CC Minutes - 11/21/01 Work Session

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Mr. Kelly said that the issue of neighborhood impact was key to him. He did not think that was or should be any different from the siting of a private business. He suggested a conditional use approach may be the appropriate direction to take. He wanted a process that moved forward with ideas from staff and input from the providers. Mr. Kelly emphasized his desire that the providers succeed. He said that dispersal was not a comment on the performance of the providers, but represented a balancing act for the City. He added he was not interested in policies intended to keep social services out of any particular neighborhood, but in policies that precluded too much impact on any single neighborhood. Mr. Kelly wanted to know what do other communities do. Mr. Kelly suggested that with more work, staff could produce a more complete inventory of local social service providers. Mr. Weinman asked the council what it wanted inventoried, and how it defined a social service to be inventoried. Mr. Kelly defined a social service as "those things that are impactful." Mr. Weinman said he did not know how to define what was "impactful." He asked if a social service must be a nonprofit agency; did the definition include the hospital, or a school? Mr. Kelly believed that the process of identifying the services in question would be an iterative one, and suggested that staff work with the neighborhoods and providers on the inventory. Ms. Nathanson suggested that it was too soon to develop an inventory. She said what was lacking in the discussion was a clear statement of the problem that existed or the council's objectives. The council had not told staff what it wanted it to fix. She said that the council needed to make a clear statement regarding the problem. Ms. Nathanson asked if the problem was that neighborhoods were unhappy with the direct impacts or potential risks to residents and their children. She said that the council needed to be willing to say so out loud, as that would give staff direction on what should be inventoried. Was the problem client access to treatment and emergency assessment? She said that the issues may be solved by the same type of policy, or they could require mutually exclusive policies. Ms. Nathanson asked if one of the problems the potential for bad personal behavior on the part of a client that could require an emergency response; did that suggest that services should be located in an area of quick police response time? Ms. Nathanson was not ready to give direction to staff on solutions until she knew what problems the council was trying to solve. Mr. Farr concurred with Ms. Nathanson's statements. He acknowledged that Mr. Meisner had received calls about the issue from constituents in his ward, and he had received some, but he did not know the magnitude of the problem. He said that there were actual and perceived problems, and most of the problems he heard about were perceived, which would make Mr. Weinman's task more difficult. He called for more formal input from the community before the council gave staff more direction. He thought perhaps the policy should be advisory rather than proscriptive, but that was the only question on Mr. Weinman's list he could answer at this time. He did not think the neighborhood input received to this point was enough, and reiterated his request for a public hearing. Mr. Rayor agreed that defining the problem was the first step that needed to taken. He thought there was a problem but suggested that anything the council adopted should exempt existing uses, which would give the council time to address the new services that located in Eugene. He suggested that as a starting point, the inventory could be a paper search of the conditional uses in Eugene. He also suggested that staff investigate regulations governing distances between schools and social service uses. City Manager Jim Johnson said that staff was looking for direction on why the City would want to MINUTES--Eugene City Council November 21, 2001 Page 7 Work Session