Michael Rindfleisch

Agreed that the city need to build the project, however, location appears to be problematic. However, there a essentially empty land close to service opportunities in downtown Bend that could support such an operation. Troy Field is extremely under-utilized and no reason the City of Bend could either rent from the School District or take by eminent domain to be re-purposed for this project. It would be location near more service providers for mental health and various addiction treatment along with other public health issues. It is closer to more entry-level jobs with the growing hospitality operations in downtown which would allow residents of the project to easily walk to work and not have to rely on personal vehicles or a fragmented public transit system, It would be in a location where city leaders especially the city council could monitor its operation on a daily basis and provide first-hand knowledge on its successes or its inadequacies. This would be a win-win-win situation for all (residents, city leaders and the general public). It should be one of the first locations for helping the unhoused move to more full integration with the rest of the community.

Sorry, but the push to allowing so many cans in one day is what drove the grocery outlets to get the return process removed from their operations and now to a very limited number of bottle drop locations. This now requires consumers to increase their car emissions footprint making extra trips to non-convenient locations and the drop locations have a significant history of being unsanitary with machine breaking at a very high rate and very long wait times to use machines (not to mention harassments by panhandlers seeking extra cans). Thus, consumers began to just toss the cans/bottles into their home trash and the state recycling rate dropped so much that the state was required to increase the deposit to 10 cents per container. Increasing the daily limit will drive even more consumers to avoid the drop locations and toss even more into trash essentially destroying the original intent of the Bottle Bill.

One of the key reasons that Jamie McLeod-Skinner lost was that she appears to the centrist voters to be a serial political adventurer. Over the past three election cycles, she has run for Congress in one district, the Secretary of State and Congress in another district, not really focused on building political capital in a step by step process Thus, voters really don't know how her policies will be implemented. It appears to the average voter that she is simply shopping for a full-time political paycheck.

Follow-up to my last post, Zachary Bass at the Redmond Apt got back to me advised the airlines are not suspending ticket sales as they are taking "a wait-and-see approach" with possible work slippage. Obviously, the airlines are going to book the tickets and then end up with a number of upset passengers when the flights are cancelled. Wonder why management in those airlines are not willing to take the Redmond Airport staff who are doing the project management at their word. Thanks for the quick response, Zachary.

I recently checked the Redmond Airport website to determine status of the proposed airport closure for May 2016 and according to their website, "during the 21 day closure, all air service will be suspended from May 2-22, 2016. Air carriers will not issue RDM tickets to customers during these traveling dates...[g]iven our proactive communications with air carriers we do not anticipate customers will encounter travel problems by inadvertantly purchasing tickets during the closure date." Obviously their information is incorrect as I was just able to reserve flights from my military overseas location in Frankfurt Germany to Redmond on United Airlines, Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines websites for the dates of 4-21 May. As the travel community is normally able to purchase tickets a year in advance, it would be extremely helpful for the airport leadership to get with the airlines and get the travel closure information in their system to prevent inadvertent ticket purchase.

Appears to me that the Bend-La Pine school district owes the taxpayers a $700,000 rebate since they determined that a bid of $1.9 million on property listed at $2.6 million was an acceptable way to steward limited public funds. There was no rush to sell this property at this time as the funds from the sale have not been sequestered for purchase/construction of a specific school project. Perhaps school board chair co-chair Nori Juba can explain how the construction of high-end rental condos are not "an easy transaction from the development perspective."

Citizens of Bend have a couple of opportunities to kill this one-sided transaction. One, demand the public facilities designation for the property not be removed until the asking price is increased to the listed price. Two, demand that when the offer is raised to $2.6 million, also require the developer to accept the hazardous clean-up costs as part of the acquisition. Third, when those two contingencies are meet, also require the developer to provide parking on the site of the condos, either in a basement setting or at least above ground, not on-street parking spots. Obviously, the developer community will scream loud on how affordable housing would be affected by these requirements, but let's be honest, this is not affordable housing, but just another step in the Vail-ization of Bend.