CC Minutes - 06/13/05 Mtg - Laserfiche WebLink

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Jessica Tennat, 1131 Monroe Street, explained that she was the owner of the Monroe Street Cafd and had owned it for 16 months. She wished to respond to neighbors who testified at the previous meeting. She had applied for a change of use to change the establishment from a market to a deli when she took over the cafd. She related that she invested $20,000 in work to make the building a compliant for operation as a deli, working with Mike McKerrow and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC), and she currently had a minor posting due to some of the live music. She thought having music at the site was still complying with the City Code. She stated that she was working with Mr. McKerrow to provide the numbers for alcohol and food sales and had documentation that the cafd sold twice the amount in food than in alcohol. In response to complaints regarding the serving of alcohol in front of the building, she had chosen to ask her customers not to imbibe there. She underscored that the cafd closed at 10 p.m. and any music that was playing would have ceased by then. Regarding parking, she said she had two agreements which netted 12 parking spaces. She related that she had participated in some mediation with neighbors of the cafd and gave them her cell phone number, but no one had called her. Debbie Jeffries, 3800 North Delta Highway, wanted to comment on the 5:4 vote on the Goal 5 Inventory in Eugene. She asked the councilors if they had read Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 660.023.110(4) and if they knew the specifics of the OAR. She asked if the councilors had read a Sensitive Species List, provided by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), compiled more recently than the year 2000. She wondered if any councilors had told a property-owner constituent that supporting the Goal 5 inventory process was a way to keep a neighbor from building on adjacent property. She asked if any councilors knew the council had passed an ordinance required by the Goal 5 process that listed the significant resource sites in the City limits and the urban transition (UT) area. She suggested the councilors could gain "bonus points" if they knew the year or the date of the cutoff to file an appeal. Ms. Jeffries answered some of the questions. She stated that the OAR she cited was the Wildlife Habitat Goal 5 Resource and subsection (4) was the discussion of the Safe Harbor and what the local government options are. Regarding her second question, she stressed that the list did not exist and the ODFW had no money to create one. Rather, she said, the most recent list had been compiled in 1997. She stated that the City passed its ordinance requiring the Goal 5 process in 2003 and the UT version had been passed some time later. As for the time for an appeal, she said it had long passed. She indicated that she knew that because she had appealed the inventory to the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) and she declared the council should have done the same if it did not like the Safe Harbor method that was passed. She remarked that she was not an attorney or a land planner, but she did know how to use the internet, think, and ask questions. She asked why the council did not do the same thing instead of wasting "everyone's time and money." Ms. Jeffries stressed that the Goal 5 process had been a multiple years in duration and had used tens of thousands of public and private dollars as well as hundreds of hours of government staff and private citizens' time. She said the council's "uninformed conduct" on a vote impacting the Goal 5 periodic review process had taken "all often minutes" and had ignored the very staff that spent years developing it. She averred this continued to "reinforce the unpredictable and unprofessional reputation" of the City as a whole. In conclusion, she called the Mayor's tie-breaking vote "an embarrassment," not because her opinion differed with the Mayor's but because she allegedly ignored the community and staff deliberation process. She recalled that the Mayor had run for office under the slogan "the mayor for all Eugene" and asked that she "start acting that way." MINUTES--Eugene City Council June 13, 2005 Page 3 Regular Session