Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Ms. Taylor asked if there were ways to achieve greater flexibility in enforcing the current code when something seemed unreasonable or impractical. Mr. Nystrom replied that there were tools in the current code that attempted to provide a certain level of flexibility to consider alternative approaches or relief. He said that type of question would be raised during the next round of code amendments. Ms. Taylor said her biggest concern was the low priority given to the Land Use Board of Appeals remand concerning Goal 9, Goal 10, and Chapter 6 tree provisions. She observed that at one point it was the top priority but had slipped down the list to Item 38. City Attorney Emily Jerome replied that a number of those provisions were back in place through various measures, but not all of them. She said there were compli- cated tree issues related to the inventories and the item represented a major undertaking; although it could be moved to a higher priority at the direction of the council. Ms. Taylor said she would propose moving the remand to a higher priority. She asked what authority the Planning Division had to spend time, effort and resources on plans for a hospital when the council had been informed it could not express an opinion because of future action it might take. Mr. Nystrom replied that the Planning Division was only responding to land use applications that were submitted to it, including Metro Plan and refinement plan amendments. Mr. Kelly cautioned that refinement plans were critically important to the neighborhoods that had them and the current ones should remain in effect until the next generation of plans was well in place. He urged establishing a goal to have second generation refinement plans for every neighborhood over the next five to six years. He agreed with the need for a scope of work on a buildable lands analysis and advised the commission to take commercial and industrial land first because of the availability of raw data from the joint jurisdictional study and lack of data on residential land. Ms. Ortiz thanked commissioners for their efforts and remarked that the commission itself had been helping the City plan for its future since it was established in 1925. She indicated infill was an issue for her and she challenged the commission to create a win-win situation where infill occurred but people were able to accept it because it was compatible with their neighborhood. She hoped to see the community accommodate growth without expanding the urban growth boundary. Mr. Kelly concurred with Ms. Ortiz’s comments. He said that win-win could be achieved with design review and design standards, possibly mixed with alternate path, and also by bringing a broad spectrum of people to the table to address the problem. He said a point had recently been made about housing and rental affordability in the community. He said that rental housing did not have to mean poor quality and design standards and appropriate siting could help. Regarding the remand and tree issue, he conveyed a suggestion from the Eugene Tree Foundation to look for solutions as part of the minor Land Use Code amendment process. Mayor Piercy said she had been hearing at almost every meeting in the community a growing concern that one day Eugene would be a city for wealthy people and poor people and nothing in between. She said the challenge was to ensure in an intentional way that there was a place for young families to move into the community. She said a city without children was not a community and just letting the market prevail would not ensure that working families and young families had an entry; those families were critical to the well- being of the community and the school system. Ms. Bettman stated that just because something was heard everywhere did not mean it was substantiated by research and data; it just meant it was the prevailing opinion. She thought that a responsible representative government made sure that they substantiated the policies they made with research and data. She said that MINUTES—City Council September 27, 2006 Page 6 Work Session