Bend expanding downtown safety initiatives

Bend is planning major updates downtown to help keep the area safer and welcoming for employees, residents and visitors, from security cameras and more officers on patrol to improvements at the city’s sometimes sketchy parking garage.

Some of those projects include redesigning the South Mirror Pond parking lot. Additional signs in the parking garage and art in the garage stairways will also be considered, city councilors were told at Wednesday night’s meeting, which also dealt with a host of other issues.

Additional lighting has already been added to the city’s parking garage.

City Economic Development Director Carolyn Eagan said the city wants to make the garage feel as safe as possible.

She also said the community will see some big changes this summer. One of the biggest changes will be a pilot program to add a four-hour parking restriction on Riverside Boulevard along Drake Park.

Those parking limit signs will go up May 26 and stay for the summer. Eagan said it should help improve access to the park.

“Drake Park is one of our community gems, and we definitely have people who want to use that park at all times of the day, so the parking restriction really helps us turn over the parking more often, so that more people can enjoy the park,” Eagan said. “We are trying, at the same time, to make more long-term parking available for people who want to use the river or who need to be in the park all day.”

The city also wants to work on education and outreach programs to connect with the public about these changes.

The Bend Police Department is also taking part in the changes.

A school resource officer will work a downtown foot patrol throughout the summer and will work at various times Monday to Saturday.

Patrols will continue to focus on the hours that are typically “high call hours” in the area.

Police Chief Jim Porter said officers will contact the bars to work with them and conduct education efforts.

“We know there’s about a 25 percent to 30 percent gap to the safety feeling downtown, from the days to the nights,” Porter said. “We will also have, for the first time, our community response team fully staffed. They are a team of a sergeant and two officers who will focus on livability issues in the downtown area, on high crime areas in the downtown area. When I say ‘high crime,’ I am talking about misdemeanor crimes and those that affect the livability and safe feeling downtown.”

Porter said they want the public to see police as a force that is trying to protect and change things downtown.

But Porter also said the improvements on the police force of late extend well beyond downtown, telling the council that after years of struggling to fill vacancies caused by retirements, for reasons such as a struggle to find housing, the police force has been at 90 percent staffing and 98 percent “operational staffing” since mid-January, for the first time in four years.

He said 911 calls are down 4 percent and officer contacts up 16 percent. A crisis response team will be back to full staffing in June for the first time in almost 18 months.

Another change will be the addition of security cameras in “hot spots” downtown, the police chief said, along with working to build relationships and gain trust with downtown businesses. But added officers downtown will have portable Breathalyzers, to check for “buzzed” would-be drivers, as well as working with bars to create a list, so that someone ejected from one bar doesn’t just go to another and get another drink.

Councilors also made headway on what parts of the city and urban growth boundary to make a priority for new building or redevelopment, both in the much-discussed Bend Central District and other core areas to the city’s outskirts, from a northern area off O.B. Riley Road to the southeast portion called the “Elbow.” — all dependent on private partnerships and possible incentives.

Councilors also held a hearing and approved a new downtown economic improvement district at a higher rate of 25 cents per square foot on property owners, after far fewer than the required 33 percent (by square foot ownership) expressed formal objections, as the process requires.

The three-year assessment will expand services, such as high-pressure sidewalk cleaning, more security and marketing and a new Bend Cares campaign, which Downtown Bend Business Association Executive Director Mindy Aisling said will encourage downtown shoppers to donate to causes for that help the homeless, such as the Bethlehem Inn, rather than give money to panhandlers.

Much of the night was spent discussing whether and how to fund and proceed on two long-time high-priority “missing links” in the city’s transportation grid: on the north end, the Empire Avenue connection to Northeast 27th Street and, on the south end, the Murphy Road extension to 15th Street.

A grid of transportation scenarios presented to councilors showed options and costs of “complete” projects and just doing a bare-bones connection, as well as much talk about whether the road extensions could be done in phases, working with ODOT on their pieces of the puzzle.

The impacts could be sizable – the full-ticket completion of those roads is estimated at $60 million, with lesser amounts if they are staged or scaled back. That could boost the current system development charge of $5,285 per dwelling unit as high as $8,100, at the top of the ticket. Other options include a 1-2 percent increase in water and sewer fees.

That impact on existing residents already hit by a string of water and sewer fee hikes in recent years did cause some pauses by some councilors, but Mayor Casey Roats stressed that existing road users, not just growth, would benefit from getting the projects moving in a bid to ease congestion and keep (or get) traffic flowing.

City planners also said a signal of commitment on the two projects is key to ODOT, developers of private projects in the area and others. Another option is to lengthen the timeline further, but make the commitment now.

“It’s a political risk,” Councilor Bruce Abernethy said — but waiting further to decide will just boost the sizable costs even farther — at a time when other road needs, not to mention tens of millions of dollars worth of still-pending sewer needs, are not far down the road for the still-growing city.