CCMinutes - 08/09/04 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Ms. Taylor expressed hope that the council would not "blindly adopt" the recommendations. She agreed with one committee member's suggestion that economic development focus in part on increasing family wage jobs and another committee member's suggestion that Eugene support its resource-related, medical business and government sector jobs. She supported adding agricultural work to this. Ms. Taylor agreed with the contention of one member that the current urban growth boundary (UGB) contributed to the environment and community livability. Ms. Bettman said she would vote to accept the report, but her vote was not an endorsement of the recommendations. In response to a question from Ms. Bettman, Mr. Taylor said he and the Mayor met regularly to set time for the agenda and had set aside three work sessions between the present meeting and November to consider the recommendations contained in the report. He clarified that the attachment entitled Eugene City Council Revised Staff Motion; Economic Development Committee Recommendations, August 9, 2004 reflected advice from council. Ms. Taylor felt broad principles were needed prior to adoption of the recommendations. She agreed with the principles set forth on page 80 of the council agenda packet. The motion passed unanimously, 7:0. Mayor Torrey strongly recommended the council consider and discuss all of the revised motions in order to fully understand them prior to voting on them. Mr. Kelly noted that the community had gone through a four-to-seven-year process to redo Chapter 9. He asserted the code had not been created in a vacuum, things had been added for a good policy reason or to achieve a particular end. He held no doubt there were provisions that ended up at odds with others, but felt the simplification of the code was a huge work task. He asked if the intent of the motion was to review the codes or to scrutinize future changes in land use code. Mr. Coyle responded that the department had been funded in the previous year's budget to undertake a review of the land use code. He related that he and City Planner Susan Muir wished to go through that process and look for redundancies in the code and elements that needed to be in policy guidelines rather than the code. He hoped to work with the Planning Commission in order to have something within the next four to six months to present to the City Council for consideration. Ms. Nathanson was pleased to support the recommendation. She recalled that she had asked the council to consider a performance or outcome-based code rather than a rules-based code. She asserted that the council had made the code more complicated. Ms. Taylor supported simplifying the code if it meant clarifying it but opposed if it created more loopholes for certain types of development. Ms. Smith, speaking on behalf of the committee, stated that the intent was to simplify and certainly not to form loopholes. MINUTES--Eugene City Council August 9, 2004 Page 5 Work Session