CC Minutes - 07/14/03 Mtg - Laserfiche WebLink

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Debbie Jeffries, 3800 North Delta Highway, spoke on the wetland inventory process recently initiated by Planning staff to comply with the Goal 5 process. She stated that the aerial photos that were being use in the initial stages of the process were five years old and, as such, were less than adequate. She related that two modes of assessment were being used, one of which was to use the outdated photographs and the other, should the property owner provide permission, was to walk the properties in question. She said that Neil BjOrklund, lead staff in the inventory process, had called the photos adequate but not ideal and had said that the consultants would verify in the field any conditions that had changed since the photos had been taken. Ms. Jeffries suggested that this was not entirely correct, as the property owner could choose to deny access or could possibly not receive an inquiry for access, in which case the consultants were "simply going to guess." She said that the budget for this process was not to exceed $72,000. She said that with this amount of money, new aerial photographs for the purpose of assessing the criteria would be a prudent investment. She felt that without new aerial photographs, staff would be flooded with objections from property owners and the process would become more costly. Ms. Jeffries reminded the council that the process had just begun because the City staff and the staff of the Lane Council of Governments (LCOG) assigned to the project in 2000 had failed to read the Oregon Administrative Rule 6.600(23) completely. She asked the council to direct staff to provide a report to the council on the budget of the FTE time devoted to this process each year until completion, the cost of up-to-date aerials, and whether staff believed $70,000 to be a sufficient amount. Majeska Seese-Green, 549 Van Buren Street, stated that she was president of the Whiteaker Neighborhood Association and co-chair of the Neighborhood Leaders Council. She thanked the council, on behalf of the two organizations, for putting more funding into the neighborhood association newsletter and postcard notification budget. Ms. Seese-Green said that she had been disappointed that this funding had been taken from the Neighborhood Matching Grants program and not from the City reserves, as had been done for the Permit and Information enter funding. She advocated for the revision of the Neighborhood Matching Grants program, should it be continued in the future, so that it supported the neighborhood associations and was integrated into the work of the neighborhood associations. She felt that, in that way, it would help to build the neighborhood associations. She asserted that, as it stood, the grant program undermined the neighborhood association because it did not seek to leverage one project to connect with another project and that the grant program competed with neighborhood associations for residents' energies. Council President Pap~ closed the Public Forum. Councilor Taylor thanked everyone who spoke at the Public Forum. She expressed hope that it would be possible to fund the cattery. She noted that someone had suggested licensing dogs, stating that this was already being done, and wondered if the creation of a cat licensing program MINUTES--Eugene City Council July 14, 2003 Page 5 Regular Meeting