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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC Minutes - 10/16/02 Work Sesison MINUTES Eugene City Council Work Session McNutt Room--Eugene City Hall October 16, 2002 Noon COUNCILORS PRESENT: David Kelly, Gary Pap~, Nancy Nathanson, Scott Meisner, Pat Farr, Betty Taylor, Gary Rayor, Bonny Bettman. Mayor James D. Torrey called the meeting to order. A.WORK SESSION: Draft Endangered Species Act/Salmon Strategies Senior Planner Mr. Bj0rklund introduced the item, noting the council's past direction to staff to seek more public involvement on the proposed strategies. He said that, of the ten proposed strategies developed by the City's Environmental Policy Team and forwarded to the Planning Commission and the City Council, staff recommended that implementation of Strategy A, the proposed overlay zone, be postponed while targeted citizen outreach occurred. That was the primary regulatory strategy involved, and staff did not believe that it had involved potentially affected property owners to the degree they understood the strategy. Staff proposed to hold three targeted neighborhood meetings and to do a targeted mailing specific to the strategy. Mr. Bj0rklund noted that the other nine proposed strategies were primarily internal in nature. One strategy, the proposed noxious vegetation list, had minor regulatory implications. He invited questions. Mayor Torrey called for council comments and questions. Ms. Taylor hoped the City could revise and reinstate its waterway protection ordinance, which had been remanded by the Land Use Board of Appeals. Ms. Taylor questioned the impact of postponing implementation of Strategy A. Mr. Bj~rklund indicated the delay did not affect the actual implementation of the ordinance, which could not be considered by the Planning Commission until fiscal year 2004, given its full work program. He anticipated that the ordinance would come back to the council in May 2003. Ms. Taylor asked if there was anything the City could do to protect the areas the overlay zone was intended to protect in the meanwhile. Mr. Bj~rklund used a map mounted on the meeting room wall to identify publicly owned land, stressing that the majority of the potentially affected land was publicly owned and within the City's management purview. The City did not, at this time, have the regulatory authority to restrict uses on private land beyond what was already in the code. Ms. Taylor asked if the courthouse site would be affected by the strategy. Mr. Bj~rklund said the courthouse site would be within the area to which the strategy was applied. However, it could be exempt in that all the proposed new buildings were likely to be in areas already developed. MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 16, 2002 Page 1 Work Session Current City regulations in west Eugene, for example, exempted areas developed prior to having the setbacks in place. There was community support for such an approach. Ms. Taylor asked if the Amazon headwaters was affected by the strategy, and requested information about the status of the headwaters acquisition. Mr. Bj~rklund had no information on the status of the acquisition. He believed that the strategy would only affect the headwaters if the land became publicly owned. The strategy would not place any regulatory restrictions on any part of the Amazon Creek. Ms. Taylor asked why auxiliary streams were not considered as important as the river given that the waters all go to same place. Mr. Bj~rklund agreed that water quality was important to salmon. However, the most direct impacts to salmon would happen in and along the river where the salmon habituate, which was why high-priority regulatory activity was focused there. Other streams were being addressed by the City's stormwater management program. Ms. Taylor thought the overlay approach very moderate and did not think it would be controversial. She asked if environmental groups were involved in its development. Mr. Bj~rklund said that the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides had offered comments on the strategies. He anticipated more outreach to environmental groups would occur. Mr. Carlson noted that the City Council would hear its update of the Stream Corridor Program on November 20. Mr. Meisner appreciated and supported the staff recommendation for more public outreach before the habitat overlay district was developed. He said that the public needed to be brought along and educated. He asked how the general public could be educated about noxious vegetation given that the proposed strategy would apply to new development only. He asked how remedial change could be accomplished. Mr. Bj~rklund said that part of the idea of adopting a plant list was to draw some media attention to the issue, and to use that as a point of reference for education. He said that it would take a sustained effort, but examples from other communities indicated that the adoption of such a list got media attention and the attention of nursery owners and the public. Mr. Bj~rklund said that citizens needed to start talking about the issues and learning about how to address noxious plants on a daily basis. Mr. Meisner appreciated the staff effort and, while he trusted the media would publicize the City's efforts, he wanted the City to take affirmative steps to provide information about noxious weeds not just to the nursery industry but to neighborhoods as well. Mr. Bj~rklund said there were other organizations working on the issue, such as the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Natural Heritage Program, that the City could partner with to do that education. Mr. Meisner said the City needed to make it clear that adoption of the strategies did not mean that existing development along the river would be removed. Mr. Kelly concurred with Mr. Meisner regarding the need for neighborhood education. He said that the City needed to both educate its employees on good internal practices and lead by example for the broader public. Mr. Kelly was very supportive of all the proposed strategies. He said that there were many benefits from the program beyond the benefit to the salmon, such as improvements to water quality, improvements to the river as a public amenity, and avoidance of downstream impacts. MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 16, 2002 Page 2 Work Session Mr. Kelly appreciated the staff desire for flexibility, but said if the City provided what he termed more or less complete flexibility in implementing strategies B-J, how could the council ensure that progress was made? He suggested an annual council work session as one mechanism. Mr. Bj~rklund concurred. He said that staff could report on activities to date on an annual basis. Mr. Kelly thought that was a reasonable way to keep the council informed, and suggested that the approach be included in a motion adopting the staff recommendation. At the request of Mr. Pap~, Mr. Bj~rklund described the setback as a 75-foot setback with a 45- foot transition zone. Mr. Bj~rklund anticipated a closer look at the waterways involved, suggesting that there were some that the City might want to keep salmon out of, such as the Eugene Millrace, which lacked habitat for salmon. In other words, there may be streams to which the setbacks would not apply. Mr. Pap~ determined that staff had not yet calculated the impact of the setbacks on the buildable lands inventory. Mr. Pap~ asked if the City was coordinating its other studies with the overlay district. Ms. Childs said yes. Mr. Pap~ asked how the strategy would impact the fiscal year 2004 budget. Mr. Bj~rklund noted the funding allocated for development of the strategies through fiscal year 2003. The cost of implementation had not been analyzed, and he suggested that would occur in fiscal year 2005. Mr. Carlson added that most of the strategies involved changes to internal City practices and procedures and could be accomplished within the existing budgetary authority. Mr. Pap~ suggested that the City could realize more if it coordinated with Springfield and Lane County given that streams did not stop at the jurisdiction's boundaries. Mr. Bj~rklund reported that the City of Eugene was coordinating its activities with other jurisdictions through the Metro Endangered Species Act Coordinating Team. Each jurisdiction shared information about their efforts with that team so that local governments were aware of what each jurisdiction was doing. He agreed that in terms of habitat restoration, the City may want to look beyond its urban growth boundary (UGB) to realize a greater benefit. He said that the results of the riparian and habitat assessment would be folded into restoration efforts, and that assessment acknowledged the importance of areas outside the UGB as important to the region's fish. Those areas, as well as areas inside the corporate boundaries, would be examined. Mr. Fart said that speaking as a member, he could assure the council that the Oregon Nurseryman Association was very concerned about invasive plants and it was a continuing topic of discussion. Mr. Fart recalled the high levels of pollution that had affected the Willamette River in past years and the progress that had been made since then. He said the council should keep in mind how far the community has come in cleaning its river. Mr. Fart concurred as to the importance of public outreach. Mr. Fart said that rivers and the salmon were very important to him personally, and asked for information about the 2002 spring chinook run. Mr. Bj~rklund said the runs of hatchery salmon were much higher than in the past, and scientists were attributing that to changes in ocean conditions that caused more food to be available to the fish near the coasts. Mr. Fart said that the City Council should do what it could for salmon habitat while keeping in mind that other conditions affected the status of the fish as well. MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 16, 2002 Page 3 Work Session Responding to a question from Ms. Bettman, Mr. Bj0rklund said the majority of fish involved in the bigger runs were hatchery fish, which often do not survive in the ocean. He said that one good year was not a good barometer of the salmon's health over the long-term because of natural fluctuations in climate, ocean conditions, and temperature, among other factors. Ms. Bettman asked about the status of the wild salmon in general. Mr. Bj0rklund said that compared to historic numbers of returning wild salmon, the numbers of wild salmon returning to the upper Willamette basin were still very Iow. Ms. Bettman asked if the proposed outreach effort would include the solicitation of citizen input that could result in changes to the recommendations. Mr. Bj0rklund anticipated that for the most part, the outreach would be more educational in nature. Ms. Bettman asked how many of the strategies the City was already implementing on its property. Mr. Bj0rklund said he had not done that analysis and did not know the answer. Ms. Bettman suggested that the City could apply Strategy A at an accelerated pace on City property. Mr. Bj0rklund reiterated that to adopt and apply an overlay district, the staff must get on the Planning Commission agenda and was unable to do so until fiscal year 2004. However, he believed that the City could voluntarily abide by the strategy on its own property. Ms. Bettman wanted to hear more from the City Manager about how that could be accomplished. Ms. Bettman asked if there were harmful activities that the City was currently failing to regulate. She noted that the Agenda Item Summary indicated that the City would be liable for harmful activities it failed to regulate. Mr. Bj0rklund identified significant impacts to riparian vegetation as one area the City was not regulating. The City was managing its lands along the river to maintain riparian areas, so he concluded there was a Iow likelihood the City would be faulted for failing to self-regulate impact. The City did not currently have code authority to mandate setbacks on private land along the river as was proposed through Strategy A. Mr. Bj0rklund said that if a development occurred along the river that resulted in the removal of substantial riparian habitat, that could be interpreted as a violation of the Endangered Species Act, and the City could be liable for not regulating that activity. Mr. Carlson said that on projects where the City was developing near a waterway, such as the East Bank Bicycle Path, it was having the National Marine Fisheries Service review the projects for potential impact. Ms. Nathanson generally endorsed the strategies being proposed and appreciated the careful wording of Strategy A. She determined from Mr. Bj0rklund that staff was proposing to limit rather than prohibit underground utilities, in the overlay zone. Ms. Nathanson observed that an overlay zone to protect the habitat along Amazon Creek was something she had desired for a long time. She said the objectives of such a zone would be habitat, aesthetic qualities, achievement of a continuous park through Eugene, and improved urban design in general. Ms. Nathanson did not think that the council needed to codify a staff check-in. Ms. Nathanson noted that the council recently added examination of the telecommunications ordinance to the Planning Commission's work load and questioned whether it could add yet another item. MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 16, 2002 Page 4 Work Session Mr. Rayor recalled that, through adoption of a resolution related to the local protection of salmon, the council adopted the highest level of protection, and that was what he expected. He perceived Strategy A as incremental or "feathered." He had not anticipated staff would recommend physical setbacks but rather conditions on structures, such as minimized removal of vegetation and Iow- level lighting. He called for another approach that addressed those elements. Ms. Childs clarified that anything the City did from a regulatory standpoint, such as an overlay zone, must go through the usual adoption process, and that took time. Other related work would occupy staff through the current fiscal year, and attempting to take on a major overlay zone development project would be very difficult for the commission and staff. She said that the proposed outreach program would set the stage for the code development work that needed to take place in the future. Mr. Kelly, seconded by Mr. Farr, moved to direct staff to schedule a 45-minute work session on the agenda item before the end of 2002. The motion passed unanimously, 8:0. Mayor Torrey asked Mr. Bj0rklund to be prepared to comment at the next work session on the impact of the runoff from illegal campsites on the salmon. B.EXECUTIVE SESSION Mayor Torrey stated that the Eugene City Council would meet in executive session to consult with the City Attorney regarding current litigation or litigation that is more likely than not to be filed. The executive session was held pursuant to ORS 192.660(1)(h). Representatives of the news media and designated staff were allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience were asked to leave the room. Representatives of the news media were specifically directed not to report on any of the deliberations during the executive session, except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made in executive session. Mayor Torrey noted that, at the end of the executive session, the council may return to open session and welcome the audience back into the room. C.EXECUTIVE SESSION Mayor Torrey stated that the Eugene City Council would meet in executive session to conduct deliberations with persons designated to negotiate real property transactions and to consider records that are exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Law, including written advice from the City Attorney. The executive session was held pursuant to ORS 192.660(1)(e). Representatives of the news media and designated staff were allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience were asked to leave the room. Representatives of the news media were specifically directed not to report on any of the deliberations during the executive session, except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made in executive session. Mayor Torrey said that, at the end of the executive session, the council may return to open session and welcome the audience back into the room. The meeting adjourned at 1:30 p.m. Respectfully submitted, MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 16, 2002 Page 5 Work Session James R. Carlson City Manager pro tem (Recorded by Kimberly Young) MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 16, 2002 Page 6 Work Session