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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC Minutes - 10/11/06 Work Session M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Work Session McNutt Room—Eugene City Hall October 11, 2006 Noon COUNCILORS PRESENT: Bonny Bettman, David Kelly, Gary Papé, George Poling, Betty Taylor. COUNCILORS ABSENT: Jennifer Solomon, Chris Pryor, Andrea Ortiz. Mayor Piercy convened the City Council work session. She noted that Ms. Ortiz, Mr. Pryor, and Ms. Solomon had conflicts that prevented them from being able to participate in the meeting. A. ACTION: A Resolution Expressing the City Council’s Opposition to Ballot Measure 48 and Encouraging Eugene Voters to Oppose the Measure Ms. Taylor, seconded by Mr. Kelly, moved the following resolution: Whereas Measure 48 would amend the constitution to limit the biennial percentage of in- crease in State spending to the percentage increase in the state population, plus inflation. Whereas the passage of Measure 48 would seriously impact State funding for important community services such as education, law enforcement and corrections, housing, health care, senior services, infrastructure, veterans programs, and economic development. Whereas Measure 48 could cause cities to take up the gap, resulting in pressure on local budgets. Be it resolved by the City Council of Eugene that the Council goes on record in opposi- tion to Measure 48 and encourages voters to oppose this measure. Mayor Piercy stressed that the resolution was drafted by the City Council; such a resolution could not be generated by staff. Ms. Taylor related that the League of Oregon Cities opposed the ballot measure with a straw vote. Mr. Papé asked if the Council Committee on Intergovernmental Relations (CCIGR) reviewed the ballot measures, adding that this was the normal process. Mayor Piercy replied that she had contacted the CCIGR and had heard only from Ms. Taylor. She said the ballots would be mailed on October 20 and the issue was time-sensitive. Mr. Papé stated that he appreciated the time-sensitivity of the issue, but pointed out that the measure had not been placed on the ballot “yesterday.” He felt the council should follow its normal process rather than bringing it up for “an eleventh hour decision” with only five councilors present. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 1 Work Session Ms. Bettman disagreed. She believed that for this particular measure a council resolution was appropriate. She likened Ballot Measure 48 to ballot measures 5, 47, and 50 from past elections, which she said were measures aimed at “asphyxiating local governments.” Mr. Kelly echoed Ms. Bettman’s comments. He said people who wish to reduce the services of government should come forward and select the services they did not want anymore rather than taking such a broad move. He noted that Ballot Measure 48 was similar to a measure passed in Colorado some years earlier; the results of the ballot measure had been so devastating that the people of Colorado had since voted to put the measure in abeyance. The motion passed unanimously, 5:0. B. WORK SESSION: Implementation Strategies for Sustainable Business Initiative City Manager Taylor asked Council, Public, and Government Affairs Manager Mary Walston to introduce the topic. Ms. Walston stated that this was intended to be an initial conversation to start the implementation process of the recommendations in the Sustainable Business Initiative (SBI) report. She underscored that the report contained broad ideas and admittedly lacked in detail. She said the work session would provide the council with a chance to fill in the details. She related that at every meeting of the SBI Task Force the Mayor asked what the City could do to support sustainable business, what it could do to encourage sustainable business practices, and what the City could do to educate the public. To that end, six recommendations had been prepared by staff for the council’s consideration. Ms. Walston noted that Councilor Ortiz requested no action be taken in her absence. Ms. Walston reviewed the recommendations, listed in the Agenda Item Summary (AIS): ? Reaffirm the commitment to sustainability through the adoption of a resolution; ? Accept the SBI report as a basis for future actions; ? Consider making the recommendations in the report a council priority action item in 2007; ? Prepare an ordinance to establish a sustainability commission as a standing committee advisory to the council; ? Develop a budget package within the framework of the FY08 budget process ? Assign a staff person to more fully develop the ideas and recommendations. Ms. Walston also noted that a draft resolution in support of the first SBI recommendation was in the packet Mayor Piercy asked representatives of the SBI Task Force to speak about the proposed resolution. Rusty Rexius, a member of the task force, stated that the goal of the process was for the council to take the report and create a mechanism to “put it into play.” He acknowledged that it was not specific; it was intended to be a framework. He felt the report was a great start. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 2 Work Session Bob Doppelt, coordinator for the SBI Task Force, said the he hoped the resolution would let the business community know that growing sustainable practices and adopting sustainable purchasing was a City priority. Mr. Kelly thanked the task force for the work. He related that Rabbi Husbands-Hankin made global warming the topic of his Yom Kippur sermon. He said there was an interfaith effort to educate people about global warming nationwide entitled Interfaith Power and Light. He thought the SBI work was a good place to start. Mr. Papé asked if there was any idea what the cost of staff time for the commission would be. City Manager Taylor replied that staff had come up with a ballpark estimate based on experience with other commissions. He recalled that in the last budget cycle $100,000 had been set aside for Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 to implement the ideas that might come forward from the SBI Task Force. He said anything ongoing would be something that the City would have to anticipate and consider as part of all of the other demands on the budget. He added that he had asked City Attorney Glenn Klein to prepare an administrative order to help move forward staffing an interim office wherein existing staff would work on temporary assignment to provide support for moving the action plans and budget planning forward. Mr. Papé wanted the City to lead by example. He added that he could feel comfortable with the second staff-prepared motion as it moved to “consider” the recommendations of the report as a new council priority rather than to use the word “make,” for instance. He said the SBI report would be in competition with other “huge” demands on the community. Mayor Piercy commented that she wanted to encourage the support of businesses that produced sustainable products and the support of any businesses that wished to take on sustainable business practices. She said neither one determined a “perfection level” of sustainability. Mr. Papé thought there should be more specificity in the language. Ms. Bettman asserted that the resolution did not seem different from the motion to accept the SBI report. She wanted to see stronger language in the resolution, perhaps embracing the first three recommendations. In response to a question from Ms. Bettman, Ms. Walston affirmed that the SBI Task Force had made suggestions as to who would be on the commission. Ms. Bettman asked how the council would go about making decisions about who would serve so that it would be in the ordinance. Ms. Walston replied that she assumed the council would review the draft ordinance in a work session or at the actual public hearing and, like other ordinances, the council could comment on it and make changes. Ms. Bettman asked if staff would pick options “out of a hat.” Ms. Walston responded that staff would check the report and consult with members of the task force to get their ideas, not unlike the Police Commission at its formation. Ms. Bettman was uncertain how to read the fifth staff-prepared motion, which sought to direct the City Manager to prepare a budget proposal for the SBI recommendations. She asked if it meant the budget proposal for implementing the full time equivalent (FTE) employee for staffing the commission plus the meetings would come back within the City Manager’s proposed budget. She wanted clarification as to what the motion indicated. City Manager Taylor replied that the motion ensured that a decision package would be formulated that listed exactly what it would cost to create the capacity within the City organization. He MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 3 Work Session reminded the councilors that when anticipating the Police Auditor’s Office, the decision package had been included in his recommendations and as part of the proposed budget, though it was developed as a stand- alone decision package. Regarding the sixth motion, which directed the City Manager to assign staff to develop a plan to implement the ideas and recommendations in the report, Ms. Bettman asked if this was not redundant, given that the direction would be to move forward with the top three recommendations. She asked why staff would be taken from working on other issues when the $100,000 could be allocated toward setting up the position, a commission, and the support of those efforts. City Manager Taylor replied that he thought the recommenda- tions and the implementation strategies should be pursued sooner rather than later. He felt that waiting until it was a budget item would delay the start of the process until July 1, 2007. He said he would propose bringing someone from the environmental policy team with the current funding and then see if the council would support ongoing funding in the FY08 budget. He sought to speed up implementation activities and the staffing of the office so that it would be put into place this year and not next year. Ms. Bettman asserted that it made more sense to move forward with implementing the first three recommen- dations with the currently allocated $100,000. Ms. Taylor thanked the task force for the hard work. She expressed her enthusiasm for the work. She had hoped to adopt all of the recommendations at the present meeting. She wanted the council to decide to provide ongoing funding. She averred that the “end of life itself could happen” as a result of global warming. She would like the business community to strive for perfection in its sustainable business endeavors so that everything done was sustainable. Regarding the funding, Ms. Taylor averred that the SBI work was more important than many of the other things the City was doing. She suggested that the Police Commission could go out of existence. She felt it had served its purpose; the council could take over policy discussions about the police and the funding for the Police Commission could be reallocated to the proposed SBI commission. Mr. Poling supported the SBI recommendations and he supported getting a “jump start” on it. He stressed the importance of being fair and equitable to all businesses whether they were local businesses that had been established for a long time or new businesses to the area. He averred that there were “dynamite young businesses” in the city. He did not want to give one an advantage over another. Mr. Kelly agreed that it was important to work with all businesses at whatever level they were working toward sustainability in order to “help them up the ramp.” Mr. Kelly asserted that if the work was not funded in the budget, 90 percent of it would be “dead.” He said one of the ways the City expressed its priorities was how it set its funds. He noted that the office of sustainable development would not be “some giant organization”; rather, it would have no more than 1.5 FTE. He averred it was eminently doable. He wanted to get things started, but he thought it was inefficient to take someone who was doing other work now and reassign them. He suggested that the motion combine the intent of staff’s final motion and the issue of budget package. He wanted to use the $100,000 to post the position as soon as possible and, in the same motion, state the intent of council that the ongoing funding for the office would be in the draft budget for FY08. Additionally, he hoped the next work session on this topic would be soon. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 4 Work Session City Manager Taylor did not anticipate having another work session on the SBI report. He thought, instead, it would be considered as an action item on October 23. Mr. Papé expressed appreciation to Ms. Walston for all of the work she had been doing. In response to a question from Mr. Papé, City Manager Taylor said the SBI effort was comparable to the other important items that were funded through the budget process. He likened it to the City’s commitment to diversity and human rights as it was a core value and deserved that kind of attention. He averred that making it a council priority would mean that the council would receive a multi-year action plan that the council would then track; the council would receive quarterly reports. He said it would be on the Web site. Mr. Papé was concerned that the council was “putting the cart before the horse.” He did not want to preempt the session that would happen in January with the “new” council. Mr. Kelly recommended the following: ? That the council appoint the SBI commission; ? That the term length be three years, with terms staggered initially so the commission would not have 100 percent turnover; ? A 12-member commission seemed large to him, but if the council moved forward with that number, he suggested that each councilor nominate one person and the other four positions be “at large” po- sitions. Ms. Taylor liked Mr. Kelly’s ideas. She hoped that some of the people who had served on the task force would consider being on the commission. City Manager Taylor observed that two of the recommendations were to be carbon-neutral as a community by 2020 and also to generate zero waste. He called those big and worthy goals. He thought this was why the City should get the resources together and the teamwork to be able to talk about how the City would begin to engage in providing the leadership to address it and also to engage the City’s partners in the community in the discussion. Mayor Piercy noted that part of the work was comprised of meeting with other parts of local government. She said it seemed there was a lot of interest in partnership. Mayor Piercy adjourned the meeting of the Eugene City Council and convened a meeting of the Eugene Urban Renewal Agency at 12:47 p.m. C: WORK SESSION th Review of Responses to the 10 & Charnelton Request for Proposals Mr. Papé asked why this issue was being discussed at this session. He asked if the council could adjourn to an executive session. City Manager Taylor replied that staff intended to explain why it recommended a specific proposal. City Attorney Klein clarified that this was a subject that could be go into an executive session, but at this level it was not necessary to do so. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 5 Work Session Denny Braud, Senior Development Analyst from the Planning and Development Department, reviewed the three proposals that had come in response to the Request for Proposals (RFP) the City issued for the site on th the corner of 10 Avenue and Charnelton Street. He noted that the RFPs had gone through two levels of review: a staff review and a review conducted by the Eugene Redevelopment Advisory Committee (ERAC). He noted that the ERAC had been expanded by three people for this specific purpose, in order to bring in additional expertise in the areas of financing, sustainability, and multi-unit housing development. Regarding the Beam Development proposal, Mr. Braud stated that it was contingent upon acquisition of the adjacent privately owned property as the proposal was for a full-block development. Mr. Braud said the Sockeye Development proposal responded to the RFP objectives well, but included a $3.36 million funding shortfall. He commented that given Sockeye’s previous development projects, the City would expect a project done by them to be of very high quality. Nonetheless, the level of subsidy requested was high. Mr. Braud highlighted the proposal from the TK Partners (Tom Kemper group). He averred that the proposed housing density could support the Great Street vision for Broadway. Mr. Braud conveyed staff’s support for the TK Partners proposal. He reported that the proposal had also garnered nearly unanimous support from the ERAC. He noted that staff conducted due diligence on the proposal and had spoken with other cities in which Kemper has worked, who gave favorable feedback regarding Kemper’s work. Additionally, he said Kemper’s connection with Scanlan Kemper Bard, a major real estate investment firm in Portland, brought a lot of credibility to Kemper’s financing plan. Staff sought direction to enter into an exclusive negotiating period of approximately 90 days with Kemper, after which terms would come back before the council for approval. Those terms included purchase price, timeliness, and additional detail regarding the overall development concept. Mr. Klein clarified that if a council discussion was related to giving specific direction as to what the negotiations should be with an entity, the council could choose to go into an executive session, but if the question was related to gaining more information about each of the proposals and/or choosing which one to pursue, an executive session should not be called. Mr. Papé expressed his preference for holding an executive session for a discussion of strategy with the City Manager. In response to a question from Ms. Taylor, Mr. Braud stated that the original offer for the property from Oregon Research Institute (ORI) was $400,000. Ms. Taylor observed that the current offer, $192,000, was much less than that. Mr. Braud cautioned the council that initiating negotiations did not indicate an acceptance of that purchase price. He stressed that this was one of the “deal points” that would be negotiated over the 90-day period. Ms. Taylor agreed that the proposal from TK Partners was the best of the three received, though she was not prepared to act on it at the present meeting. She did not believe the downtown area needed any more retail space. She opined that if the City gave a subsidy it should get something in return. She suggested that some of the space could be used for a theater, noting that one of the small local theaters was looking for a new space. MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 6 Work Session Mr. Kelly called the proposals exciting. He commented that ‘subsidy’ had become a dirty and political word. He pointed out that no one called the money spent on road projects that access a new development a subsidy. He said in this case government would be spending money for the community good, but the vehicle for the community good might be private development. He felt the fundamental community good would be that more people would live downtown, more high-quality development would be located downtown, and this development would go on the tax rolls. He said while the land sale price was of interest to him, the ultimate potential benefit to the community, both psychological and economic, were of a greater order of magnitude for him. Mr. Kelly liked the Sockeye proposal because of the low-income housing but could not support it because of the funding gap. He agreed that the TK Partners proposal was the best. He suggested the council pass the motion in the AIS and then plan for an executive session to discuss terms and conditions. Mr. Papé called the proposals exciting. He believed all three of the firms to be quality firms. In response to a question from Mr. Papé, Mr. Braud clarified that the City paid $900,000 for the site, including the site where the present library was located. He added that one could roughly estimate that the cost of the site was $300,000, given that the purchase was for three quarter-blocks and the site in question was one quarter-block portion of it. Mr. Papé pointed out that the City spent $200,000 on the demolition. He surmised that approximately $600,000 had been invested in the property. He supported getting private investment in the downtown area. He wanted to try to accommodate private development as well as the City could. Nonetheless, he preferred to discuss the finer points of this negotiation in an executive session. In response to a question from Mr. Papé, Mr. Braud clarified that the Beam proposal envisioned the City contributing the land to the project, and loaning it between $2 million and $2.7 million, and the repayment of the loan would be contingent on how well the project performed financially. Ms. Bettman said she appreciated that the ERAC had been expanded. She felt it added to the credibility of its recommendations. She felt the council could proceed with the motion in the AIS and then hold an executive session to iron out the details. Ms. Bettman indicated her support for the TK Partners proposal. She commented that the ultimate objective in the downtown area was to get more people there. She said the creation of housing downtown would further this objective and agreed that some subsidy would likely be required. She did like the Beam proposal except for the level of public subsidy it included. She did not believe the City should subsidize retail space in the downtown area. She noted that there was a small amount of commercial space in the TK Partners proposal and she felt it was an appropriate level to include in the development. She wanted to see the City move forward with it. Ms. Taylor wanted more time for the public to comment and for councilors to consider those comments. She did not believe executive sessions should be held unless they were absolutely required by law. Ms. Taylor, seconded by Mr. Kelly, moved to direct the Agency Director to enter into a 90-day exclusive negotiation period with TK Partners for the sale and development of th the 10 Avenue & Charnelton Street development site, based on their proposal, and to MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 7 Work Session return to the City Council, acting as the Urban Renewal Agency, with the proposed terms of the sale and development following the negotiation period. Ms. Taylor indicated her opposition for the motion, noting that she was not ready to support it at this time. Mr. Papé reiterated that three councilors were missing. He felt this proposal was too large to vote on without the three councilors who were unable to attend. Mr. Papé, seconded by Mr. Poling, moved to table the motion to October 16. The mo- tion passed, 4:1; Ms. Bettman voting in opposition. Mr. Braud noted that Tom Kemper and Ron Skov from TK Partners, were in attendance. He thanked them for coming. Ms. Taylor suggested the council meet at 5:30 p.m. prior to the public hearings on October 16. City Manager Taylor recommended a 6:30 p.m. timeframe. He said he and the Mayor would poll the councilors to determine the meeting time. The meeting adjourned at 1:19 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Dennis M. Taylor City Manager (Recorded by Ruth Atcherson) MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 11, 2006 Page 8 Work Session