CC Minutes - 02/20/07 Public Hearing

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did not believe there was a nexus between the parks SDC and commercial and industrial development. Mr. Welsh said the PROS plan was an overly ambitious plan with regard to its 20-year plan and that it did not adequately speak to the need to fund ongoing administration, maintenance and operations costs of new and proposed parks. He opined that it should have been reduced to a more affordable size and the parks and open space inventory should include the river greenway, west Eugene wetlands, and school properties involved in recreation programs to reduce the need to seek more SDC funding. David Hinkley , 1350 Lawrence Street, #1, a member of the Rates Advisory Committee, said there was a nexus between a park and a commercial use if a company’s softball team played on a field or an employee picked up lunch on the way to a park. There was a commercial demand on parks, but to get from that nexus to its fair apportionment was a problem. Mr. Hinkley suggested that alternatively, the council consider including hotels and motels in the list of residential uses as the only difference between those uses and an apartment was the length of one’s stay, and that the City forego on collecting from commercial enterprises. He did not agree with splitting neighborhood parks out from the methodology. He asked why facilities such as baseball fields and racquetball courts were not called out separately. There being no more requests to speak, Mayor Piercy closed the public hearing and called for council questions and comments. Mr. Poling thanked Mr. Roberts and Mr. Hinkley for their remarks and indicated his continued opposition to charging commercial and industrial uses an SDC for parks. Ms. Bettman said it became evident during the council’s discussion of the transportation system mainte- nance fee (TMSF) that 50 percent of the people who work in Eugene do not live in Eugene. She questioned what percentage of people who shopped in Eugene also did not live in Eugene. Ostensibly, she suggested, if Eugene had regional shopping centers and regional retail uses, one could assume that many of those shoppers do not live in Eugene. She asked for numbers to quantify that assumption. Ms. Bettman believed there was an obvious nexus between office and commercial uses and the parks SDC because of the “mere fact” that 50 percent of the people who work in Eugene do not live in Eugene. That meant when an office or commercial building was constructed, it would result in the employment of people who then required the City to increase its capacity to parks to serve those people, who were not residents. She perceived a very direct nexus and wanted a number to justify that conclusion. Fred McVey, engineering data services manager did not have any numbers to offer. He explained that the nexus staff used was an intercept survey of park users; the survey found that 16-½ percent of park users were not Eugene residents. Ms. Bettman thought that a “modest percentage” but the chamber and homebuilders were denying the validity of the nexus. Ms. Taylor said that, “obviously, if people work here, they are going to use the parks.” She saw a connection between the parks SDC and commercial and industrial uses. Also, Ms. Taylor asserted that parks such as those developed for Olympic events have been shown in many communities to increase business development. Mr. Clark said he understood that many of those surveyed were riding their bicycles through City parks. He suggested that those using the parks were transportation system users and not parks users. That fact skewed the survey results for him. If SDCs were supposed to represent the impact and the equitable funding of services, businesses need water, stormwater, sewer lines, streets, and wastewater to exist; they did not need parks to exist, and therefore did not see the nexus. MINUTES—Eugene City Council February 20, 2007 Page 9 Public Hearing