Item B: River Road/Santa Clara Annexation Policy

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ATTACHMENT E City Manager’s Office City of Eugene 777 Pearl Street, Room 105 M Eugene, Oregon 97401-2793 EMORANDUM (541) 682-5010 (541) 682-5414 FAX www.eugene-or.gov Date: September 14, 2006 To: Mayor Piercy and City Council From: Dennis M. Taylor, 682-5510 Assistant City Manager Subject:CITY COUNCIL ASSIGNMENT RESPONSE: CLARIFY AND EXPLAIN REASON BEHIND CITY’S PRACTICE OF DOING STREET ANNEXATIONS Attached to this memo is the March 30, 2006, memorandum responding to a previous question about street annexations. That memo contains information regarding the regulatory framework, urban transition intergovernmental agreements, why the City annexes streets, and the service impacts of street annexations. In summary, the March 30 memo explains that cities are the logical providers of urban services and most urban services are provided on, under, or via the street right-of-way. The Metro Plan generally anticipates that all lands within the urban growth boundary will eventually be served by the City. Annexation of appropriate and logical public street segments enables the City to provide better, more consistent transportation, utilities, and emergency services for growing urban areas. This memo will attempt to describe the process that City staff uses to determine which street segments to request for inclusion in annexations being considered by the Lane County Local Government Boundary Commission. Essentially, all annexations to the City of Eugene being processed by the Lane County Local Government Boundary Commission are initiated by the property owner and submitted directly to the Boundary Commission. These are considered to be voluntary annexations. City staff reviews each annexation request separately, prior to it being submitted to the Boundary Commission, to ensure that the property meets the requirements for annexation (e.g. inside the urban growth boundary, services can be provided). As a part of that review, City staff looks at any streets abutting the subject property to determine whether it would be appropriate to request the inclusion of right-of-way with the application. The Boundary Commission statutes do not require any jurisdictional approvals to add right-of-way to an annexation request. The City does request comments from other jurisdictions, especially Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) and Lane County, to determine what services are provided via the right-of-way and whether there is any concern related to the inclusion of right-of-way in the proposal. City staff also met recently with Lane County and EWEB staff to determine whether annexation of right-of-way is supported by these agencies and determined that it is supported. The priorities for inclusion are arterial and collector streets where there are already significant properties within the City abutting the street. These streets have the most traffic and are the routes used most frequently by police and fire services. (Recent examples would be portions of Coburg Road, Royal Avenue, River Road, Irvington Road, Spring Creek Drive, Scenic Drive, River Loop 1 and River Loop 2, Park Avenue, and N. Park Avenue)