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Other Background Information For the past 30 years, regulation in Eugene's downtown has been used to help maintain the area's balance of public and private interests with the goal of encouraging a pleasant place for civic and cultural events combined with commercial activities and residential and economic pursuits. In January 2004, the council directed the City Manager to revisit the Downtown Ordinance which had been adopted on November 24, 2003, to clarify the issue of regulation of commercial versus non- commercial activities in Eugene's downtown. A council work session was scheduled for April 12, 2004, to report on progress made to resolve the public and council concerns. For several weeks prior to the work session, city representatives and a community coalition met with the City's attorneys to develop changes to the Downtown Ordinance and the temporary Administrative Rule R-3.336, adopted by Administrative Order No. 21-03-15. Working together, city representatives and community members were able to more clearly focus the areas of concern and reach agreement on a strategy to resolve these issues while ensuring that the City of Eugene could provide necessary management of the downtown area. This strategy has been applied to the draft Downtown Ordinance (Attachment A), which has been amended to clearly apply only to commercial activities. All discussion of non-commercial gatherings, whether spontaneous or planned, has been removed from the draft ordinance. In addition, the charging of admission has been clarified as a determining factor in defining an activity as a "commercial event" which would be regulated by the ordinance. This removes "entertainment events" for which there are no admission charges from regulation by the downtown ordinance. Following the adoption by City Council of revisions to the Eugene Code concerning the Downtown area, Administrative Rule R-3.336 will be updated to correspond with the new ordinance. Within the next few months, work will begin to develop a second ordinance, currently being referred to as a "Parade/Gathering Ordinance" which is intended to provide an opportunity for City representatives to work with the community coalition to design an effective process to facilitate parades and gatherings on public property. Essentially, by eliminating non-commercial gatherings from the Downtown Ordinance and Administrative Rule R-3.336, an opportunity has been created to resolve the issues of the size of gatherings, to re-focus the need for permits into the same context as all similar city processes (such as facility or park rentals), and to eliminate the need for insurance coverage for most small or spontaneous activities. Timing A public hearing is scheduled for May 10 and City Council action on May 24, 2004. OPTIONS No options are presented as this is a public hearing. STAFF RECOMMENDATION Staff recommends proceeding with the ordinance as proposed. L:\CMO\2004 Council Agendas\M040510\S0405104.doc