CC Minutes - 11/21/01 Work Session

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take that approach: Was it because of traffic? Because of the clients? Because of the neighborhood impact? Mr. Rayor said yes, particularly in the R-1 and R-2 zones. He thought that some kind of dispersal based on distances between uses was appropriate; the first use to locate would have a circle around it within which another use could not locate. He thought that would also go to Ms. Bettman's concerns about residential conversions. Ms. Taylor said that the council did not have enough time to discuss the ramifications of this topic. She thought that transportation was central to the services involved, and services to which clients need to go should be centrally located because that was how public transit worked. She said that it was already time-consuming and difficult to get to the center of town, and even more difficult to have to transfer to another bus to reach a service's location. Ms. Taylor thought that services should be in the very center of town and proximate to each other, because frequently a client who needed one type of service also needed another, and it would be helpful if they were all located downtown in nonresidential locations. She thought that centralized locations would also speak to Ms. Nathanson's question regarding police response time as response times would be good. Ms. Taylor agreed with Mr. Fart that the council needed to hear from more than two neighborhood associations. She said that those neighborhoods currently feel more impacted by social services than other neighborhoods, but if the council began to disperse those services it would hear objections and concerns from other neighborhoods. Ms. Taylor thought that the nature of the service and the associated impact needed to be taken into consideration. She also questioned whether the City had authority to regulate the locations of social services, and suggested that agencies often made their decisions on the basis of rents. Mr. Pap~ arrived at the meeting. Mr. Meisner said the council had heard from more than two neighborhoods, pointing out that it also received a communication on the issue from the Trainsong neighborhood. He said that rather than basing their location decisions on the market, agencies should make them on the basis of client needs, ease of transportation, and logical clustering. He said that market-based decisions could lead to inappropriate locations. Mr. Meisner called for a fair process that allowed the neighbors to be heard. In response to Ms. Nathanson's comments, Mr. Meisner said that while some complaints were neighborhood-based, others were agency-based. He cited an incident in which a methadone clinic wanted to locate on the west side and the mayor worked to find another location. The site he located was zoned appropriately, but the property owner would not rent to the clinic. He believed that suggested the City might need a proscriptive approach to make sure that such uses could be located in the community. He pointed out that the City had taken a proscriptive approach to the Eugene Mission in the Whiteaker Plan to address the concerns of both neighbors and mission staff. Mr. Meisner suggested involved the Planning Commission in the issue. Mr. Johnson noted the commission's already heavy work load. Mr. Kelly thought the discussion indicated council interest in an examination of the dimensions of the issue and better definitions of the impacts of concern. He did not think the council was asking for a solution at this time, but rather for a process that involved the providers as well as residents. Speaking to the question of how to define a social service, Mr. Kelly suggested that it related to MINUTES--Eugene City Council November 21, 2001 Page 8 Work Session