Ibex Global, a Bend call center at the edge of the Old Mill District, plans to more than double its workforce by hiring 450 employees by summer’s end.

“This year will be the biggest we’ve ever been in Bend,” said Alec Campbell, vice president of client services for Ibex, formerly TRG Customer Solutions.

The company, headquartered in Washington, D.C., employs more than 9,000 in 18 call centers in five countries, according to its website. The Bend call center, on Southwest Hill Street near Wilson Avenue, currently employs about 400, Campbell said.

The first training class starts June 8, and the company plans to recruit until September, Campbell said.

Heidi Simila, recruiting manager for Ibex Global Bend, said she started hiring about a month ago. By the end of the week, she expects to have about 75 new employees. She said the openings are in customer service technical support positions. Pay starts at $10.50 an hour during training and increases to $12 an hour after workers complete training. Employees also are eligible for benefits after 30 days.

Ibex was the sixth-largest private employer in Central Oregon, according to Economic Development for Central Oregon’s most recent survey, wrote Roger Lee, EDCO executive director, in an email.

“The news about the Ibex expansion is both exciting and very significant for the region,” Lee wrote.

Lee said EDCO worked with a company called Sky Alland and Old Mill District developer William Smith Properties in 1999 to establish a call center in the building, which was originally constructed for Tektronix. About the time the company expanded to Bend in 2000, the name changed to iSky.

Since then, the company has undergone three name changes. As of February it became Ibex Global. Over the years, it has handled customer service phone work for a variety of businesses, including American Express, BMW, Honda, Owens Corning and Sotheby’s. In 2009, TRG representatives said the company was handling product and technical support for Apple Inc., according to The Bulletin’s archives.

Call centers in Deschutes County shed about 670 jobs between 2008 and 2012, Damon Runberg, regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department, wrote in an email. T-Mobile laid off more than 350 employees when it closed its Redmond call center in June 2012, according to the newspaper archives.

But last year, he said, call centers in the county showed strong growth, adding back nearly 150 of those lost jobs. If Ibex added 400 workers, he said, the industry as a whole would account for about 2 percent of total nonfarm employment in Deschutes County.

“It’s likely that many of the call center workers who lost a job in the recession either found a new call center job or found work in another industry,” he wrote in an email. “However, there are still potentially hundreds of experienced call center workers who are either unemployed or underemployed. Ibex’s plan to expand is great news for those still looking for … work.”

Ibex has not been the only call center hiring. Consumer Cellular, which took over the Redmond call center vacated by T-Mobile, said earlier this year that it planned to hire 200 employees, bringing its workforce to about 600.

Ibex offers an entry-level job with training in consumer electronics, said Campbell.

“It can be viewed as a stepping stone for young people looking to establish a career, either at Ibex or another company,” he wrote in an email. “We also hire people who have been laid off from manufacturing or other declining industries and help them re-establish themselves.”

Darren Cooper, who came from the trucking and manufacturing industry, just celebrated his two-year anniversary as a telephone technical support specialist for Ibex.

“The employment market was pretty bad, and I decided to take a chance,” he said. “As a male in my mid-40s, I found myself working in an environment I had never been in before, one that was very diverse and full of opportunities.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7818, rrees@bendbulletin.com

A program that helped more than 700 Central Oregonians get current on their mortgage payments will end July 1.

The federally funded Home Rescue Program in Oregon paid out about $120 million in three years to 9,500 qualified homeowners who, due to job loss or a pay reduction, fell behind on their mortgages. The U.S. Treasury Department gave Oregon $148 million for the mortgage program, part of $220 million the state received from the federal Hardest Hit Fund established in February 2010. The Hardest Hit Fund provided $7.6 billion to the District of Columbia and 18 states hardest hit by the 2007 housing market collapse that accompanied the Great Recession.

“We’re really excited that this program has been so successful,” said Alison McIntosh, spokeswoman for Oregon Housing and Community Services. “We’re on track to commit the entire amount of money allocated by the Treasury.”

In Deschutes County, 585 homeowners benefited from the Home Rescue Program; along with 112 in Crook County and 97 in Jefferson County, said Scott Cooper, executive director of NeighborImpact, the local agency that assists homeowners with their applications.

Five application windows of one week each remain before the program concludes as its funds run out, McIntosh said. The application periods open at noon on alternate Wednesdays and close the following Tuesday. The final cycle starts June 25 and ends at noon July 1, she said. The state estimates another 1,500 may apply.

Home Rescue provides up to 12 months of mortgage payments or $20,000, whichever comes first. It also provides a maximum $10,000 to qualified homeowners to bring their mortgages current. To qualify, homeowners must now earn at least 10 percent less than they earned in either 2011 or 2012 and less than 120 percent of state median income. Prospective applicants may find out if they qualify by answering a questionnaire online atwww.oregonhomeownerhelp.org.

The program, one of three created as part of the Hardest Hit Fund to assist homeowners, proved more popular statewide than anticipated. But Cooper said efforts to reach mortgage holders in arrears in Crook and Jefferson counties fell short.

“We had a greater response in Oregon than we could meet, but we were beating the bushes repeatedly in Crook and Jefferson trying to get people to apply for the program,” he said. “Percentage-wise, there was an even greater need in those two counties.”

The state agency held its application response time to four months, though it sometimes stretched as long as 155 days, McIntosh said.

Two other Hardest Hit programs aimed to reduce homeowners’ costs by refinancing their mortgages. The Loan Refinancing Assistance Pilot Project and the Rebuilding American Homeownership Assistance program remain in effect, McIntosh said. The Loan Refinancing Assistance program assists homeowners in Crook, Deschutes, Jackson, Jefferson and Josephine counties, specifically. More information is available at the agency website.

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com

Getting a building permit from Deschutes County or planning a new subdivision could get more expensive this summer.

Deschutes County’s Community Development Department is pushing for a 2 percent increase in the fees it charges on most permits, for services such as building inspections, new plumbing systems, demolition permits and electrical work.

And, the county surveyor’s office wants 15 to 25 percent increases on fees to plot out boundaries for new residential neighborhoods.

All told, the heads of eight Deschutes County government departments have asked county commissioners to change fees on a variety of services for the next fiscal year, starting July 1.

County commissioners discussed the fee changes during a work session this week.

A majority of the proposed changes would raise fees by $50 or less, and only figure to affect small groups of people. Deschutes County Justice Court wants to add $20 on the fees for people who don’t appear for a citation hearing, for example.

Even the Community Development changes are small, mostly $1 to $10 increases. Building site evaluation fees would rise from $210 to $215, for instance. The fee to install a range of water-related systems in a home, such as sinks, dishwashers and water heaters, would rise from $25 to $26.

But those costs could add up for property developers and homebuilders, department Director Nick Lelack told commissioners this week.

He said an uptick in building permit activity has the county under pressure to add new staff positions. Lelack also pointed to inflation, which has raised the cost of equipment by 3 percent.

The fee increases would help add two employees and keep up with the department’s daily needs, he said.

“Other (counties) aren’t seeing the permit levels we are,” Lelack said. “And we’re trying to get a number of costs back to full service rates.”

Other fees could go up significantly higher. The surveyor’s office wants to raise minimum fees on a partition plat review from $500 to $625.

Partitions are a common step for large property owners looking to split up a piece of land into smaller lots.

For more complex reviews, as on subdivisions planned for condominiums, the proposal would raise fees from $780 to $900.

The surveyor fees have been frozen since the recession, according to Chris Doty, director of the county’s Road Department, which oversees the surveyor’s office.

“We don’t frequently review fees,” Doty said. “It’s been six or seven years since the surveyor fees were adjusted.”

As Community Development, Doty said the improving real estate market is putting pressure on the surveyor’s office to offer more services.

No decisions have been made yet. The fee increases will be part of each department’s proposed budget, which commissioners and budget committee members will discuss later this month.

Besides Community Development and the surveyor’s office, the county clerk’s office, Information and Mapping Department, Health Services Department, Justice Court, Community Justice Department and legal counsel office requested changes to their fees.

— Reporter: 541-617-7820, eglucklich@bendbulletin.com