Bend is one of a kind. A boom town powered by its natural beauty and its inhabitants’ love of getting dirty outside. What could be better?

What about Sparks, Nevada? Or Flagstaff, Arizona. And don’t forget Missoula, Montana.

Although no city is a perfect mirror image, the city of Bend has come up with a list of 16 “companion cities” against which it can measure city services. The list was devised during the 2013 biennial budget review and employed again this week as the City Council and Budget Committee reviewed the proposed $630 million 2015-17 budget. Having such information, city staff said, allows the administrators to look at staffing levels and performance in context of what other cities are doing, a process which helps Bend set priorities as it allocates new funding or attempts to make cuts.

“The Budget Committee and community kept asking why we were always just comparing ourselves to cities in Oregon,” said Brad Emerson, who compiled the list when he was the city’s special projects director. “A lot of the cities aren’t growing like we are or lack similar demographics, and none have the same climate swings that we do. These things all affect our performance as a city, so we decided to try to come up with a list of communities that may be more useful.”

The list is based on a number of metrics, including population, median income and education levels. Just as important, however, was significant recent growth, as Emerson noted cities attracting new people as rapidly as Bend face particular challenges as they attempt to ratchet up services.

The list also includes cities with robust tourism, a boon for the economy that also comes with hurdles for city management.

“A city in the middle of Iowa that’s not on the tourism radar doesn’t get a big influx of summer tourists, and as a result, faces a whole different set of issues,” Emerson noted.

Climate is also key, as that affects how water, sewer and stormwater systems work.

“Plenty of cities in New England have cold climates like we do, but we didn’t include any because they don’t have the climate swings we face,” Emerson said.

Sharon Wojda, the city’s finance director, pointed out that sometimes the most important factors in a comparison aren’t readily apparent.

“Gresham here in Oregon is one we compare ourselves to a lot because they also have a very low tax rate, meaning we’ve faced a lot of similar challenges,” Wojda said.

Each department, such as police or planning, picks out a few cities to compare its services with based on what’s relevant in that particular field. Police, for example, focus on demographics, whereas the city’s planning staff only looks at cities in Oregon, because of the unique nature of the state’s land use laws.

The city’s Engineering and Infrastructure Planning Department looked at cities with similar populations including Nampa and Meridian in Idaho and St. George, Utah. From that comparison, the department found it was managing projects valued at more than the work of the other three cities combined.

On a staff level, each engineer was in charge of about $15 million in projects. Only St. George cracked $2 million per engineer, reaching $2.2 million.

“Our numbers aren’t even on the same charts,” Wojda said. “When we first saw those numbers, it was like, ‘Wow, we really are doing a lot with fewer staff.’ But we’re not asking for more staff to bring down the number to the average. So in this case, I think it shows how efficiently we are able to operate.”

While there is no perfect match, Emerson did note a few cities that tend to be useful across a number of fields, including the larger Fort Collins, Colorado, which has similar stats in terms of growth, demographics and climate.

“Missoula also pops up a lot, and I’ve heard Flagstaff referred to as our twin city,” he added.

Not every department is able to find a useful twin, however.

Paul Rheault, the city’s utilities director, noted our drinking water supply truly is one of a kind.

“Very few places have two sources, like we do with groundwater and surface water,” he said. “And what we do take from our surface water (in Bridge Creek) doesn’t cost us much at all, as most cities have a treatment plant, and we don’t even have one yet.”

The city is building a treatment plant to the tune of about $25 million, which will allow Bend to meet a federal deadline to start cleaning out cryptosporidium, a microorganism that can make you sick.

However, because of the natural cleanliness of the water, the city has so far gotten by with only adding a bit of chlorine to its surface water, a simple approach that Rheault says “is unheard of across the country.”

— Reporter: 541-633-2160, tleeds@bendbulletin.com