Bend Current. News from The City of Bend.

NOVEMBER 2019

Children crossing the street at a crosswalk on the way to school with text reading feel safe crossing the street? bendoregon.gov/one-minute-survey

SAFE TRAVEL AND TRAFFIC IMPROVEMENTS

Community members say traffic congestion and safety is Bend’s most pressing problem. They want the City to improve traffic flow and safety for people who drive, ride bikes and walk.

Public opinion research shows people most want improvements to Reed Market Road, connections to U.S. 97 Parkway, better East/West and North/South cross-town connections and intersection bottleneck improvements. The community also supports projects that complete missing segments of sidewalks and bike routes and create safer routes and access to schools and parks. Funding options for these types of safe travel and traffic improvements include a General Obligation bond.

The City has been working on a plan to address these needs. Some projects that improve traffic flow and safety (like Empire and Murphy corridor improvements) are already funded and in construction. If voters approve bond funding, work can begin on more priority projects.

The community is invited to help identify priority projects via a one-minute survey and learn more at bendoregon.gov/safe-travel.

The City Council is expected to decide in February 2020 on whether to ask voters to approve a bond measure.

Learn more in this video: What we're doing to address traffic flow and safety.

Property tax dollars breakdown: 42.6% to Bend Schools, 14.8% to Deschutes County, 2.3% to 911, 4.7% to COCC, 0.6% to High Desert Education Service District, 3.5% to Library, 10.4% to Parks & Rec, and 21.1% to City of Bend.

HOW PROPERTY TAXES ARE SPENT

Did your property tax bills arrive?

Many of you wonder where your taxes go. We at the City of Bend work alongside our partner agencies—the Bend Park and Recreation, Bend-LaPine Schools, Deschutes County—who take the lead on things like parks, schools and health. About 21 percent of your property tax dollars go to the City of Bend. The City’s budget is spent on core needs from improving our roads to keeping you safe and bringing in new jobs and affordable housing. Everything we do is focused on helping Bend work as smoothly as possible while providing Bendites with the most value for their tax dollars.

The City’s General Fund is mostly made up of property taxes. Other sources of income for the General Fund include some room taxes (i.e. lodging taxes) and franchise fees.

Only about 30 percent of the total revenues that the City receives go in to the General Fund, and they are known as “discretionary” funds. The other approximately 70 percent (the part that is not the General Fund) are what we call “restricted” funds. Learn more in this video: How the City's budget works.

We make Bend a city. We make Bend work.

Sewer pipe cut open revealing that it is almost completely clogged with fat, oils, and grease. It looks really gross.

KEEP YOUR HOME CLOG-FREE DURING THE HOLIDAYS

Protect your pipes! Keep your pipes flowing this holiday season by putting all trash and cooled cooking fat into the garbage for safe disposal:

Scrape foods from dishes into the garbage instead of the sink.
Limit use of garbage disposals. They only add to the trash going down the drain and can cause sewer problems.
Wipe cooled grease and fats from pots, pans and dishes with paper towels before they go into the sink to prevent blockages and save water.

If your pipes get blocked by grease, food solids and trash, it causes blockages that can redirect wastewater into the streets or back into our homes and businesses. Yuck!

Learn more at bendoregon.gov/fog or watch this cute video.

SIDEWALK RESPONSIBILITIES AND ENFORCEMENT

As we know, white fluffy snow transforms into a concrete ice block if we don’t remove it from our sidewalks quickly. Shovel before it packs down and becomes immobile if possible!

Many of our neighbors use sidewalks to access schools, stores, transit and school bus stops. Adjacent property owners are responsible for shoveling sidewalks. We want to take a common sense approach to enforcement of snow and ice on sidewalks. We understand that after a major snow storm, everyone will be behind with maintaining sidewalks. It is ideal to have your sidewalks cleared within the time frame outlined in our code, but we also realize it’s not always realistic. The code says people should remove snow and ice on sidewalks within six hours of daylight after the snow has fallen or accumulated in commercial areas, or one day in all other areas.

With over 2,000 warning letters issued in the last few years, the City will be issuing citations to repeat offenders and providing warnings to first time offenders this year.

WINTER STREET OPERATIONS

Everyone has a responsibility to prepare for winter. That means getting resources and supplies lined up before the big storm hits. Learn what to expect and get information about street plowing, sidewalk shoveling and protecting your home at bendoregon.gov/winter.

The Streets and Operations Department has a plan for winter street operations, including how we prioritize streets to plow and sand, how we handle driveways and how we’ll deal with certain problematic streets where on-street parking during particularly heavy snowfall has contributed to increasingly narrow and sometimes impassable roads. These are what we call “emergency snow zones.”

As part of a pilot project, during declared snow emergencies, the City will ask that “emergency snow zone” marked streets be cleared of parked cars, to help us plow from curb to curb. Learn more here about where the locations are, how to find out if an emergency is declared and what to do if your car is towed.

Watch our 2019-20 winter video: How the City maintains streets in winter.

NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION SURVEY

Did you know that there is a direct conduit for communication between Bend neighborhoods and City Council? The Neighborhood Leadership Alliance (NLA) advisory committee provides a direct and continuing means for Neighborhood Associations to participate and provide input to the City Council from the community.

The NLA has just wrapped up its first year as a committee. As members begin to identify their path forward, they are asking for your input. They have developed a short survey in an effort to help committee members better understand what the community knows about Neighborhood Associations, what feelings there are about Neighborhood Associations, and preferred communication methods among neighborhoods.

We invite you to share your input in this short 2-minute survey open to all community members through Dec. 31, 2019. Take the survey now!

COMMUNITY CLIMATE ACTION PLAN

The Community Climate Action Plan is a set of strategies that will guide both the City and the community as we work together to reduce our fossil fuel use. The goal is to decrease fossil fuel use in Bend by 40 percent by 2030 and a 70 percent decrease by 2050 (from a baseline year of 2016).

A community advisory group, the Climate Action Steering Committee, has been working since early last year on a plan that encourages and incentivizes businesses and residents to voluntarily reduce fossil fuel use. The City Council is tentatively scheduled to vote on approving this plan on Wednesday, December 4. The plan is a roadmap to a sustainable future and suggests practical action across a wide range of sectors and activities.

(541) 388-5505
communications@bendoregon.gov

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