Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Ms. Bettman echoed her colleagues’ thanks for the work that went into the plan. She supported the report but could not support moving forward to create an annexation plan. She asked how the council could accept the plan without reinforcing this idea. Mayor Piercy reiterated that the council was not approving any recommendations at this time, it was only voting to accept the report. Mr. Carlson said this was why staff had used the word ‘accept’ rather than ‘approve’ or ‘adopt,’ because the latter two were stronger terms. He assured the council that amending the Urban Facilities Plan or the enacting of new code amendments for infill development would be separate actions that would come back for approval. Ms. Bettman said as long as the legislative intent and the record supported Mr. Carlson’s assertion she was prepared to support acceptance of the plan. Mayor Piercy was struck by how much citizens had in common. She said the intensity and the amount of conversation and investment area residents had in this plan were something the elected officials witnessed throughout the community on a regular basis. She felt it was an important attribute of the community’s processes and life. She had been heartened to listen to this conversation. She observed that no matter where one lived in the community, infill was a difficult concept to deal with. She said the City has one policy which dictates that residents should live more densely so that the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) would not have to be expanded, yet there was a strong feeling throughout the community that residents did not want their neighborhoods to change in nature. She commented that it was difficult to meet both goals at the same time, adding that we are only at the beginning of that struggle. Mr. Kelly agreed that it was not the ‘if’ or the ‘when,’ but the ‘how’ in this challenge. Regarding infill, he quoted former PDD director, Paul Farmer, who said “change is inevitable but decline is not.” He said Santa Clara and River Road did not look the same as they had 20 years ago and they were guaranteed not to look the same in 20 years. He believed that the City and its residents could collectively devise a way that the neighborhoods could look and feel “good and better” than they did now. Ms. Ortiz asked Mr. Handy how he would envision the policy he suggested. Mr. Handy replied that it would be broad enough to give citizens something to “interface with” so that they understand where the City was coming from. He cited as an example that the case had not been effectively made for street annexations and community residents were not persuaded that they were necessary. He wanted, on some level, the City to communicate to its citizens about what it wanted to do and how it intended to do it so that citizens had a better understanding of what the City was doing. Mr. Carlson noted that there had been a lot of focus on the Urban Facilities Plan, but there was also a major section of the Metro Plan that dealt with the provision of services to River Road/Santa Clara. He said this was actually where the City’s policies related to annexation and the future of the area were located. He stated that this was developed in the years from 1979 to 1982 and it focused on the provision of sanitary sewers in the area. He thought it would be of use to take a comprehensive review of the plan. He noted that the County also shared some of the issues regarding urban transition. Mayor Piercy acknowledged that County Commissioner Bill Dwyer, Springfield, was in attendance. MINUTES—Eugene City Council June 21, 2006 Page 7 Work Session