Source Weekly Update

We got to speak with Marcus LeGrand and Anthony Broadman, founders of "The State of Bend" podcast, about being a platform through podcasting and being involved in the city of Bend.

Riccardo Waites is a local leader dedicated to unifying and empowering the black/BIPOC community of Central Oregon. He is the founder and executive director of the Central Oregon Black Leaders Assembly (C.O.B.L.A.), founder of We Black Radio (WBR), Navy submarine veteran, father of nine, and Central Oregon resident of 22 years. Waites was compelled to organize his efforts in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020. This Episode, Waites discusses C.O.B.L.A. programs, WBR, and the fight...

Eric Lint has worked in politics across the Northwest, approaching it from a variety of perspectives. From newsroom to lobbyist, congressional office to campaign trail, Lint now informally consults for civic groups and candidates across Central Oregon with a focus on data and outreach. He maintains the local politics blog Bend Votes at bendvotes.com. In this podcast, Lint talks about the landscape of politics in Bend and Deschutes County and what trends he sees emerging during this 2022...

Nicola Carpinelli is the founder of Hearts Unknown Education, a spinoff of the nonprofit, "Dead Poets Foundation." In this podcast, Carpinelli talks about the genesis of Dead Poets from an art exhibit on suicide awareness to a full nonprofit, and details the art therapy work he's now doing with kids in Bend.

Andrea Breault is the Transportation Director for Cascades East Transit. She has 18 years of 18 years of transit, parking and fleet management experience mainly from campus operations, having worked at two universities prior to working at CET. She’s also an avid bike commuter for 18 years. In this podcast we chat about Central Oregon's transit system, plans for expansion and how the staffing shortages felt nationwide are impacting CET's ability to offer more services.

The Source sits down with a leader the Greater Idaho movement, the effort to move Oregon’s border and fold more counties into the state of Idaho. Matt McCaw is the Crook County Move Oregon’s Border Captain and has been actively involved with both Move Oregon’s Border and Citizens for Greater Idaho for almost two years. I am a lifelong Oregonian raised in Bend, father and foster-parent of 8. He and his wife and own several small businesses. They currently live in Powell Butte.

The Source sits down with Steven Ames of the Bend Vision Project—Part of Envision Bend—to talk about this new process for envisioning Bend's future. Ames is a consulting long-range planner and principal of NXT Consulting Group of Bend and Portland, Oregon. Author of the American Planning Association’s award-winning Guide to Community Visioning, Steven has worked with more than 80 communities across the U.S. and overseas in planning for the future. Steven is a recipient of the Oregon APA...

Roger Worthington lives to ride his mountain bike, play with his dog Diggy, and drink beer with friends. He owns Worthy Brewing; Indie Hops - a hop breeding company in the valley and a law firm in Los Angeles that specializes in asbestos cancer. He’s the president of the Worthy Garden Club, a non profit whose mission is to help connect people to the natural world so we can become better stewards. Worthington joins the Bend Don't Break podcast to talk about his environmental stewardship, and...

Jill Mahler recently stepped down from her role as station manager and executive director of KPOV, Bend's local non-profit community radio station. Mahler started her KPOV career in 2008, as part-time office manager of the then-fledgling station, with a passion for community and no media experience. Over the years she aided KPOV in growing from a small low-power station to a Central Oregon institution, overseeing operations with a small staff and about 100 volunteers. Needless to say, it was...

As Jack Zika finishes up his last legislative session, we talk about some of his biggest accomplishments during his time in office. He tells us about dollars brought back to Central Oregon from Salem, the controversial changes of the boundaries of House District 53 and his hopes for the future of the district.

Bend is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States—yet people here often wonder why certain developments take so long to get off the ground, or why a project not favored by the public got off the ground anyway. In this podcast, Russ Grayson of the City of Bend discusses Oregon's land use policy, the barriers and limitations to developing housing and other properties, the City's challenges in keeping its Community Development Department fully staffed and much more.

Kate Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy, talks with Source Publisher Aaron Switzer about the new water bank pilot project for the North Unit Irrigation District, which allows farmers to obtain water from other water rights holders. The program is aimed at easing some of the pain of ongoing drought for farmers who saw field lay fallow in 2020 and 2021 due to irrigation shortages.

Kim Gammond joins the Bend Don't Break podcast this week, talking with the Source about her vision for the City Club of Central Oregon, its mission, future topics of conversation and the challenges the organization has faced in creating programming around community conversations during a global pandemic. Kim Gammond is the Executive Director at the City Club of Central Oregon. A proud graduate of Bend Senior High School, she continued her education at the University of Oregon with a Bachelor...

Another skier dies after falling in a tree well at Mt. Bachelor, and omicron rages through Oregon—though it's proving to be less deadly than past variants. Get it all in this week's Source Weekly Update podcast.

We look back at this year's top stories in this Source Weekly Update Podcast!

In part three of a three-part series of interviews on approaches to homelessness in Bend, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz talks about how officers respond to calls involving people experiencing homelessness, how that work impacts levels of service elsewhere and much more.

A fundraiser in honor of a fallen Bend kayaker, a new space for El Sancho and the rollout of a partnership between the sheriff's office and an addiction treatment center... all in this week's Source Weekly Update podcast.

A plea in the Barry Washington, Jr. murder case, monitoring Bend's sewers for the omicron variant and an effort to assess the impact of short-term rentals on home prices in Bend, all in this week's podcast.

The advent of a new COVID variant, more delays for the ski season and an upcoming legislative session to manage the flood of renters seeking to avoid eviction, all in this week's Source Weekly Update podcast. (Editor's note: this version of the story on the Omicron variant stated that the variant originated in South Africa—a fact we have found to be erroneous. The variant was first discovered by South African researchers, but it is not confirmed to have originated there. We have updated the...

Finding solutions for the unhoused is a hot topic in Bend and elsewhere, as housing gets more expensive and income inequality continues to grow. In Central Oregon, the Homeless Leadership Coalition is at the forefront of the effort to find solutions and to support those experiencing homelessness. In this podcast, Eliza Wilson, a member of the Homeless Leadership Coalition and a program manager for Grandma's House talks about her own experiences as a young person experiencing homelessness,...