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