Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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continued in the Goal 5 inventory. She thought it irresponsible and illogical and a waste of taxpayer's money to allow development in sensitive areas before they could be inventoried. Ms. Warnes likened it to installing smoke detectors after a house had burned down. She echoed comments regarding the rare and sensitive species whose habitat lay in the south hills. She hoped that the City's government and staff would not let developers continue to enrich themselves at the expense of natural resources. She agreed that developers impact the environment more on steep slopes. Tom Halferty, 1120 East 41 st Avenue, wished for a bigger picture look at the importance of open spaces to cities. He related that he arrived in the city of Eugene in 1971 and thought the city was beautiful. Since then, he witnessed a patchwork of development spreading over the surrounding hills. He observed that communities that had been in existence for hundreds of years had wisely chosen to protect natural areas adjacent to urban areas. He cited the Forest Park in the City of Portland as an example ofland that had been prudently set aside. He foresaw that the Willamette Valley would fill in over the next 50 years and urged protection of special natural lands, such as the land around Spencer's Butte. He noted that the pileated woodpecker had territory that wrapped around the hills. He hoped the council would consider saving larger tracts around the city. Shirley St. Clair, 5035 St. Clair Lane, submitted her testimony in writing accompanied by pictures of her property. She requested her property, purchased by her parents in 1949, be removed from the riparian setback because it was different from the neighboring properties. She maintained that a 40-foot setback from the stream would eliminate two potentially buildable lots. She related that across the stream was a developed field that her father once used for flying model planes. She felt that Ballot Measure 37 would apply to this property as this land use action would diminish property values. She added that her mother had turned 91 on the day of this hearing. Mark C. Hoyt, 475 Cottage Street, Suite 120, Salem, spoke on behalf of Joe Green, who purchased the land where the East Amazon headwaters were located. He reported that a development application had been filed earlier in the day. He said the development application involved 13 revisions to the plan and detailed analysis of the site by natural resource consultants, arborists, and civil engineers in order to minimize the impact on the site. He related that as part of that, he was able to come up with a design that would preserve more than 50 percent of the site in common ownership open space and preserved the natural riparian corridors that were identified as a natural resource on the Goal 5 inventory and a substantial amount of timber on the property. Mr. Hoyt averred it would preserve the wildlife habitat neighbors expressed concern about. He said the developer opted to propose private streets because it would allow the modification of street lighting standards. He related that as the current ordinance was written, it was unclear whether private streets could be used as part of a development. He felt public streets with street lighting standards would flood wildlife habitat with light and negatively impact the wildlife. He declared that this would accomplish what the Goal 5 ordinance sought to do and what the citizens who were protesting the development wished for, while allowing resources to be assets to developments. Lauri Segel, 1192 Lawrence Street, declared the City of Eugene and its metropolitan partners to be more than a decade behind in the effort to bring the Metro Plan into compliance with the Goal 5 rule. She asserted that the adoption of the Goal 5 policies had been planned to be concurrent with the adoption of the buildable land inventory scheduled to be adopted in 1997, but was adopted in 1999. She asserted that it was not difficult to "guess which groups" were responsible for the delay. Ms. Segal alleged that a couple of years earlier, the previous council and mayor "performed a maneuver" that had the effect of removing approximately 1,900 acres of upland habitat from the natural resource inventory. She asserted MINUTES-Eugene City Council Regular Session September 26, 2005 Page 11