Mark Capell, on left, and Nathan Boddie

Bend residents who want to see an example of what City Councilor Mark Capell has done during his time in office need look no further than Skyliners Road, west of the city.

There, a contractor is building a $24 million pipeline to replace pipes from the 1920s and 1950s that supply residents with drinking water from creeks in the foothills of the Cascades. Although other city councilors voted in favor of the controversial project, Capell is currently the longest serving councilor who voted for the pipeline, after some supporters were voted out of office or did not seek reelection.

Capell is proud of the pipeline and other city infrastructure projects that moved ahead on his watch, and he wants voters to re-elect him to a third term in November so that he can focus next on street projects. Three seats are up for election this fall on the seven-member, nonpartisan Bend City Council.

But challenger Nathan Boddie, who wants to unseat Capell, says the incumbent and other councilors have pursued projects that are more expensive than necessary.

This is not the first time that Capell and Boddie have found themselves at odds. Boddie filed a complaint against Capell with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission in 2013, after Capell voted to proceed with a $30 million water treatment project. That project is now under construction. According to the ethics commission, city officials had already contacted the commission to inquire whether Capell, whose brother Paul Capell works at the large engineering firm that designed plans for the water filtration plant, could vote on whether to proceed with the project. An employee of the ethics commission advised Capell he could vote on the issue and after the commission investigated Boddie’s complaint, it determined Capell did not violate state ethics laws.

Nathan Boddie

Boddie is a physician at St. Charles Bend, where he treats inpatients. Boddie grew up in Georgia and worked as a firefighter and emergency medical technician in Montana. In his late 20s, Boddie went back to school for his medical degree at St. George’s University in Grenada and after completing his residency at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, Boddie said he moved to Bend seven years ago.

For Boddie, the most important issue the City Council faces is the need to reduce spending.

“We’ve been on a reckless spending spree, and my opponent has been sticking the residents of Bend with the bill,” Boddie said on Friday.

City officials have said for years that Bend’s permanent property tax rate — $2.80 per $1,000 in assessed property value — is one of the lowest rates in the state for a city of its size. The city uses most of that tax revenue to pay for police, fire and ambulance services and street work. Bend property owners also pay taxes to the Bend Park & Recreation District, which has a permanent property tax rate of $1.46 per $1,000 in assessed value. However, the park district is a separate government entity.

Boddie said despite what some officials have said, the city’s tax rate is higher than it needs to be and the city charges too much for drinking water and sewer services.

Although Boddie, who served on a city sewer advisory committee, said Bend sewer and water projects cost more than necessary, he also said the city should not allow work it has already completed to go to waste. For example, Boddie said it would not make sense to leave unused a new city water pipeline that a contractor is currently installing west of the city.

“What we don’t want to do is spend more money to try to redo already wasteful things that have been done,” Boddie said.

Boddie said the city should overhaul its land use laws to make them clearer and reduce the amount of time that planners and other city employees spend answering questions about development proposals. Also, Boddie said he would like to reduce the fees the city charges developers to help pay for infrastructure to serve new homes and other development.

Mark Capell

Capell is a fourth-generation Bendite, whose great-grandfather arrived in the city in 1915 to work as the lumber camp manager for Shevlin-Hixon mill. Capell moved back to Bend in 2002 after a career that spanned jobs in planning and sales management at American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Nashville, Tennessee, Fort Worth, Texas, Chicago and Austin, Texas, as well as a position in marketing with Sprint in Dallas. Capell and his wife, Jeanni, own a small computer services company in Bend.

Looking ahead to the next four years, Capell said the primary challenge for the City Council will be to plan for the future of transportation.

“I think we’ve done a very good job on water and sewer, setting up long-term plans on what needs to be done and how to fund those things,” Capell said Thursday. “The part we haven’t finished is transportation, so that’s going to be key in 2015. We got a good start with the (general obligation bond measure for specific street projects), but we need to find a longer-term way to fund road work.” Plus, government officials across Central Oregon still face the question of how to pay for bus service, Capell said.

Capell said he wants to serve another term on the City Council in order to finish long-term plans for city infrastructure.

“I understand what’s needed on infrastructure, and we’ve worked really hard to get the infrastructure done at the least cost to the public,” Capell said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, hborrud@bendbulletin.com