CC Minutes - 02/12/07 Work Session

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Ms. Laurence said that the City had undertaken other large planning processes, such as the one with City Hall. She said that she thought that EWEB and the City could jointly move forward to initiate and manage this process using the City’s expertise in planning and EWEB’s knowledge of the property and what would work for them. She said that funds for the consultant for this process would need to be discussed. She saw no difficulty in working together as had been demonstrated in the past five years. Ms. Bettman clarified that a jointly managed process would mean that at decision-making points, the council and EWEB would have to agree to a multi-jurisdictional decision-making process. City Manager Dennis Taylor said that ultimately both bodies would have to agree on the master plan. Ms. Bettman said that the proposal was to bring something back to the council and she wondered if it could include the option of City- managed and jointly managed plans. Mr. Klein said that the council could direct the City Manager to bring back proposals describing how the process could be City managed and how it could be jointly managed. Mr. Klein added that he would want to include in any proposal the extent to which the council could be involved in the master planning process. He said that if councilors were part of the advisory team and recommended approval of the master plan, they would also be saying that the comprehensive plan should be amended to allow it and this would appear as already supporting the quasi-judicial decision on the MetroPlan amendment. Ms. Bettman asked if the advisory team could just recommend forwarding the master plan to the council for a decision. Mr. Klein said that he thought that there was a way to have some council involvement, but he thought that the advisory team offered too many opportunities for opponents to say that whoever partici- pated on the team was biased and had a conflict of interest. Mr. Klein said that whether the master plan came to the council by itself or with the Metro Plan amendment, the council would have ultimate authority to say no to all of it because the master plan could not go forward without the Metro Plan amendment. He said that in terms of resources and a smooth system, it would make sense to have the master plan approved concurrently with the Metro Plan amendment. City Manager Dennis Taylor commented that the master plan process was not without cost and that one of the questions was who should bear that cost. Ms. Bettman said that she would like to take as the friendly amendment that the City Man- ager bring back proposals for both a City-managed master plan process and a joint or co- managed master plan process. Mr. Pryor agreed. Mr. Zelenka said that the reason he brought up the co-managed plan was that staff of the two entities brought different kinds of expertise and knowledge to the process. He said that both would be integral and important to making this work. He said that perhaps a third party facilitator would benefit the process. He said that he would like to hear what the EWEB commissioners thought of the proposal. Mr. Farmer said that based on what he had heard, he did not know if the board would accept a co-managed process or not. He said that he was almost certain that the board would not give up its right to manage the process for the property that it was going to sell. Mr. Simpson said that he was very much in favor of approaching the master planning process in a collaborative, shared manner. He said that it did not matter to him who was the lead on the process. He thought that the same results could be had even if the City took the lead. He said that he wanted to express MINUTES—Eugene City Council February 12, 2007 Page 12 Work Session