BEND, OR -- City Councilors and the Budget Committee now have the proposed city budget; deliberations begin later this month before it’s finalized.

City Manager Eric King says the two-year budget takes into account current economic uncertainty, “Without any new revenues, just kind of business as usual, about a 5% increase in the first year of the biennium and about a 3% increase in the second year. And it’s not keeping pace with costs; costs are much higher than that.”

He says that means minimal staff increases, “The areas we’re just trying to keep pace with growth are in public safety and our infrastructure core service areas, so there are some staffing increases - pretty minimal, not keeping pace with the population growth but just some increases to keep our calls for service and the demand for service in line with our capacity. with most hiring in police and infrastructure services.”

Overall spending is based on City Council goals created in January. “The focus really is on housing. So, how do we get infrastructure, how do we ensure that we’ve got an available land supply for housing. So, lots of projects aimed at that,” said King.

Not included in the city’s budget: anything related to houselessness. “We’ve just been able to apply for state and federal grants for those projects. We’re reliant on grants. We don’t have an ongoing operational revenue,” he said, adding there are several factors weighing on decisions, “The last couple of years, we’ve had the advantage of state and federal funds coming in - COVID relief funds. Those funds have been used and now we’re facing these inflationary pressures, like many other folks, and so there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. We’re also seeing development activity somewhat level off.”