CC Minutes - 01/24/07 Work Session

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Ms. Bettman declared that her reading of the City’s policy related to road rights-of-way annexations suggested that use of the word “should” instead of “shall” allowed staff discretion on whether to seek inclusion of road rights-of-way in an annexation. Mr. Klein agreed that “should” did not mean “shall,” but the policy would require justification from staff if road right-of-way annexation was not requested; otherwise, any adjudication would question why the City did not comply with what appeared to be an applicable policy. Ms. Bettman said the boundary commission had exercised that discretion by not granting every road right- of-way addition the City requested. Mr. Carlson responded that the City only requested the addition of roads in about 50 percent of the annexation proposals. He said the boundary commission had been somewhat inconsistent about agreeing to include road rights-of-way. Ms. Bettman felt that the council could give direction to the City Manager to halt the practice and that was the motion she would be making. City Manager Taylor indicated that the City was using a best management practice similar to that used by other jurisdictions related to noncontiguous annexations and logical provision of services. Mr. Clark asked if the City was currently in compliance with Metro Plan provisions to identify methods of establishing an urban transition program to eventually provide provision of key urban services only by cities. Mr. Carlson said a plan was currently in place and how well it worked depended on the service. He gave examples of contracting with districts to provide services to portions of the City, but thought some of those agreements were less effective than they could have been. Mr. Clark clarified that he was asking if there was a plan for transitioning annexation. Mr. Carlson replied that the Metro Plan provision cited by Mr. Clark related more to interim service delivery methods than to a plan for eventually annexing the entire area. He said there was no timeline or process for ultimate annexation of the area; the Metro Plan did not require such a plan, but asked that an active annexation program be undertaken. Mr. Clark asked if the street annexation program had changed over time. Mr. Carlson said the program evolved over time; shortly after adoption of the Metro Plan the practice had been to sometimes annex the street in front of the property or occasionally only half of the street. He said in many cases the annexations were sufficiently isolated that no street was included; increased annexation in certain areas over the past five years had resulted in more frequent staff recommendations to include streets because service delivery would be more efficient if the road was included. He said in most cases the requests were made when 50 percent of the front footage was already within the city limits. Mr. Clark asked if the City operated like other metropolitan areas in similar circumstances. Mr. Carlson pointed out that Eugene was the only jurisdiction that still had a boundary commission and different jurisdictions responded in different ways. He gave the examples of Portland and Gresham, whose active, aggressive annexation policies and practices resulted in very little unincorporated land in that area. He said in the Salem area the approach was to form the City of Keizer; Eugene was using the incremental annexa- tion approach with voluntary annexations only. MINUTES—Eugene City Council – Work Session January 24, 2007 Page 6