Item 4A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Mr. Zelenka pointed out to Mr. Pryor said the vast majority of multi-family developments were in the West University Neighborhood, and 11 of 14 developments had not received the MUPTE but had still been built since 2004. When he drove around the neighborhood he saw a lot of development underway that was occurring without the MUPTE. He said “one of them was big.” For that reason, he would support the motion. Mayor Piercy suggested that the question might be whether there was a net gain for the community in terms of the quality of buildings constructed in the urban core. Ms. Bettman said if the City wanted higher quality building, it would want it all over the community. She said that was a code issue and required design standards. It made no sense to pay people to build “prettier projects” or forgive them their taxes for that reason. Ms. Bettman asked for information about the standards the City had in place for quality. What were the demonstrable differences between the qualities that the City received with the public benefits listed and how were those benefits weighed? Mr. Weinman was unsure that staff would be able to do so but indicated it would try. Ms. Bettman suggested that staff examine the last three applications. Mr. Weinman pointed out that staff did not weigh that information but provided it to the council for evaluation. Ms. Bettman said the characteristics she saw looked similar to those she saw being built in her neighborhood, and she questioned why they necessarily were considered higher quality. Mr. Clark was also concerned that the City had appropriate development and that it did not create a burden on public safety or rental housing enforcement. He wanted to motivate quality development and minimize conflicts with neighbors. He thought that it would be useful to have information about UO enrollment projections for the next ten years. He said that students would need someplace to live and they would have an impact on the market. Mr. Weinman said he would attempt to secure that information, but indicated that it was his understanding the UO was not projecting high enrollment increases. Ms. Taylor thought the boundaries should be reduced and the benefit of building in the core recognized by the MUPTE. She did not think the City needed to subsidize the demand for housing for University students. Ms. Taylor wanted to know what the City would receive from Broadway Place when it went on the tax rolls. Mr. Pryor said he added up the MUPTE housing units in the WUN and compared them to the others, and the 103 housing units were built with MUPTE, but 90 units were built without MUPTE. The other non- MUPTE projects were generally smaller. Mr. Zelenka asked what the City received for its public dollars. He liked the standards but they had no benchmarks to allow the council to measure what it was attempting to achieve. Mr. Weinman said the council’s evaluation of the information provided by applicants was purely subjective. Mr. Zelenka said that there were scoring mechanisms to get at that information, and he had no way to do so. He did not think the process allowed for that because the City could not quantify what it was buying. He asked how the City would know something would not be built without MUPTE. Mr. Weinman said that financing was part of the equation. Staff looked at and analyzed the pro formas to determine if they could be financed under lending requirements and based its recommendation on that analysis. Lenders wanted a certain cash flow from projects. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 22, 2007 Page 11 Work Session