CC Minutes - 05/16/07 Work Session

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The motion failed, 5:3; Ms. Taylor, Ms. Bettman, and Mr. Zelenka voting in favor. Mr. Pryor, seconded by Mr. Pryor, moved to adopt the motion that Ms. Bettman proposed with the following substitution: “use the one-year transitional process for this year” in the place of “maintain the cur- rent evaluation procedures for this evaluation cycle.” The motion passed, 5:3; Mr. Zelenka, Ms. Taylor, and Ms. Bettman voting in opposition. Mr. Poling offered to serve on the subcommittee. Ms. Solomon signed off at 12:49 p.m. B. WORK SESSION: An Ordinance Concerning Setting Fees and Charges and Amending Sections 2.020, 2.442, and 6.411 of the Eugene Code City Manager Taylor explained that the ordinance was coming before the council as a result of recent court decisions. He asked City Attorney Jerry Lidz to elaborate. Mr. Lidz stated that a recent decision made by the Oregon Court of Appeals struck down a fee that the manager had adopted for a failure to comply with the code process, and in particular Section 2.020. He said the section generally authorized the City Manager to set fees and charges for City services, licenses, and so forth. He related that it described the notice and comment process and it directed the manager to consider five factors when adopting fees. He added that other sections of the code often set additional standards. He said in the recent court decision city staff or the manager, based from work done by staff people, adopted fees to recover the City’s cost of managing permits for various utilities to do work in the City right of way. He noted that there was a specific code section in Chapter 7 that stated those fees must fully recover all of the City’s costs for processing the permit and inspecting the work done under the permit. Mr. Lidz further explained that based on an analysis staff had conducted on what the City’s costs were the City Manager adopted certain fees which had been then challenged by Comcast. He related that one of the numerous grounds for the challenge was that the City Manager had not specifically compared the City’s fees for this purpose to fees adopted by other cities. He indicated that staff had not considered this comparison to be relevant given that the City had language in the code directing the manager to recover all of the costs and most cities subsidized those permit programs. He said the Court of Appeals did not agree with this and declared that the City Manager must consider what other cities had done. Mr. Lidz explained that the proposal in front of the council was intended to say in those cases where it would be a “meaningless step” to consider one of the factors listed in the code the City Manager need not do it. He felt that in practice it would have little effect with the exception of, in rare cases, saving some staff work. He stated that the “safeguard” was that the City Manager would have to make a written finding explaining that he considered a certain factor to be irrelevant or not applicable and why. He stressed that the Court did not require the City to make the change; should the City not make this change the City would have to jump to a hoop that was in some cases meaningless and in some cases would require a lot of staff work. MINUTES—Eugene City Council May 16, 2007 Page 5 Work Session