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Item 5: Ordinances on Minor Code Amendments
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Item 5: Ordinances on Minor Code Amendments
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10/12/2009
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<br />The City’s findings in response to LUBA’s remand, including the City Council’s interpretation <br />of the subject policy, follow. <br /> <br />The West University Refinement Plan, adopted in 1982, includes some policies that are <br />mandatory directives for land use decisions in the Plan area and other policies that do not <br />mandate a particular course of action. For example, unlike Policy 3, Policy 21 is a directive for <br />th <br />future city actions. It provides: “All new development in the R-4 zoned land north of 13 <br />Avenue in the plan area shall be subject to site review so that it is efficient, workable, safe, <br />compatible with surroundings, and considerate of historic and natural features.” WURP, 51. <br /> <br />The Plan text recognizes that not all of its policies are intended to be prescriptive. It describes its <br />policies as “guidance for decision-making related to the plan area” and states that “City <br />programs, actions, and decisions, such as zone changes, traffic pattern changes, and capital <br />improvements, will be evaluated on the basis of their ability to implement these policies as well <br />as other adopted City goals and policies.” WURP, 3. <br /> <br />The City Council does not interpret Policy 3 as a mandatory directive prohibiting the Council <br />from increasing parking requirements. Of the eight things that Policy 3 lists to be “taken into <br />account,” the one now at issue is most clearly not a mandate for a certain result. Unlike the other <br />seven things on the list -- which begin with terms that direct a certain outcome (“reduce,” <br />“redefine,” “enable,” “increase,” or “amend”) -- the item at issue only directs that the City <br />“review” the existing code text “with the purpose of reducing” required parking. To the extent <br />the Policy did operate as a directive, it only directed that the City Council, when updating its <br />land use code, ‘take into account the need to review current parking requirements with the <br />purpose of reducing the required number of spaces per unit.’ In fact, the City Council did so <br />with the land use code update it adopted in 1993. That approach failed to alleviate the <br />neighborhood’s parking problems and, as discussed below, it is consistent with the Plan to now <br />take a different approach. <br /> <br />Even if Policy 3 had been drafted in a way that could be interpreted as a mandate, it would be <br />erroneous to interpret Policy 3 as a mandate for this action. The Plan is now more than 27 years <br />old. Since the Plan’s adoption, the City has tried a ‘one space per unit’ approach to parking in <br />this neighborhood. However, that approach has not been an effective solution to the parking <br />problems in the neighborhood. The Plan was not intended to make ineffective solutions <br />mandatory. In the “Use of the Plan” section, the Plan refers to itself as a “flexible guide for <br />specific decision making” and states that “[a]nalysis and/or testing of proposed solutions to <br />problems may prove that they should become City policy or should be dropped.” WURP, 4. <br />Consistent with this provision, the text of Policy 3 and the other Plan provisions discussed above, <br />the City Council interprets Policy 3 as being a guide, but not a mandate. The Policy served as <br />guidance with the City’s testing of a ‘one space per unit’ approach. The Policy now causes the <br />City Council to be cautious as it increases the parking requirement, but it does not preclude the <br /> <br />City Council from doing so. <br /> <br />4 <br /> <br />
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