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safety district, and the issue had come up at the staff level as well. She understood that Lane County was looking at the pros and cons of the Metro Plan. Mayor Piercy acknowledged that Mayor Leiken did an opinion piece where he mentioned the issue. Ms. Muir clarified the motion. Staff understood that if the motion passed, it would include the change to adopt the motion on opportunity siting and the MUC high priorities. Ms. Taylor, seconded by Ms. Bettman, moved to amend the motion to move Item 43, which is the remand and used to be at the top of the list, to the number 5 position, and move every- thing else down. Mr. Kelly said it had been a long-standing concern of his that what council said was a high priority often “drifted away.” Having said that, there was currently so much on the high-priority list that he could not support the motion, in spite of the fact that there had not been any progress on those important issues. Mr. Papé concurred with Mr. Kelly. Ms. Bettman said she consistently heard over the years from constituents that this was an important issue. Issues important to the community, such as the protection of heritage trees and the loss of that canopy, were more important to the community than most of the LUCU issues that have been processed by the Planning Commission and City Council. Mr. Kelly asked City Manager Taylor to have Public Works and Planning return with a proposal to address only the tree ordinance issue to take advantage of the good work done on the tree ordinance in 2000. City Manager Dennis Taylor said it would be relatively easy to put that together and bring the issue back to the City Council in a narrower sense than is envisioned in the PDD draft work program. Ms. Taylor concurred with Ms. Bettman that there was nothing more important to the community than protecting its trees and every week that did not happen, Eugene lost more trees. Mr. Papé said he did not want to imply to the public that Eugene did not have tree protections. He believed the City’s current historic tree preservation was not regulated properly. City Attorney Glenn Klein said the regulations that were in place now on trees were the same ones that were in place prior to the remand. Cutting trees required permits under certain circumstances depending upon whether the property was developed or not developed. They also required permits depending on the number of trees to be cut. Permit applications go to the Urban Forester, so there were protections that were currently in place. The protections that would have been in place had the tree ordinance not been remanded were improvements over what was in place today. Mr. Papé said the Eugene Tree Foundation was working on historic tree designations and asked if there were any regulations around historic trees. Mr. Klein said he was not aware of any, but there were provisions in the charter that related to some very old trees within certain rights-of-way. Mr. Papé said many historic trees were in the public domain, and he appreciated that they were not disturbed. Additionally, there was public information provided by the Urban Forester prior to any of those trees being cut down. MINUTES—Eugene City Council July 27, 2005 Page 9 Work Session