CCMinutes - 09/29/04 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mr. Pap6 stated he would support the resolution but urged the council to consider Ms. Solomon's comments. He said he would advocate opposing Measure 37 and pressuring the State to make reform of land use planning and regulations a top priority. Ms. Nathanson observed that land use regulations were adopted by majority vote by elected officials who were thinking about the interests of individual property owners, residents, and business owners and the well- being of everyone in the community now and in the future. She said that she was sympathetic to complaints from individual property owners and looked for ways to mitigate the detrimental impact of a regulation but still achieve generally the desired result; however, in a democratic form of government some individuals would be disadvantaged by efforts to meet the needs of the whole over time. She asked how and by whom claims of reduction in value would be processed to determine their validity and to what extent a land use regulation was responsible for the reduction. Mr. Klein replied that when a claim was filed in court, a property owner likely would need to provide evidence in the form of a professional assessment of the reduction in value and reasons for it to support a claim. Ms. Nathanson asked what the consequences were if waiving a regulation for one property owner devalued adjacent property. Mr. Klein said that the City's waiver of a regulation for a property owner under Measure 37 would not give rise to a Measure 37 claim by an adjacent property owner. He said it was possible to establish procedures that would allow the adjacent property owner to bring a private cause of action against the property owner whose waiver request resulted in devaluation. Ms. Nathanson asked how the City would waive a regulation it had adopted in order to be consistent with Statewide planning goals. Mr. Klein said that Measure 37 prevailed over other State statutes and would allow the City to be consistent with State statutes as a whole, even though it had waived the regulation. Ms. Taylor stated her support for the resolution in opposition to Measure 37 and said it was clear that the measure would be harmful to the City. Referring to the retroactive aspect of the measure, she asked if building being allowed on panhandle lots that decreased the value of neighbors property would give those neighbors claims under Measure 37. Mr. Klein replied that Measure 37 only provided property owners the right to file a claim on restrictions on the use of their property; neighbors' claims could not be based on uses on adjacent property as it was not a restriction on use of their property. Mr. Poling agreed with Ms. Solomon's comments regarding an owner's expectations about the value of his or her property and just compensation for a decrease in value; however, Measure 37 went too far in some areas and for that reason he was in favor of passing the resolution. He noted that the people of Eugene had voted 68 percent against Measure 7. Ms. Bettman characterized Measure 37 as institutionalized anarchy that would destroy the livability of Oregon and at the very least was one-sided. She commented that if an argument could be made that a regulation diminished property values, there was a concomitant argument that many decisions were made by the council that vastly increased the profitability of property and governing bodies were not remunerated for those decisions. She said that zoning regulations and land use laws had created the value of property and when the ability to regulate for livability and compatibility was removed it destroyed property values. She said there would be a window of profitability for advocates of Measure 37 to cash in on the years of protection for property values by zoning and land use regulations before all property values began to decline. She said she would support the resolution in opposition to Measure 37. MINUTES--Eugene City Council September 29, 2004 Page 3 Work Session