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Bend council exempts mural fees for a year, pauses business-registration hike
Summary
Bend City Council adopted the city's FY 2026'27 fee schedule with two council amendments: a one-year exemption for mural permit fees and a six-month pause of a planned 10% business-registration increase pending a January reconsideration and BDAB review.
Bend City Council on June 17 adopted the city's annual fee resolution for fiscal 2026'27 but with two council-directed changes intended to ease costs for artists and small businesses. The council unanimously approved an amendment to exempt the $676.60 mural permit fee for one year and to defer a scheduled 10% increase in initial and renewal business registrations until January 2027.
The amendments were proposed during a public hearing on the fee resolution after small-business owners and community members described the impact of development and system-development charges on startups. Veronica Ramos, owner of Redemption Coffee Company, told the council that transportation SDC estimates and other fees had made it “near impossible” to bring a brick-and-mortar shop to Bend and warned she might move to a neighboring city to avoid the costs.
Council members debated the municipal trade-offs before adopting the amendments. City finance staff told the council that the mural fee program generates only a modest amount of revenue (a few thousand dollars per year) and that pausing the 10% business-registration increase for six months would cost the city roughly $22,500 in lost revenue for the first half of the fiscal year; a full-year pause would be about $45,000. Councilors said the pause would give staff and the Business Development Advisory Board (BDAB) time to revisit fee methodology and consider restructuring that could reduce burdens for small businesses while preserving a funding stream for economic development work.
Councilor Mario Mendes, who moved the fee-resolution amendment, said exempting the mural fee was an inexpensive way to incentivize public art while the business-registration pause would allow a planned BDAB review to proceed without imposing an immediate cost on local entrepreneurs. City staff said the changes would be incorporated into the city's budget documents and that they would return with more detail as BDAB completes its review.
The amended fee schedule also includes other routine adjustments presented by staff during the night's budget packet, including modest utility and SDC index-linked increases. The council adopted the overall fee resolution with the two amendments and recorded the motions in the official minutes. The exemptions and the pause are effective for the next fiscal year unless council or staff report otherwise following BDAB's January review.
