Bend city councilors hear from first responders about the city’s public safety goal

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The “Public Safety Goal Update” was one of the highlights at the Bend City Council meeting Wednesday evening.

Police Chief Mike Krantz spoke about police and fire working together.

New technologies that’ll be implemented this year include:

• Installing automated traffic enforcement, where red light safety cameras are mounted at intersections. They can catch red-light runners with photo and video.
• Developing staffing plans that align with data systems, and getting federal approval to use a drone as a first responder program remotely.

Chief Krantz also talked about prioritizing calls based on severity.

“Everything is limited by resources and availability. We have humans out driving around and waiting for those calls to come through the Night Warning System, and when things like large weather events occur, we typically see a lot of crashes and we put the information out, and we have our responders respond to things that appear to be more serious from the beginning. 

"They triage those crashes, whether they were injury or blocking. And then we asked people that if you were involved in a crash where your car stalled out and you’re not blocking anything, please handle that on your own, so we're not trying to provide the resources to respond to something that doesn't require a police officer when there could be an injury crash coming," said Krantz.

Another item covered at the council meeting was the controversial $10.6 million tax exemption for the 313-unit Jackstraw Project, on SW Industrial Way, through the city's tax exemption program.

All City Council members agreed to pause the program until it's been reassessed. However, the pause does not include applications already in the queue, like the Jackstraw Project It's already gotten approval from the Council.