Before the end of 2023, the Source Weekly checked in with Mayor Melanie Kebler to learn about important accomplishments from the year and priorities moving forward with the growing city. Below is an excerpt from that Dec. 15 conversation.
Source Weekly: What are some of the City of Bend’s biggest accomplishments from 2023?
Melanie Kebler: One of the things I'm really proud of is the Lighthouse Navigation Center and the Safe Parking Program that we've set up the past couple of years. We're seeing people move out of homelessness, and we're seeing people stabilize, and that's very encouraging because it's showing that those solutions work.
In the same vein, we saw the Coordinated Houseless Response Office back on track. They just had a meeting yesterday that I know was productive, moving forward on finding solutions for managed outdoor shelters, which is a real gap in our system.
I think passing the fire levy was huge this year. Some other big accomplishments were grants around infrastructure, getting $20 million for the Hawthorne overcrossing and getting federal grants for our airport tower, which is a real safety measure that we need out at the Bend airport. There are a lot of federal grants rolling out in the next few years that we want to take advantage of.
On the public safety side, I’m really proud of our police data dashboard that's live now, with the transparency on all of our police data, and I think even more proud of how we have supported the crisis response team. That was something that's many years in the works, but we've finally got that on the ground this year and of the 752 encounters that they had here in Bend, 75% of those were resolved without a police officer at all, which was the result that we're looking for.
SW: What are some of the City’s priorities going into 2024?
MK: Starting at the beginning of next year, we're going to get to the end of a lot of projects that we've been working on throughout this year and some that started before this year. Updating the tree code, that's something that we're going to be moving through in the beginning of next year.
Same for the system development charge update and the transportation fee process. It's been a year-long process that we'll wrap up early next year. I'm looking at updating the Community Climate Action Plan, which will be kicking off next year. But there are a lot of things that are sort of wrapping up at the beginning of the year, then we're going to get into our next slate of goals.
SW: How has the City addressed houselessness?
MK: When I was first elected in 2020, and took office in 2021, this was something that we just leaned right into because we had emergency dollars available, and we had a huge gap. We didn't even have an emergency overnight shelter that was consistent for the winter. Over the past few years, the city has been stepping up on what we can do.
I think the more difficult conversation has been more region-wide and community-wide – how do we coordinate and get everybody stepping up to play their part. The other challenge is the community conversation. As elected leaders, it’s our job to overcome that and make sure we're acting on good data and good policy reasons. The fact is, if you want the status quo to change, which we all do, you've got to do something different.
SW: What are your overall thoughts on the trajectory of Bend?
MK: I'm very optimistic about what's happening in Bend. We've been through a lot, as a lot of cities have, and we have some pretty serious challenges, but we still have an engaged community, and we still have people who care and will write. We really do have something special here. We're at this point where we can really be in charge of our own future and our growth, and we can help to dictate what we want to see the future be like, even in the midst of state rules and all this other stuff.
I know there's been a lot that we are dealing with, but I'm still very optimistic about where we're headed. I think we're in the right direction. And we need to just keep pushing forward and getting where we want to go.
