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ATTACHMENT E Council Minutes - Public Hearing - February 9, 2003 5. PUBLIC HEARING: An Ordinance Concerning Multiple-Unit Housing and Amending Section 2.945 of the Eugene Code, 1971 Mr. Taylor called Richi¢ W¢inman, Urban Services Manager for the Planning and Development Department, to the podium to speak to the issue. Mr. W¢inman explained that the Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption (MUPTE) was a ten-year property tax exemption for housing, new construction of five units or more designed to encourage development in the urban core. The proposal before the council sought to expand the boundary for MUPTE. He opined that without help to "level the playing field" and provide assistance, it was unlikely the City would see new multi-family housing developed in the downtown area. He said, after ten years, the City would see substantial benefit from developments built with the MUPTE incentive. Councilor Kelly noted that, on the second page of the ordinance, the section that had required that a development meet "at least four of" the design features listed in subsection (2) was not in the present draft. He stated that, for action, he thought it should be included. Mayor Torrey opened the public hearing. Deborah Healey, 360 East 15th Avenue, reported that the executive committee of the West University Neighbors (WUN), of which she was a member, had met twice to discuss the issue. She related that the WUN did support actions that would improve housing standards in the neighborhood. She submitted two additions to the seven quality standards mentioned in option one, proposed by the WUN, as follows: 1) Approval by the appropriate neighborhood association would be required; 2) That the proposed development should be designed for home ownership. She stated that the WUN wanted to be part of the MUPTE process. She added that, should the two additions be included, the WUN would advocate for requiring that five of nine of the design features be met rather than four of seven of them. Mark Steven Baker, 360 East 15th Avenue, noted that he was a community member appointed to the joint task force. He attributed the problems the neighborhood experienced to the lack of stability caused by the transient nature of neighborhood residents due to the abundance of rentals and the fact that the population was largely made up of students. He asked the council to craft policies that would encourage some diversity of occupancy in the neighborhood in order to increase stability. Mr. Baker commented that the low level of maintenance done on properties in the neighborhood contributed to the problem. He felt that rental owners were holding property, investing as little as possible, and getting the highest rents they could based on the assumption that the property would eventually become part of the university or the hospital. Tom Slocum, 1950 Graham Drive, voiced his support of the staff recommendation. He felt that, because the projects would come before the City Council, there would be opportunities to determine the quality of the project. He did not think that the City would want to get into design contests on a neighborhood basis. Regarding the proposed boundary, he urged the council to move it so that it butted up against Washington Street allowing development to look out over the park. Russ Brink, 214 East 30th Avenue, executive director of Downtown Eugene Incorporated (DE1), called attention to the memorandum included in the council packet, which was the result of a meeting of developers who had built L:\CMO\2004 Council Agendas\M040421\S040421B.doc