BEND'S CITY MANAGER TALKS ABOUT THE 2013 SESSION'S IMPACT ON THE CITY...

The 2013 session is one for the history books - but now the impacts of those laws will soon be felt.  Bend City Manager Eric King says the PERS reform law (Senate Bill 822) that passed this session should save the city 1.3 million in pension costs during the next two years.

But much of that savings is reached by postponing a PERS payment, so King says they will probably not spend it.  Another effort was to bring more local control early on to land use planning-

"To try to provide more clarity - when people want to appeal a land use process - the bill didn't go through but we did get a "budget note" so the state agency has to consider that -- It's very frustrating for the city to take something to take it forward- and then people raise it at the end of the line- and we could've addressed it earlier and at the local level -- and that can really bog down the process."

King says lawmakers also paved the way for cities to access state money for special transportation projects other than state highways.  Projects that are important to the region, such as improvements to the Redmond Airport.