Item A: Joint Meeting with River Road Parks and Rec District

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The existing financial situation causes both the district and the City to have a structural imbalance with the growth in revenues not keeping up with the costs to maintain the current service system. Both agencies have been using reserves in the past few years to maintain services. No amount of transferred money will solve the structural problems. Annexation Policy The City Council last reviewed River Road/Santa Clara annexation strategy at a council work session on January 24, 2007. The council passed a motion which halted the practice of adding right-of-way to annexation requests in the River Road/Santa Clara area where such additions would create islands. The City of Eugene’s annexation policy is primarily derived from the Eugene-Springfield Metropolitan General Plan (Metro Plan). There are seven themes or principles that are basic or fundamental to the entire Metro Plan. 6. The Metropolitan Plan is based on the premise that Eugene and Springfield, the two existing cities, are the logical providers of services accommodating urban levels of development within the urban growth boundary. One of the objectives in this section of the plan is to: 11 Identify methods of establishing an urban transition program which will eventually reduce service delivery inefficiencies by providing for provision of key urban services only by cities. The policies section addresses annexation specifically as follows: 16. Ultimately, land within the urban growth boundary shall be annexed to a city and provided with the required minimum level of urban services. While the time frame for annexation may vary, annexation should occur as land transitions from urbanizable to urban. 18. As annexations to cities occur over time, existing special districts within the urban growth boundary shall be dissolved. The cities should consider developing intergovernmental agreements, which address transition issues raised by annexation, with affected service districts. These policies have been implemented in both the City Code and Lane Code to require annexation before new development is permitted. All of the annexations in the past 20 years in the River Road area have been at the request of property owners, primarily to develop property. Most of the undeveloped properties have been annexed to the City. In recent years, most of the annexations have been single lots intended to be partitioned to allow additional development. It is highly unlikely that additional major annexations in the River Road area will occur under the current policy. The 2007 Oregon Legislature eliminated the Lane County Local Government Boundary Commission and the responsibility for approving annexations transferred to the City on January 1, 2008. The City was scheduled to review the first two annexations under this process on July 14, 2008, neither of which is in the River Road area. There are no annexation requests currently pending in the River Road area. The transition from the Boundary Commission to the City eliminated the opportunity for non-contiguous Z:\CMO\2008 Council Agendas\M080723\S080723A.doc