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NEWS Parking Pains
The Old Bend Pilot Parking District will soon face the biggest challenge since it started: Summer
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By Jack Harvel
Since the start of the year, the City of Bend has been testing a residential parking permit program in a section of the Old Bend neighborhood. The intent behind the pilot program was to give the residents of the neighborhood parking spaces that wouldn’t have to compete with river floaters, downtown shoppers and event crowds. After six months, survey results show little change in residents’ attitudes, but the program’s biggest challenge lies ahead with summer events and an influx of tourists.
The specific area of the pilot program, which includes all the streets east of the Deschutes River between Drake Park and Miller’s Landing Park and ending at NW Broadway to the east, was selected because preliminary surveys from the City showed a high degree of support—around 70%—for it in the area. Recommendations from the neighborhood would shape any permanent
program if one is put in place, parking officials say.
A second round of surveys taken during the pilot program showed little change in attitudes of residents. “The support was very similar still, we were at about 70% in support of the district, generally with very great feedback on what we should improve,” said Tobias Marx, parking services division manager at the City of Bend. “I think the biggest lessons learned so far are to improve some of the signage to make it easier to understand for people, and that we had to communicate a little bit better about the visitor process.”
Concerns about aspects of the program have come from both residents and city leaders. At the Bend City Council meeting adopting the program, Councilor Barb Campbell was the lone dissenting voice.
“This resolution is selling part of the public right of way to a small number of our citizens,” she said during the September 2020 meeting.
Neighbors have complained about paying for parking in front of their own homes, the computer-based permit tracking system and the difficulty of inputting visitor passes into the system – which requires entering visiting cars’ makes, models and license plate numbers on the City’s website.
“Because it’s all in a computer system it’s a lot more difficult to get somebody a pass. I understand that they started giving out physical passes, but it’s case by case,” said Steve Lillegren, who lives in the pilot program parking district. “And it’s because the computer system doesn’t know how to handle the manual passes.”
More communication is needed, Marx said, saying that the two types of visitors parking managers need to com-
municate with are those who are visiting households in the area and those who aren’t. To accommodate these different groups, everyone who has gotten a residential permit will be sent two visitor passes for visiting friends. The City is also promoting the Bend Park and Recreation shuttle to floaters and coordinating with people attending events to inform them of the best parking practices.
Temporary permits for non-residents can be obtained through a portal on the City’s website. Some parts of the neighborhood offer free two-hour and four-hour parking, as well. The City maintains a map of available parking for visitors, with additional designations for “hybrid areas” where people can park during events like Munch and Music— the weekly free music event set to start again in Drake Park July 8.
“Munch and Music, Theater in the Park, Summerfest, all those are coming back. And I think that will be a great test to see if those hybrid areas that we created for events will work the way we wanted,” Marx said.
To test how the program works, an extensive parking study will track what’s happening on the street throughout the day for two weeks in August.
“We need that because we’re going to have a baseline in the summer times, when we have events, when we have other things going on, and more tourists, etc. What’s the baseline here in the summer, then we’ll do the same thing again, probably in October or November,” Marx said.
The study will be followed up with a third and final survey of the district to show what residents think of the program after a year of having it in place. That survey will influence what happens next—but people who live outside of the neighborhood can still chime in by writing to the City or speaking during the public comment period when City Council next discusses it.
“We’re actually including some of the performance metrics that we’re looking for to really bring this back to Council and to say, ‘Look, this is what we have observed. This is what we have learned over the year, this is the feedback we have received, this is the public opinion about it in the district and these are the evaluation metrics we had set,” Marx said. “Now we need to determine if we want to continue it or not.”
The City Council won’t revisit the district until after the program finishes at the end of the year. If approved it could provide a roadmap for other areas experiencing parking congestion. Other parts of Old Bend that weren’t included in the pilot could be a candidate for a parking district if the people living there want it.
“It should be something that comes from the people living there, and if this pilot works well, then out of that we can create a tool kit,” Marx said. “It’s really up to the neighbors and the parking committee to decide that.”
Jack Harvel
Cars are lined up by Drake Park, where time-limited parking is still available to the public.
Jack Harvel
A sign showing that only residents can park in the Old Bend District are displayed throughout. Bend Parking Services Manager Tobias Marx said that more clear signage was one of the most frequent recommendations given in parking surveys of the area.
Jack Harvel
Por Jack Harvel / Traducido por Jéssica Sánchez-Millar Una moratoria sobre los nuevos establecimientos de marihuana hizo que el condado de Deschutes no pudiera recabar impuestos sobre la marihuana. Un nuevo proyecto de ley podría cambiar eso.
Un proyecto de ley que devolvería los impuestos recabados de la marihuana en el Condado de Deschutes ha sido aprobado por la Cámara de Representantes de Oregon y está en espera de la votación del senado. El condado anuló su capacidad de recabar el 10% los impuestos aplicados a las ventas de la marihuana al poner los comisionados una moratoria sobre el permiso para los nuevos establecimientos de producción de marihuana en agosto de 2019, una decisión que los votantes hicieron permanente con una medida de propuesta de ley en noviembre del 2020.
Los impuestos a nivel condado se gastaron en los programas de prevención del uso de drogas y en la investigación de operaciones de cultivo ilegal. Cuando el condado estaba recaudando impuestos por primera vez, recibió entre $4-$500,000 al año, pero después de ser aprobada la medida 110 de Oregon, el proyecto de ley que despenalizó la mayor parte del uso de drogas recreativas en el estado y redirigió los impuestos sobre la marihuana para financiar los programas de tratamiento para las adicciones a nivel estatal, el condado recibiría alrededor de $200,000 al año.
“Teníamos cientos de miles de dólares cultivando marihuana en el condado, vendiendo marihuana en el condado, recibiendo impuestos por las actividades en el condado y no enviamos ingresos al condado,” dijo el comisionado del condado de Deschutes Tony DeBone.
El proyecto de ley fue respaldado por el representante Jason Kropf de Bend y por Jack Zika de Redmond. Ninguno de los dos estuvo en la cámara de representantes durante la aprobación de las pautas de legalización y tributación de la marihuana, pero Kropf dijo que el tema de una renuncia voluntaria de un condado no se exploró.
“En el momento de propuesta de ley o legislatura original, nadie había anticipado lo que pasaría”, dijo Kropf a the Source. Era algo anticipado, ya que se tendría al condado completamente dentro o fuera y luego lo que sucedió en el condado de Deschutes no se había contemplado”.
En ese momento dijeron los comisionados que Deschutes optó por abandonar lo relacionado a los nuevos establecimientos de marihuana en gran parte debido al conflicto entre los productores de cannabis y sus vecinos.
El programa piloto de la región histórica de Bend implica que el estacionarse en esa zona durante eventos sea más complicado este año
Aprincipios de 2021, un programa piloto en el vecindario histórico de Bend estableció un sistema de permisos de estacionamiento para los habitantes que algunas veces tienen que competir con las personas que van a flotar el río, que van de compras al centro y que asisten a los eventos para así poder estacionarse fuera de sus casas. Después de 6 meses, los resultados de la encuesta muestran pocos cambios en las actitudes de los habitantes, pero el reto más grande del programa está por venir con los eventos de verano y la llegada de turistas. “Acabamos de hacer una encuesta en el vecindario histórico de Bend. De hecho, tuvimos una mejor respuesta comparado con la encuesta inicial,” dijo Tobias Marx, gerente de la división de servicios de estacionamiento de la ciudad de Bend. “Estábamos cerca del 70% a favor de la región, generalmente con una estupenda retroalimentación en relación a lo que deberíamos mejorar.”
La zona específica del programa piloto, la cual incluye todas las calles al este del río Deschutes entre Drake Park y el parque de desembarque Miller, que termina al este de NW Broadway, fue seleccionada porque las encuestas preliminares de la ciudad mostraron un alto nivel de apoyo.
“Creo que el aprendizaje más importante, ha sido hasta ahora, el mejorar algunos de los letreros para que la gente pueda entender mejor lo que está pasando y comunicarnos un poco mejor con relación a el proceso de visitas,” dijo Marx.
A todos los que han recibido un permiso residencial se les enviará dos pases para las visitas. La ciudad está adoptando un enfoque específico para los visitantes durante el día, como el promover el uso del transbordador de Bend Park and Rec para las personas que flotan el río o coordinarse con las personas encargadas de eventos para informarles cuál es la mejor forma para estacionarse. Los visitantes que asisten a la zona para presenciar eventos tendrán espacio limitado en las calles para estacionarse, junto con un tiempo límite de estacionamiento de hasta 4 horas.
“Much and Music, Theatre en el Parque y el Festival de Verano, vienen en camino y creo que será la mejor prueba para ver si esas zonas híbridas que creamos para los eventos funcionaran de la manera deseada,” dijo Marx.
El consejo municipal de Bend evaluará la zona a final de año, y si se aprueba, podría proporcionar una guía para otras áreas que estén pasando por congestión de estacionamiento. Otras partes de la zona histórica de Bend que no se incluyeron en el programa piloto podrían ser candidatas para la zona de estacionamiento si la gente que vive allí lo desea.
Where’s That Weed Money?
A moratorium on new marijuana facilities made Deschutes County unable to collect its share of taxes. A new bill could change that.
By Jack Harvel
Pixabay
Abill that would bring back taxes gathered from marijuana sales in Deschutes County has passed the Oregon state house and is awaiting a vote from the Senate. The County voided its ability to collect 10% of the taxes levied on marijuana sales when commissioners placed a moratorium on permitting new marijuana production facilities in August of 2019—a decision voters made permanent with a ballot measure in November 2020.
The county-level taxes were spent on drug prevention programs and toward investigating illegal growing operations. When the County was first collecting taxes it received between $4-$500,000 a year, but after Oregon Measure 110, the bill that decriminalized most recreational drug use in the state and redirected marijuana taxes to fund statewide addiction treatment programs, the county would receive around $200,000 annually.
“We had hundreds of thousands of dollars growing marijuana in the county, selling marijuana in the county, taxes being received by the activities in the county, and no revenue being sent back to the County,” Deschutes County Commissioner Tony DeBone said.
The bill was sponsored by Representatives Jason Kropf of Bend and Jack Zika of Redmond. Neither were in the House during the passage of marijuana legalization and taxation guidelines, but Kropf said the issue of a county opting out simply wasn’t explored.
“Nobody had at the time of the original bill, or in the original legislature, anticipated what would happen,” Kropf told the Source. “This was sort of anticipated as you’d have county either fully in or fully out, and then what happened to Deschutes County just hadn’t been contemplated.”
Deschutes opted out of new marijuana facilities in large part due to conflict between cannabis farmers and their neighbors, commissioners said at the time. The County’s first moratorium was lifted after it placed some regulations on growing cannabis to ease the tension between these two groups,
If a new bill is not approved, the County's share of cannabis tax revenues will continue to go up in smoke.
establishing smell mitigation, required setbacks for greenhouses from property lines and distance requirements from “youth activity centers.”
“We put reasonable regulations in place, and we said we’ll re-review it a year later, and sure enough, those reg-
—Tony DeBone
ulations couldn’t even get settled in because they started to get appealed,” DeBone said. “There was a point where we’re like, ‘OK, well, this isn’t working, how about we ask the people to give us clarity?”
When the ballot measure passed it froze the number of county active marijuana processors in time, not allowing any new permits to be awarded, though a few facilities were approved by the county before the moratorium and are still seeking state permits. Currently Deschutes County has fewer than 20 marijuana processing facilities on land under the jurisdiction of the county. If the bill is passed by the Senate and signed by the governor it would get the county back to receiving its funds, but would require the creation of an advisory committee made of stakeholders in the marijuana industry.
“The bill says the advisory committee shall give guidance to the commission about finding out how these dollars should be spent is my understanding,” DeBone said.
The group would also make recommendations on public safety measures related to marijuana and on how to solve issues that apply to marijuana businesses. Deschutes County Commissioner Patty Adair said the group could be valuable in coordinating things like irrigation, especially those in irrigation districts that will struggle to meet demand like Tumalo and North Unit.
“With wells going down and the Tumalo area, their water is on rationing seven days on seven days off, I’ve heard from some hay ranchers that that are having a hard time. So you know, all those things, I’m sure could come up,” Adair said.
The clock is ticking on this legislative session and as of press time, there’s one week until legislators adjourn.
“We’re on a time crunch. We basically only have a week left this session, so part of the reality is if we have enough time to get this passed, that’s what I’m working through,” Kropf said. “If not this session, I’ll continue to push on it. We have a robust cannabis industry here in this county and I think it’s appropriate that we have a share of the revenue that we helped generate for the state.”
If not approved in time the bill would have to wait until the next legislative session in February 2022 before it would have the possibility of becoming a reality.
Fire in Warm Springs
A fire on the Warm Springs reservation reached over 6,000 acres; crews called in for backup during a hot weekend
By Jack Harvel
Afire on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation spread to an estimated 6,200 acres at the start of the week. The S-503 fire was first spotted on Friday, June 18; by Saturday morning it had spread to an estimated 250 acres and grew rapidly over the hot and windy day. By the end of Saturday Warm Springs Fire Management said the blaze had grown to 4,300 acres and threatened 250 homes and structures in the area. The cause of the fire is unknown at this time, according to Inciweb, the interagency incident information management system.
On Monday Incident Commander Kevin Stock of the U.S. Forest Service assumed management of the fire.
“Firefighters are focused on securing areas of concern including structures, residences and values at risk. Night shift continued line construction on the southern portion of the fire tying into a large meadow,” a statement from the Oregon Department of Forestry said.
On Tuesday the firefighters focused largely on the fire’s northern and eastern flanks, as well as the heel of the northwest corner, where further spread would threaten residences in Pine Grove in Wasco County. On Sunday evacuation notices were lowered from Level 3 (go now) to Level 2 (get ready). There have already been two spot fires since the start of the blaze, one that reached about 42 acres near a fish hatchery that is 50% contained and one that was just under an acre that was secured and is now being patrolled.
“Predicted afternoon winds and potential thunderstorms may test the eastern flank today. Initial attack activity is expected to increase as lightning activity moves through the area,” the statement said.
The Warm Springs fire was just 10% contained in the latest release from the Forestry Service, but a video released by Warm Springs Fire Management reported it hoped to get the perimeter secured Tuesday—but with thunderstorms in the forecast, crews expected the eastern flank of the fire to be further tested.
Calling for backup
The mix of drought, heat and lightning is severe enough that the Oregon State Fire Marshal deployed two task forces to Central Oregon on Tuesday to relieve some of the pressure off of local crews. Over 300 local firefighters had been working on the Warm Springs fire since the blaze started.
“We know the conditions across the state are dry, and with thunderstorms in the forecast, even the smallest spark could trigger a wildfire, that is why we are prepositioning these resources,” Oregon State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said in a press release. “We can’t control the weather, but we can plan for what we can control, and that is strategically placing resources ahead of this weather event.”
The teams weren’t sent to deal with a specific fire, but to bolster local forces in preparation for potential incidents. The two teams hail from Marion County and Washington County, and will remain in Central Oregon for at least three days to assist local teams if any wildfire eruptions threaten structures, and could stay longer if needed.
The OSFM hasn’t deployed any of its Incident Management Teams, who provide support for severe fires, but at least one of the state’s three teams could be sent if a fire gets out of hand.
The current fire has impacted the air quality around Warm Springs, but not to an unhealthy level at press time. The Warm Springs Air Quality Report for Tuesday showed there are 53 micrograms of pollution per cubic meter, up from the average of 13. This is considered a moderate amount of pollution that’s acceptable to most people, but could pose some health concern for people who are particularly sensitive to air pollution.
Courtesy InciWeb
Retardant is dropped on the S-503 fire on June 20.
Doing our Best to “Bee” Safe!
