Whether you’re gearing up for 2024 or in the midst of your busy season, please take a moment to read through this message and provide some brief feedback on the Transportation Fee currently being scoped out by the City of Bend. This fee will be assessed on residences and businesses throughout the City and will appear on monthly utility bills.
After reading the background below, you can take the survey here or provide more in-depth feedback by sending a message to BEDAB@bendoregon.gov or speaking at BEDAB’s next meeting on Monday, December 4 at noon in Council Chambers at Bend City Hall. If you’d like to participate in the meeting via Zoom, you can find that information here.
Things we think you should know before taking the survey:
The Bend City Council has tasked the Bend Economic Development Advisory Board (BEDAB) with developing recommendations for City Council around how this fee could be assessed on businesses located in commercial and industrial spaces throughout town.
If your business receives a City of Bend utility bill or you pay one via an agreement with your property owner or manager, you’ll be assessed a Transportation Fee when it is implemented. This initial survey input will help inform BEDAB’s feedback around how a fee is phased in and the process used to determine how much any one business pays.
You can read more on the City’s Transportation Fee page here, but here’s a few points we want to call out to help explain why this fee is being considered now:
- Funding for transportation system operations and maintenance is limited and declining. The City’s revenue is not keeping up with the cost of providing service our community expects.
- The Transportation Fee funding would help the City maintain its core transportation system, which is crucial to protecting this public investment. Not investing in repairs means it becomes considerably more expensive to maintain streets. The fee would be used on street pavement preservation, snow plowing, street sweeping, clearing debris from bicycle lanes and sidewalks, sidewalk infill, safety equipment like speed radars, traffic signal upgrades, and more.
- The basis of the Transportation Fee is on a household or business’ impact to the transportation system. Calculating non-residential fees is a little more nuanced than single-family versus multi-family fees because of the wide variety of businesses located in Bend. The non-residential fees are still being discussed, your input via this survey will help focus on key issues like how the fee is phased in and where business’ may have questions.
What to expect next:
BEDAB will present their recommendation to the Bend City Council on January 3. You can expect updates from me as that feedback is developed and Council holds opportunities for public comment early in 2024.
