Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Mr. Pryor said part of him wished to facilitate the council decision in regard to which would be most likely to make it through the process, and if amending the motion was necessary, that was fine. He would vote against which ever application denied the permit because he was not in favor of denying the application. He could say he liked one over the other but that did not mean he would vote for it. Ms. Solomon suggested the honorable thing for the council to do was to deny the application so the applicant could move on. She pointed out the City had “sat on the application” for more than one year and the company was not receiving its “day in court.” She thought the City was doing the company a huge disservice. She hoped the application could be moved on quickly to LUBA. Speaking to Ms. Bettman’s remarks regarding the affected homeowners, Ms. Solomon pointed out the property in question was owned by Delta outright for many years, and it was not up to the company to tell the County and City where homes should go; those governments made those decision. She thought the homeowners also had a level of responsibility. They realized the mining operation was next door when they moved in. She suggested it was disingenuous to blame the company when it was in place first and owned the property outright and met all the criteria related to the application. She pointed out the company had two Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA) complaints in 12 years. Speaking to Ms. Bettman’s comments that the council deliberated extensively on the application, Mr. Clark recalled that council had deliberated extensively on the process throughout many meetings, but at the last meeting, when it deliberated on the application’s concept, it reached only that point where it discussed the insufficiency of resources. Then discussion stopped. While each point was in the record and addressed by the Planning Commission, he did not think the council had adequately deliberated on those points to the degree he felt comfortable about a decision to deny the application. . Mr. Clark pointed out that both the neighbors and the applicant were all inside his ward, Ward 5. He understood the concerns of the neighbors but pointed out that there were rocks under the property in question, and at some point they would be mined. The question before the council was less who than when. Mr. Clark thought the record showed the company was a good one with 130 family-wage jobs and medical and dental benefits. The company had been a great community member, and he did not want to see the land sold to a company from outside the community with deep enough pockets to prevail in the end and much less consideration for the neighbors. Ms. Taylor asserted that there were more than two complaints about Delta Sand and Gravel during her 11- year tenure on the LRAPA board of directors. Ms. Taylor asked Ms. Jerome if the council was suggesting it found the other criteria satisfied if it did not explicitly address them. Ms. Jerome responded that the council was not commenting on them; on remand, it might or might not be able to address the criteria. She was reluctant to confine the findings to the issues identified by Mr. Zelenka without further analysis of its impact on the decision. Ms. Ortiz said she would support a motion to deny the application. She did not disagree that the company was a good one, but if the gravel resource was not there the operation was a waste of farmland. She suggested the land be used for infill and growth or it should remain as farmland and open green space. She agreed with Ms. Bettman about the traffic impact. She acknowledged that the community had grown up around it but the company had an incredible impact on traffic on Beltline that she had recently begun to experience personally because of her change of work place. She frequently encountered very large sand and gravel trucks that traveled to and from the operation and suggested the council consider how it would look at that impact if the company was newly relocating to the site. MINUTES—Eugene City Council April 21, 2008 Page 4 Work Session