Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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ahead of future things to enable the council to say that it had the big picture. Mr. Kelly said the opportunity planned unit development (PUD) sounded intriguing, and liked the idea that it was a prototype for an alternative path. He asked the Planning Commission to look at it broadly, so that it was an alternative that need not be burdened by Chapter 9 standards for all development. Mr. Kelly expressed nervousness over statements like streamlining the PUD process, adding that he wanted to see focus on the issue. He said it was important to talk about neighborhood involvement rather than neighbor involvement. Ms. Bettman concurred that streamlining also made her nervous, especially since opportunity siting was predicated on involving the neighborhood and empowering the neighborhood associations through the process of developing density goals. She said the City may need to do a demonstration project. Ms. Taylor asked for more of an explanation of what the Planning Commission meant by streamlining. Ms. Colbath explained that it was not the commission’s intent to streamline past the public involvement component, but noted that time was money. The public involvement was included in the general standards to which PUDs would need to adhere. She said public involvement would come at the front end of projects, as criteria were created for the desired outcome. Mr. Belcher agreed with Ms. Colbath, noting it was important to balance development needs to streamline the process with community needs to ensure that proposed projects were good ones. He suggested that code language could include a requirement that developers needed to meet with impacted neighborhood groups at the time of application. Mr. Lawless said the current process was an eight-step process, and suggested that triaging the process by eliminating unnecessary steps prior to the application process would be beneficial. Ms. Taylor said there may also be lists of activities that developers would know were inappropriate. She was concerned about allocating a certain amount of density to each neighborhood, noting that some neighborhoods were more suited to density levels. She stated the south hills were not suited to the same density requirements as flat areas. Mr. Kelly said the density or population allocation was very important to him. He said one size did not fit all, and the appropriate density in the south hills area because of topography and natural resources would differ from the West University neighborhood. Nevertheless, there was a good way through opportunity siting to arrive at ways to add density, albeit not as much density, to south hills neighborhoods and there was a way to add density to the West University neighborhood. It was a matter of doing specific, and therefore, costly study to develop appropriate allocations. Mr. Kelly concurred with Mr. Pape, that it was important to spend the necessary money to do the project right. Ms. Bettman reminded the Planning Commission that non-residential uses need to adhere to density standards. Additionally, she said the demographics demonstrated that densely populated neighborhoods were declining in population, which was undesirable. She expressed concern that a class society was being developed where some neighborhoods were not subject to density requirements. There are appropriate places in the south hills for density, and it is up to the neighborhood associations to determine where they choose to absorb the density. Those neighborhoods needed to accept their fair share of density. Ms. Piercy thanked the Planning Commission for attending today’s meeting. MINUTES—Eugene City Council November 16, 2005 Page 11 Work Session