City weighs in on Mt. Bachelor’s park-and-ride lot

Bend city officials will meet this month with Mt. Bachelor officials to address violations to the ski area’s park-and-ride facility on Columbia Street.

A group of neighbors who live near the parking lot have filed a city complaint and said Mt. Bachelor is not maintaining its lot, which has overgrown weeds and garbage and is also used to store utility equipment.

Bend Senior Code Enforcement Officer James Goff said Wednesday that Mt. Bachelor is willing to comply with fixing the landscaping violations, but due to winter weather will not make changes until spring.

Goff said Bachelor will address berms, irrigation and the general maintenance of their landscaping.

But he also said some of the neighborhood’s other concerns cannot be solved by city rules — and are up to Mt. Bachelor’s discretion.

“(The site agreement) encourages them to use a different area of the parking lot for the staging of their buses,” Goff said. “Again, the language says ‘encourages’ them to do that — it’s not a requirement, and so it will be up to Mt. Bachelor.”

Mt. Bachelor officials sent NewsChannel 21 a statement on Tuesday:

“We are aware of the complaint and we made arrangements with the city of Bend in late December to meet with their officials at the site in January to review the complaint,” the resort stated. ” Mitigation of any issues will be delayed until the spring and Mt Bachelor, as it always has, will live up to any binding commitments.”