CC Minutes - 01/12/09 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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the You Tube link so that the council could access six videos he had posted. He welcomed reactions and feedback. He closed by wishing the council a happy new year. Gordon Anslow , 4493 Paddock Drive, asked the council to approve the Multiple-Unit Property Tax Exemption (MUPTE) for the Pearl on Campus project. He said he had been involved in several other projects but this was the first one in which he had ownership. He acknowledged that it was reasonable to question whether a MUPTE made a reasonable difference; would a project get built without the exemption? He stated that the program had been in place for a number of years and was recently modified with refinements made to the qualification process. He believed that the intention was to incentivize the building of multi-family projects which incorporated sufficient desirable characteristics so as to further goals the City Council had identified. He averred that given the time and commitment of resources required to design a complex infill redevelopment project, the investment was sufficiently great that there was a strong potential that a project would not get built or it would be redesigned to reduce costs without the MUPTE. He said in practice the MUPTE functioned as quid pro quo; the City would invite participants to use the program, investors would make the decision to design a project with MUPTE approval in mind, the affected neighborhood group would meet with the applicant and would be asked to vote in favor and the designer then integrated the input garnered from such a meeting, and the applicant, having proceeded in good faith, would come before the council for approval. He underscored his ongoing involvement with the West University Neighbors (WUN). He said they had generally seen their projects approved for the MUPTE and had always received approval from the neighborhood group. He attributed this to their willingness to shape the projects with neighborhood input in mind. He noted that he currently served as co-chair of the Infill Compatibility Standards Task Team and the Multi-Family Subcommittee, on which the president of WUN served as chair. He felt their approach should exemplify how MUPTE could and should work, bringing infill projects to the table with neighbors and providing an incentive which empowered the neighbors to ask for consideration in design of the projects. He believed this would ultimately result in better projects for the benefit of the owner, neighbors, tenants and the City. He provided a copy of his testimony in writing. Kevin Matthews , P.O. Box 1588, stated that he was President of Friends of Eugene. He welcomed the council to a new year. He averred that even though the City of Eugene received “appropriate accolades” for being green, it had a long way to go to “start dealing with our share of the climate change issue.” He thought the City was in a position to provide leadership in the state and in the country. He acknowledged that the City had conducted inventories and had state-established goals, but he believed those would be shown to be too weak in the next couple of years. He advised the council that the City should “get in place” plans that they could simulate and project into the future. He felt they would be “big picture plans” that would help the City understand the kinds of reductions in emissions that were necessary. He declared that the sooner they understood the necessary reductions, the sooner the City could be “out in front” of it. He suggested that the City could use the challenge as the economic opportunity he believed it would be. He asserted that if the City plotted out the vehicle technology adoption rates and looked at the turnover in vehicles and then understood that driving in Eugene comprised half of the carbon emissions the City would come to understand that there needed to be a 50 percent reduction of gross Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). He opined that they needed to “get into a mindset” where all transportation issues such as maintenance and infrastructure planning should consider that there would be “fewer and fewer car miles driven.” Mayor Piercy closed the Public Forum. Councilor Zelenka wished to point out that the City Council had unanimously adopted as a goal for the City that it would be carbon neutral by 2020. MINUTES—Eugene City Council January 12, 2009 Page 2 Regular Meeting