A cyclist crosses the intersection on SE Wilson Avenue at Third Street in Bend.

The city of Bend has already collected $470,000 from the new transportation fee that shows up on your water bill. It’s on track to bring in $5 million, as planned, for the first year.

Where is that money going to go?

Bend residents won’t be able to track where each penny goes individually. The money is going into the overall funding for the city’s transportation and mobility department. It can’t be spent on things other than operations and maintenance — repairing roads, striping, sweeping streets, snow removal, and such things as improvements for people using things other than cars to get around.

The city does plan to release a data dashboard later this fall to detail the money coming in and how it is spent generally.

Here is a preview:

The fee has enabled the city to boost the money for street preservation from $3 million to $4.5 million. It has enabled the city to purchase two small sweepers to clean streets. It has enabled the city to add a new transportation engineer to work on safety programs. And there is more.

It’s not lost on the city why keeping the public informed about the fee is important.

“We need to keep communicating how the funding is used, what it is going for, so people can see the connection, why it is so critically important,” Sarah Hutson, a senior management analyst at the city told us.

This is a new fee. It was passed without voter approval. Transportation fees can be approved by city governments in Oregon without a vote of the public. Even though its just getting underway, the city of Bend has already talked about increasing the fee.

The goal is that with the increases the fee will bring in $10 million in phase two and $15 million in phase three. Those are expected to be implemented in July 2025 and 2026, respectively.

So, we get why people may not like the fee.

There are real limits, though, to revenue that the city can bring in to pay for roads. The state gas tax is flawed as cars become more efficient or don’t even use gas. The city’s property tax rate growth is limited by measures 5 and 50.

The fee is not an embarrassment. It was not a craven cash grab. It is going to help pay for things to improve transportation and safety.

What would be embarrassing is if Bend’s city government let its 900 lane miles of roads deteriorate and did nothing about it.