After more than a year of negotiations, representatives from the Bethlehem Inn and the Deschutes County Commissioners are poised to sign a lease that will extend the homeless shelter’s stay at the former Econo Lodge Motel through July of next year. The retroactive two-year lease would give Bethlehem Inn time to find a new location for its shelter, which serves as a safety net for individuals and families who don’t have anywhere else to go.

The two sides reaffirmed the terms of the deal in a meeting Tuesday between county commissioners and Bethlehem Inn staff.

Providing one of the most compelling arguments yet against a proposed $70-million drinking water project, a natural resources economist said Tuesday night that the city of Bend stands to save several million dollars annually if it forestalls a planned upgrade to its surface water supply and transfers to an all-groundwater system for the time being.

Announcing a new more aggressive push to save millions of financially strapped American homeowners from foreclosure, Sen Jeff Merkley said Tuesday in Bend that new legislation is needed to replace Obama’s Making Home Affordable program, which has failed to stem the tide of defaults.

Speaking in front of a map that showed foreclosure rates across the state, Merkley said he chose Bend and Central Oregon to kick off his legislative campaign because we sit at the epicenter of the housing bust. However, Merkley portrayed the continuing fallout of the housing bust as a national crisis that must be addressed as part of an overall economic recovery.

This year millions more Americans are expected to lose their homes to foreclosure, according to most industry experts. Those foreclosures come with a cost to homeowners, communities, banks and the overall economy, Merkley said. While there have been several efforts to date including Obama’s Making Home Affordable program, those programs have been ineffective in slowing foreclosures while dragging homeowners through a deeply flawed process controlled by banks and financial institutions that often have no interest in helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. Highlighting just how ineffective the program has been, Merkley said that the Obama plan was estimated to need more than $50 billion in homeowner assistance funding. To date it has provided homeowners with just $1 billion in relief, even as millions of property owners slipped into foreclosure.

The upstart 10 Barrel Brewery is poised for a major expansion and has lured two of the area’s top brewers to help it with the effort that would more than quadruple the Bend brewery’s production capacity.

After two years of study, the Bend City Council was expected to make what is essentially a final decision on the future of the city’s domestic water supply. Facing a looming deadline to meet new federal drinking water requirements, councilors were expected to approve a proposed $73 million upgrade to its Bridge Creek water system. The aging system currently delivers more than half of the city’s drinking and domestic water, but is in need of significant repairs.