On July 17, the City of Bend discussed its plans to update its parking code to better meet City needs. The goal is to create a comprehensive code that effectively manages and enforces use of curbs and parking.
“As we grow up as a city, we definitely need to be ahead of the curve when it comes to parking policy and making sure we’re staying on top of it,” said Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler.
The need to update the code comes from both things the City is seeing internally and what it is hearing from the community, officials said.
“Parking management and enforcement are going to become more of a needed operation of the City as we continue to densify and develop,” said Russ Grayson, chief operating officer with the City of Bend.
One aspect of the code that City of Bend staff members recommended repealing was the City’s current three-business-day rule, which bans parking a vehicle in the public right-of-way for more than three business days. Moving a vehicle more than 750 feet updates the parking time limits.
According to Grayson, there’s confusion in terms of how this part of city code works, hard for the City to enforce and for people to follow.
There are a number of reasons why this 72-hour code is not working, according to Grayson. Shorter parking restrictions result in more violations, which triggers more complaints and calls for service. A longer time limit will likely mean fewer violations, therefore making the code easier to enforce.
“I feel like there are better tools and codes out there that can address the intent of what those two things are trying to cover,” said Grayson. He also said that different code language would be easier to interpret, understand and enforce.
According to Kebler, the City hopes to set realistic time limits that staff can respond to while ensuring that a car isn’t sitting on a curb for months at a time. “We’re going to have to find that balance, having clear rules but also having rules that we can actually enforce,” she said.
Another thing the City is looking to change is who enforces parking. Currently, parking within the parking districts is enforced through a City-contracted parking service. Bend PD also responds to parking concerns when there are public safety concerns or complaint-based calls. With the current time restrictions, there is too much demand on staff.
“It’s very frustrating for people when we have a rule, but don’t have the staff or the ability to enforce it. So, we want to be realistic there,” said Kebler. With increasing demand, the City hopes to move toward bolstering its own parking division to address the issues.
Bend City Councilor Barb Campbell told the Source Weekly that she hopes these changes will take some of the demand off of law enforcement.
Campbell expressed some concerns with modernizing the parking code. While she agrees that it’s difficult to enforce parking currently, she hopes to see all of the pavement being used.
“I want us to be using available parking and not just building more and so, you know, that gets really complicated,” she said. “I believe we actually do live in paradise. I don’t want to pave any more paradise than we absolutely have to.”
Campbell, who has worked in transit, sees that as the solution in the future. “Transit is the way, I see, that we can have it all. We can reduce greenhouse gases and we can reduce congestion. That is the way that I think we can achieve that balance.”
The parking code currently up for consideration will not include vehicles used as shelters. The City plans to update these rules separately and will discuss vehicle sheltering rules, as it pertains to parking, sometime next month.
The City hopes to adopt a new code by this winter. Once a draft of the code is written and approved by city councilors, which will likely happen in October, the City will offer a number of opportunities for public comment before finalizing a code.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 25, 2024.
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As Grayson noted, Bend will continue to “densify and develop”. Part of this should be to encourage parking structures, to densify parking by stacking cars rather than spreading them out. Structures at all of the shopping areas (and another downtown) would really help. Top them with solar panels, and don’t require a smart-phone app to pay. A shuttle between downtown/box factory/old mill could also help with a nice walking/biking path between these three great areas.
Realistically the parking code is working except for the situations where people are living in their vehicles.. The city created the code and now doesn’t enforce the code when people are living in their vehicles in front of houses, schools and parks. There was a situation where a blue bus that parks at Phil’s Trail the entire season the gates are open which is not law abiding and then when the gates closed proceeded to park and remained parked at the Discovery West development and there was no recourse for those residents or the development management despite multiple reports of violations . There are also permanent vehicle residents parked behind Safeway on east side off of 27th with dilapidated trailers that look like fire hazards parked permanently between Safeway and the hospital. This is also not being enforced. So CC is changing the code again so they don’t have to enforce their own code? Wow!
Root problem is getting to utopian goal of dense, car-free community in “paradise” and reality of a community too thinly spread for viable transit, in a climate unfriendly to walking and biking many months of the year. Folks need cars in the here and now, for their own lives and to visit business. Add, much of the economy depends on visitors and commuters from near and far, who can’t get here without vehicles and need places for them at destination, not nearby then use alternatives.
Want to make Bend better; realize that the weather and lack of a large scale mass transit system makes car travel essential. Begin by contracting with a firm to build a three story underground parking structure on the site of the current Mirror Pond Plaza parking lot.. Have the firm build with an one-story business structure on the above ground section and lease for a 50-60 year agreement (these leases pay for the construction firms investment). Then remove driving on the streets in the downtown business section bordered by Greenwood, Bond, Franklin and the Pond. Designate the current downtown parking structure for ADA and bicycle parking only (freeing up the new underground parking structure from having to provide either of those requirements). Parking fees at parking structure gets sent to the Mass Transit District for increasing services outside the core downtown. A simple start.