Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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not include the resource itself or the riparian area that went beyond. Mr. Kelly said that he now understood the difference and would have to digest how that would affect the code. In response to a question from Mr. Kelly, Mr. Bjorklund presented the third slide showing an example of the 33 percent threshold with a stream feature. The example showed a site with a stream feature and had both wetland and riparian resources. Mr. Bjorklund explained that in this example, the area between the channel banks, which was essentially the area of the wetland, would not be included in the calculation of 33 percent. He said that the total lot area was .35 acres, the resource itself (the wetland boundary) was .08 acre, and the area of the setback was .15 acre. He explained that .15 was 43 percent of .35 acres and therefore the lot would qualify for the 33 percent adjustment. Mr. Kelly clarified that the setback in this provision could be reduced so that it did not occupy more than 33 percent of the lot. Mr. Pape asked what the priorities would be for reducing the setback. Mr. Bjorklund said that a number of standards had to be met. Ann Siegenthaler from the Planning and Development Department said that the priorities were described on page 35 in subsection 6. Mr. Bjorklund showed the last example of a site in Santa Clara near Beacon Drive. He said that this was a more extreme example of a smaller lot with proportionally even more of it taken up by the resource. He said that the setback area and any riparian area that extended beyond it was 21 percent of the lot, thus not qualifying the lot for the 33 percent threshold adjustment, even though there was very little developable area left on the lot after the setback was applied. He said that it was this kind of example that led staff to add the new adjustment that was intended to address situations that staff was not able to anticipate because of the relationship between where a resource was located and the lot shape and size and other factors. He said that in previous drafts the City relied in part on provisions that Mr. Klein drafted to create a process to address any reduction of clear market value in unusual situations. He said that with that "fail safe" gone, staff introduced the new section to allow the City to look at a number of factors and make the least reduction to protection necessary to allow development of a lot. Ms. Bettman asked if all of the 445 residential acres involved were plotted with lots. She wondered if, for example, a 20-acre lot could be divided in such a way that the lots would get the maximum reduction. Mr. Bjorklund said that lot divisions would have to be done to City subdivision or PUD standards and current platting standards. Mr. Nystrom said that there were other criteria to consider about the buildable nature ofthe lots and the ability to develop them efficiently. He said that he thought that between looking at lot configuration, street design issues, etc., the City would be able to get at those issues. He added that he could not say for certain that someone could not try to manipulate some of those issues. He said that there were other mechanisms in place that would help minimize that potential. Ms. Bettman suggested putting in a caveat that this did not apply unless to the maximum extent possible, an attempt was made to avoid that potential. Ms. Bettman clarified that the recommendation for reductions did not take into account the value of the property and that the owner would qualify for it even if there was already a dwelling on the property. Mr. Bjorklund agreed, and added that he wished that the City had time to do a GIS analysis to know how many lots would fall into this category. He said that it was a very complex and painstaking process to identify these lots, because calculations had to be done separately for each lot. Therefore, it was difficult to answer how many of those lots there were. He said that based on examples he had looked at, the 33 percent threshold would only be met in rare situations. Mr. Kelly said that he was comfortable with the entire ordinance with the exception of the standards adjustment in 9.8030 (21) on pages 34-36 of the packet. He said that he had no problem with subsection MINUTES-Eugene City Council Work Session October 24, 2005 Page 5