Item 3: Action - Minor Land Use Code Amendments

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A single public hearing will be held by the Planning Commission at the end of their review on all Minor Fixes. Staff expects this public hearing to occur in late winter or early spring. Public notice and outreach will occur prior to that hearing." A series of compound consent agenda items is not the same as a "series of public work sessions". For the Council to approve the proposed Findings that equate these would represent a sad new low in public involvement accountability in our city. The format of the Planning Commission "sessions" was entirely staff driven: At each of a long string of EPe meetings where MLUCAs were considered, within a ten minute agenda item, as I recall, staff gave a list of about a dozen MLUCAs,Hsted together in a single usually one-page table, in conceptual language only, with a format that only if a majority of Commissioners disagreed with an item would it be pulled out for more discussion. More than 90% of items were presented by staff and received no discussion at all. FoE made public comment repeatedly (about half a dozen times) listing items that we thought were not minor, and criticizing the psuedo~review process. No changes were made to the process, and very few to the specific items of concern. We also asked for a full list of the items so we could review them for cumulative impact, and none was made available during the Planning Commission "study period" - only just before the EPC hearing. In the public interest, Friends of Eugene would greatly appreciate some kind of City Council direction to staff to the effect that an imbalanced, inaccessible code amendment process is not what the Eugene community is looking for, and should not be repeated. Many of the items represent small policy changes and small expansions of development rights that staff thinks are fair and reasonable. FoE does not think such policy changes should be lumped in with corrections in this way that has limited public input, proceeds without substantive findings to support the policy changes, and obscures their cumulati ve impact. We were surprised that the public hearing went ahead without further process after the city council motion to hold code changes pending exploration of givings recapture. Many more than three of these proposed code changes woulld potentially increase property values. Many - perhaps most - of the proposed code changes potentially could functionally relax code requirements. Following is a list of Friends of Eugene comments on specific proposed items. Following are some brief comments on the list of proposed changes. 1 - 9.05000 - Seems minor. Friend of Eugene · 10131/05 · Page 2