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

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Councilor Solomon agreed with the characterization of the grant as an opportunity. She thought the audit could help the council have a focused, effective conversation about mixed-use. She underscored that the City needed to be willing to change things for the better and indicated she would support applying for the grant. In response to a question from Councilor Bettman, Mr. Yeiter explained the grant would result in $50,000 in technical expertise and the City need not match resources with the State. Councilor Bettman said just because the resource was available, if the City could not make good use of it, the taxpayers would still have to pay for it. She commented that the council had questioned the grant at the last meeting and what troubled her was that the grant seemed just as non-specific as it had at the first City Council meeting at which it had been reviewed. She said all of the typical code changes for smart development were from the State code. She averred it was non-specific to what the City of Eugene was pursuing. Councilor Bettman felt that if the council had a better idea of what the grant sought, she might be more inclined to support it. She noted that the council had processed ~dozens and dozens and dozens" of rollbacks to the City Code and it was %ertainly not off limits." She expressed concern that the code would become obsolete if this continued. In response to a question from Councilor Bettman, Mr. Yeiter said the present meeting offered the opportunity for the council to have input into what specifically would be looked at in the code. Councilor Bettman replied that the council could not provide such input until it had its discussion on mixed-use and infill. Councilor Kelly expressed disappointment that the application deadline was Wednesday and there was not a completed letter of application in front of the council. He wished to amend Councilor Papa's motion. Councilor Kelly, seconded by Councilor Bettman, moved to amend the motion to state in the letter that the grant shall be for the specific purpose of studying possible alternate path mechanisms. Councilor Bettman indicated her support for the amendment. She understood then that auditors would come and look at the growth management policies and the code and provide options for how the City could implement an alternate path. Councilor Bettman said one issue with the alternative path, which started from the initial code update, was that if a developer had a site and wanted to do something that fulfilled the growth management policies, fulfilled the intent and purpose of the code language, and worked with adjacent neighbors to come up with a proposal that was amenable to everyone, there should be a way to satisfy the intent without having to be prescriptive in every case. She encouraged staff to look at some of that legislative intent because there had been a number of discussions before it had been placed on the work plan. Councilor Poling asked if the amendment would disqualify the City of Eugene from the grant. Mr. Yeiter did not think so. He added that the application was left broad in order to provide latitude for the team to conduct a triage of the full code and focus on where they thought the problems lay. MINUTES--Eugene City Council June 13, 2005 Page 8 Regular Session