02.12.20 City Council Work Session Minutes

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demographic when scaling or waiving fees; said MWMC has a program that if a city waives its fees, the MWMC also waives its fees and this doubles the money for the owner; said she's not excited about entirely waiving fees because they go towards important things and doesn't want other programs to be impacted by developing a few ADUs. Councilor Semple - said that it seems like all the proposed incentives would essentially take away from the general fund because money that's given up will need to be replaced; shared concerns that waiving SEC fees for ADUs might result in higher fees for other types of housing, including missing middle housing; said she also understands that builders need to be able to build and make money; said the bottom line is how much are the City is willing to pay to incentivize this; asked how much it would cost to pay for a set of plans; asked about the cap on transportation SDCs. Councilor Zelenka - said after hearing data about affordable rents, the second half of his question is how that translates into capital costs for an ADU. Councilor Clark - said the council needs to be willing to lower the capital costs and thus make it more affordable for people in the middle range, because these numbers drive the cost; said this is why incentives are needed - to lower the costs of building; said the other piece that would significantly lower costs is working with partners at EWEB to pursue the idea of hooking up ADU utilities directly to the main house instead of starting as a new structure; asked if the SEC totals shown today assume a parks SEC increase. • Councilor Zelenka - said the council has spent a lot of time on ADU discussions when it won't lead to significant headway on creating affordable housing; said he wishes council would spend this amount of time on other things that do have a high likelihood of creating more affordable housing; said when Eugene's SDCs are compared to other cities throughout the state, Eugene is down at the bottom of the range; said he likes the idea of pre -approved plans and having a contest for designs to meet people's needs; said MUPTE is too complicated and unfair, but likes Councilor Pryor's idea of exploring the LIRHPTE program; said he's comfortable with waiving land use application fees; said it would be counterproductive to waive permit fees; said he prefers scaling back SDCs versus waiving them back entirely and is willing to look at this if it is targeted at affordable units; supported an overall cap and clarity about the budget impacts. • Mayor Vinis - said in thinking about lighter, quicker, cheaper options, it makes sense to think about the complexity of initiating any of these options; said the library of plans would be the fastest and have the most impact on the individual developer of an ADU; said a number of SDC fees for ADUs have been reduced already and it's a little soon to say how much more is needed to incentivize; said moving forward with any incentives should support low-income rental housing development. • Councilor Clark - asked how many work sessions council has had around ADU regulations, noting that the financial incentives are much more impactful on whether ADUs get built than the regulations; said this is the appropriate place to spend staff time and conversations if the council wants to see missing middle housing get built; asked what the cost reduction would be for hooking up ADU utilities to the main house versus directly to the street; asked what the next steps would be after this work session; said the next work session needs to be before summer. • Councilor Yeh - said she thinks the land use code changes are more important than cost adjustment in terms of seeing more ADUs being built; said she supported having a contest for the design plans because it could be a good opportunity to advertise the things the City is already doing and the ways people can currently get discounts, and they may learn more about whether they can afford to build an ADU. • Councilor Taylor - said the main thing she'd like to see come back is whether the options can apply only to owner -occupied ADUs. • Councilor Semple - asked how the utility would charge for separate units if there is only one meter; shared concerns about how much time council has put into ADUs and would like to move forward on HB 2001; said she'd like to continue incentivizing in the same manner as MINUTES - Eugene City Council February 12, 2020 Page 2 Work Session