is amazing.
This has better than any ground table but we've had this turnout and I just appreciate
you for showing up and just I'm going to commit I think we belong to the rest of council to
continue listening, checking in, providing you information, give you some opportunities to
ask questions, get your questions answered and tell us what you think about your neighborhood
and we'll keep working with the neighborhood districts and you to do that. And now we have
a whole hour to kind of mingle and for you to visit our staff and for us to talk some more
in a more intimate setting but just really appreciate everyone being here and thanks again
for showing up. All right.
Thank you.
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