Bend City Hall (Bulletin file photo)

The Bend City Council adopted a $628 million budget for the 2015-17 biennium at its meeting Wednesday night.

The budget is about $8 million larger than the one approved by the city’s appointed budget committee, in large part because the city added in previously approved expenses it had planned to make sooner.

Within the voluminous budget document, one line item has proved the most contentious — street maintenance. According to city staff, the city has about $80 million in deferred maintenance. The longer the work is put off, the more expensive it will become, the city has said.

To help catch up on the work, the City Council is considering a gas tax, an idea which has already spawned organized opposition from a number of local gas companies. The opposition, which has hired attorney and former Bend Mayor Jeff Eager, has highlighted the fact that less money is being dedicated to street maintenance than in the previous biennium while the overall budget is growing. As a result, the opposition insists a gas tax is unnecessary.

City Manager Eric King noted spending on street maintenance has trended upward over the decade and says the decrease in next year’s budget is the result of a string of mild winters. The city maintains a reserve fund to ensure it has the resources to respond to a major snowfall. Because snow has been scarce, the reserves had built up to a level where the city was able to dip into that fund to support one-time additional road maintenance work during the 2013-15 biennium, King said.

“That’s the reason there was that bump, but that’s not a sustainable strategy,” King said.

Councilor Victor Chudowsky, who along with Councilor Casey Roats voted against the budget, said the amount of money set aside for street work, which is about $7 million, “seems low.”

King said the City Council will be able to spend more, but advised it wait until the city has a chance to look at property tax revenue in September. Property taxes contribute about 65 percent of the city’s general fund, which is projected to total about $40 million next year.

At a special meeting on June 29, the council is scheduled to hear the results of a statistically valid phone survey gauging support for a gas tax and other street revenue sources.

Chudowsky said he is worried the city is “assuming a gas tax will pass,” instead of planning for what will happen if voters reject the idea.

During a public hearing before the budget vote, no one from the public offered testimony.

In other business, the City Council took a step toward exempting affordable housing developments from system development charges. The fees, often abbreviated as SDCs, are levied on new housing developments by the city and Bend Park & Recreation District to account for the costs of serving a larger population. For example, the city uses the fees to fund work on roads, the drinking water system and sewers.

In an attempt to spur the development of more affordable housing, the City Council said it intends to excuse $1 million worth of SDCs over the next biennium. Due to the city’s funding issues with street maintenance, the council will only reduce transportation SDCs by up to 75 percent. Under the proposal, water and sewer SDCs will be able to be eliminated entirely.

When discussing how much money to exempt, Councilor Nathan Boddie said, “$1 million is a good enough chunk that we can do some good.”

Affordable projects will not be guaranteed an SDC reduction, as the city will have an application process during which the council can decide if and how much to reduce SDCs. During the discussion, Councilor Barb Campbell noted it may be advantageous to avoid reducing SDCs on a project that will have an especially big impact on infrastructure, such as one located in an area without sewers.

“We’ll have the opportunity to weigh things,” King noted. “We’ll have a bunch of eyes looking at it, determining needs, to look at infill and see what will have less stress on the system.”

The council also agreed to have a four-year sunset on the program, after which point it will be evaluated. The target is to dedicate 85 percent of the $1 million in exemptions for multifamily housing, leaving the remainder for single-family housing. The program is scheduled to be formally considered by the council on July 15.

The park district is also considering an exemption of up to $500,000. The district intended to vote on the measure this week but held off because a board member was absent.

The City Council also heard an update on efforts to address accessibility. Last September, the city received 155 barrier removal requests, which are filed when a citizen is unable to move safely through a public space.

According to Accessibility Manager Karin Morris, the city had beforehand typically received about 10 requests a year. Such requests usually involve fixing a rough patch on a sidewalk or flattening out a steep ramp.

In her presentation, Morris said the city intends to focus on making entire corridors accessible instead of spreading improvements across the entire city. One of the highest priority areas is roughly bounded by NE Wells Acres, Neff, Jones and Pikes Peak roads. In total, the city estimates making that area accessible will cost about $1.3 million.

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