In a 4-to-3 vote, the Bend City Council decided again Wednesday night to proceed with its surface water improvement project, including the installation of a 30-inch pipe.
Mark Capell, Scott Ramsay, Jodie Barram and Victor Chudowsky vote in favor of moving forward. Sally Russell, Doug Knight and Jim Clinton voted to halt the project in favor of a broad public input process.
The council heard more than 2.5 hours of testimony on the pipe and SWIP. The majority of those delivering public testimony were opposed to the plan in its current form.
However, several people with experience with water systems did testify in favor of the city’s plan.
The most interesting event of the evening was the Bend Chamber of Commerce’s announcement that it will hire a third-party to evaluate the SWIP. The chamber will then take a stance on the project after hearing the results of that third-party study.
Learn more about that from our earlier blog on the topic.
The council may yet again reconsider whether it should move forward with the plan as construction on the pipe is not likely for the next few months at least.
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2013.
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Thank God. They finally got something right!
More divisive and difficult city infrastructure discussions and decisions are already in the queue. This expensive backlog is in large part a direct result of a decade of reckless and mindless growth, greedy development profiteering, lax public oversight, and devastating insufficiency in SDC’s. The bill has come due.
It’s time for someone other than city staff to collect information and present it to the council, as it is clear they are too invested in the project to be reliable, or even trustworthy in their role. When misinformation continues to be perpetuated (such as the unambiguously false claim that the city has historically used 18 cfs. Try half of that), I smell something fishy… indicating the existence of more flaws and fibs under the surface of these shady attempts to demonstrate diligence. Mark Cappel’s bully pulpit is predicated on the notion that if council has already voted to move ahead, then accurate information is no longer necessary. I think most people would find this rationale for decision making quite silly and if we’re going to spend $70M or more on this, I demand an honest and rational evaluation first. It certainly has not occurred yet.