Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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proposed Goal 5 ordinance and would remain in effect until the council adopted a broader variance process to apply to all new land use regulations. He said that adoption of a variance that applied to all land use regulations would require a public process before both the Planning Commission and City Council. That could possibly happen before the end of 2005. Mr. Klein said staff would include the text regarding the variance was included in the Goal 5 protection ordinance to ensure it was in place when the Goal 5 protection ordinance took effect. It would be removed from the Goal 4 protection ordinance and placed in another part of the code when the more encompassing variance was adopted. Responding to a follow-up question from Mr. Poling, Mr. Klein envisioned that there would be a fee associated with the variance application as there was now with the Ballot Measure 37 claim application. Ms. Muir indicated that staff would establish a fee based on a cost-recovery analysis. Mr. Poling called for a second round of council questions and comments. Ms. Solomon expressed a concern that the City Council could be reviewing applications on a case-by-case basis, and if it was to do so, she wanted a set of rules by which each evaluation would be evaluated to avoid subjectivity about individual applications. Mr. Klein said the standards would be set out in the City Code, and the council would be considering applications using the same standards employed by the commission, except the council would have the ability to compensate a property owner as opposed to waiving the relevant regulation. He suggested deci~ions would be made on acase-by-case basis depending on the natural resource values of the property involved. Mr. Kelly was favorably inclined toward the ordinance as he did not like the current text proposed in the Goal 5 protection ordinance now and believed the proposed text would give people an alternative way to file a claim in a way that might have advantages for the City. He also wanted to broaden the scope of the variance beyond Goal 5. Mr. Kelly also wanted the council to consider adding some of the provisions in the existing Ballot Measure 37 claims ordinance, like notice on the Web site, notice to the effected neighborhood, and the possibility of acquisition through eminent domain. Ms. Bettman determined from Mr. Klein that the minor amendments the council would consider did not have Ballot Measure 37 implications. She asked if any of the amendments would benefit a property owner by increasing a property's value. Senior Planner Steve Nystrom could not say for certain but thought the amendments were sufficiently minor not to have a significant impact one way or another. Ms. Bettman asked for a specific answer to her question by the time of the council's work session on the topic scheduled for October 12. Ms. Bettman said staff had not yet made a case to her as to the benefits of the variance. She said staff indicated the intent of the ordinance was to avoid Ballot Measure 37 claims, but she thought the City should act in ways that allowed it to continue to regulate land use through the code in ways that councilors believed were in the best interest of the public and to protect natural resources that really needed to be protected for the sake of water quality, for example. She said that mention of avoiding claims made her nervous. It brought to mind visions of the Planning Commission preempting regulations just to avoid a claim. She was concerned the variance would result in a wholesale preemption of the City's ability to regulate. She thought staff was moving forward too quickly with the proposal, while work on the compensation fund had stalled. MINUTES-Eugene City Council Work Session October 10, 2005 Page 6