Bend’s new mayor, city councilors sworn in

New Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler and new City Councilors Ariel Mendez and Mike Riley were sworn in at Wednesday evening's annual meeting.

Here's the new mayor's first remarks:

I’m so excited, honored, and grateful to be Bend’s next Mayor. I feel today I am closing a circle I started drawing as a Bend High student asking my fellow classmates to elect me to the student council. I was so happy to take on even that small leadership role. But I also remember as a teenager my worries about how neighborhoods were changing, and speeding cars on the route to school, and the shocking gun violence in Columbine and Springfield that has continued to plague our nation every year since. I remember, too, all the hikes my family took in the Deschutes Forest, and swims in the Cascade Lakes, and the joys of playing soccer on a crisp autumn high desert evening. The clear air, the smell of juniper and pine, the team all working towards that goal, that achievement we knew we could make, together.

Bend isn’t the same town that I grew up in – we’ve grown, we’ve continued to change, and we’ve learned a thing or two about ourselves in recent years. We’ve learned how we can band together to create shelter for our most vulnerable, saving lives. How we can recover after the pain of a recession. How we can weather the disruption of pandemic. And how we can hold each other up after tragedy.

Through it all, Bend has never been afraid to evolve to meet the next challenge we’re facing. And when we decided we wanted to directly elect our Mayor, and let the voters choose the person who would be the voice of our City, we set a high standard and expected strong leadership.

The Mayor sets the tone, and leads the team. And I intend to lead this team, of my fellow Councilors, of an entire hardworking City staff, of an entire community – we all want to protect the incredibly special things we love about Bend, and fix what isn’t working for too many of us.

As your Mayor, I will work hard to make this team successful. I’m here to get solutions on the ground, and that means trying some new things as well as making sure we maintain the excellent core services we’re able to provide right now. I will work with anyone who wants to pursue positive ideas that will make Bend better.

We are at a critical moment in our history as a city. We’ve tipped over 100,000 people living here, and we have big decisions about our future coming up in the next four years. This is our time to throw open the doors to possibility, opportunity, and innovation. This is our time to lay out a future path for Bend that leads to a thriving, sustainable community with good job opportunities, housing within reach for all, and safe transportation connections between our neighborhoods. This is our time make the changes we need to be truly welcoming, so new voices and new ideas continuing flowing through our community, keeping that spirit of innovation and evolution alive.

Thank you, Bend, for electing me as your Mayor. I pledge to be the leader we need right now. I look forward to the work we will do together to make Bend a better place for all of us.