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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC Minutes - 09/21/09 Public Hearing M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Public Hearing Council Chamber 777 Pearl Street—Eugene, Oregon September 21, 2009 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Alan Zelenka, Mike Clark, George Brown, Andrea Ortiz, George Poling, Chris Pryor, Jennifer Solomon, Betty Taylor. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. 1. PUBLIC HEARING An Ordinance Concerning Boards, Commissions and Committee; Amending Section 2.013 of the Eu- gene Code, 1971; and Providing for an Effective Date Mayor Piercy opened the public hearing and reviewed the procedures for providing testimony. Zachary Vishanoff , Eugene, stated that the Planning Commission should meet in the Downtown Library and televise its meetings in order to make then accessible to the public. He read the descriptions of public hearings items from the agenda and said the information was inadequate; providing more thorough explanations in plain English would encourage more people to get involved in issues at an earlier point if they understood what was being discussed. Mayor Piercy closed the hearing and called for comments from councilors. Councilor Zelenka agreed with Mr. Vishanoff about the need for better explanations of public hearing agenda items. While he agreed with the majority of councilors who supported the current interview process for boards and commissions applicants, he liked the model used by Eugene School District 4J and hoped aspects of it could be incorporated into the council’s process. Councilor Taylor also agreed that agendas could more clearly state the purpose of public hearings. She said it was a good idea to televise Planning Commission meetings. Mayor Piercy noted that 23 people had signed up to testify on the next agenda items, related to land use issues, so word was getting out to the community. She agreed the agenda language could be more explicit. Councilor Clark arrived at 7:35 p.m. MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 21, 2009 Page 1 Public Hearing . PUBLIC HEARING 2 Minor Code Amendment Project (MiCAP) (Remand) Alissa Hansen, Planning and Development Department, explained that the purpose of the hearing was to receive testimony on reinstating land use regulations related to building height transition in the South University area and to parking requirements for apartments in the South and West University neighborhoods. Those regulations had been remanded by the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). She encouraged the council to raise questions following public testimony and said that staff would respond to those in writing prior to council action on the item on October 12. Mayor Piercy opened the public hearing and reviewed the procedures for providing testimony. th Lauren Hulse , East 20 Avenue, Ward 3, Eugene, thanked the council for enacting Ordinance 20418 establishing building height transition as an interim measure until permanent Infill Compatibility Standards (ICS) were in place. She said appeal of the ordinance and remand back to the City left the neighborhood without any protection against unreasonable building heights and ICS adoption with a new set of protections was likely a year in the future. She asked that the City Council readopt Ordinance 20418 to reinstate the temporary protections related to maximum building heights and minimum parking requirements in the South University neighborhood until the council acted on ICS task team recommendations for permanent changes to building height and parking requirements. st Janet Heinonen , East 21 Avenue, Ward 3, Eugene, spoke on behalf of the South University Neighborhood Association (SUNA) board. She said by unanimous vote the SUNA board respectfully requested the Eugene City Council readopt the MiCAP building height and parking standards for specific portions of the South and West University neighborhoods as previously adopted in Ordinance 20418 on an interim basis until June 30, 2010. She said adopting the standards on an interim basis allowed time for the ICS teams to recommend standards and the council to take those recommendations under advisement. She also asked that the council provide for an immediate effective date for the ordinance. Jon Mattheisen , Chambers Street, Eugene, spoke in opposition to the MiCAP regulations because property in the South Eugene neighborhood had been under the same zoning for many years. He felt that allowing a neighborhood association to amend that zoning would set a NIMBY (not in my backyard) precedence for the City. He said the area was adjacent to the University of Oregon and high density housing. Student enrollments were increasing and if the City did not build up it would need to build out. He said student housing needs had to be met and urged the council not to regulate zoning and development by neighborhood preference. Laura Potter , Laura Street, Eugene, speaking for the Homebuilders Association of Lane County, said association members had been working with the ICS task team to develop solutions and compromises to the issues of building height and parking near the University of Oregon. She said ICS was scheduled to go to the Planning Commission on October 20 with the first three proposals, including recommendations on building height and parking. She said the parking proposal was supported by the building community and represented a perfect compromise between current code and MiCAP standards. She hoped for a similar compromise on building height. She urged the council not to reinstate MiCAP as it would undermine the work that had been done and have negative consequences for the local economy. She said the land required to meet MiCAP standards would make many lots unfeasible for development. Luke Martindale , Stonegate Street, Eugene, a senior at the University of Oregon, stated that students did not need more parking; they needed more housing. The MiCAP parking requirements would encourage more automobile use and students did not require that much parking. He urged the council to uphold its sustainability goals and let the free market decide how much parking students wanted and needed. The MiCAP parking standards would only make it harder and more expensive for students to live where they wanted to and force them to live further from campus. MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 21, 2009 Page 2 Public Hearing Richard Keeney , Westleigh Street, Eugene, Essex General Construction project manager, stated without the building projects in the University area he would probably be without a job and strongly recommended leaving the standards as they were. Marvin Mang , Calumet Way, Eugene, spoke on behalf of the many construction workers in attendance at the hearing. They were there because they needed jobs to feed their families and were employed now because projects were being built in the campus area. Increased parking requirements had already killed a number of projects and were certain to kill more and with so many unemployed construction workers in the area those jobs were badly needed. He said some families had lost their homes and would starve if not for FOOD for Lane County; many ate at public diners alongside people who were homeless. He asked the council to consider those issues when it made its decision about the proposal to dramatically increase parking required for campus area housing, something that would only benefit a small number of wealthy people in the immediate area. He hoped the council would care more for people than for parking. Jeremy Reynolds , Terra Linda Avenue, Eugene, questioned whether people who purchased homes in the South University neighborhood failed to recognize that the University of Oregon was their neighbor, over 20,000 students got their education there and parking was likely to be an occasional inconvenience. He said that unemployment created worse problems for people than parking concerns. He asked the council to have consideration for those who worked for a living. th Deborah Healy , East 15 Avenue, Ward 3, Eugene, said West University Neighbors supported MiCAP and was supporting the ICS task team parking recommendations. She said that immediate action was important because density was increasing rapidly in the neighborhoods. Despite MiCAP requirements there was no lack of building projects in the West University area that started prior to the remand. She said the neighborhood had a high concentration of bicyclists and pedestrians and parking had always been scarce, but instead of having one parking space for two or three occupants of a unit there were now six-bedroom units being built; one parking space per unit was not adequate. She did not think that more reasonable parking requirements would impact whether people had jobs and it was not sustainable to have people driving around the neighborhood looking for parking. Jackson Hite , Patterson Street, Ward 3, Eugene, a University of Oregon student, asked the council to consider students’ concern. He lived three blocks from campus, shared an apartment with four other people and did not own a car. He did not feel it was sustainable to provide multiple parking spaces and encourage the use of cars but also recognized that business owners and home builders had other perspectives on the matter. He urged the council to take more time to examine the issue from multiple viewpoints. th Stephen Baker , East 15 Avenue, Ward 3, Eugene, encouraged the council to consider the MiCAP code changes in the context of the citizen-driven process that developed them. He had lived in the neighborhood since 1973 and when the residential parking program was originally adopted people often spent 15 to 20 minutes driving around looking for parking. He said there was again insufficient parking in the neighborhood and people were parking illegally, which is why the new parking requirements had been proposed. He was concerned that in the future people would again be driving around looking for parking and wasting fuel. Gordon Anslow , Paddock Drive, Eugene, urged the council not to readopt the MiCAP measures because it undermined the good faith efforts of those working on ICS. He said an eight-unit, 24-bedroom apartment building currently in design would require six spaces under the current code, nine spaces under the ICS proposal and 12 spaces under MiCAP. He said the ICS standards being proposed represented a compromise and the development community supported. MiCAP parking requirements made development on many lots in the University area out of MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 21, 2009 Page 3 Public Hearing the question. He asked the council not to put cars ahead of people and adopt standards that would reduce reliance on cars. Michael Soraci , Kincaid Street, Eugene, said he was affected by both sides of the issue. He was laid off because a project was determined to be too costly under MiCAP requirements and at the same time he had friends and relatives living in the University neighborhoods. He agreed that both sides of the issue had legitimate concerns and the question was how to move forward. A common denominator was expansion of the University of Oregon and its lack of accountability in providing relief for people living near the University. He proposed that the University build a parking structure on campus funded by a percentage of rents in a district around the campus. That would eliminate all of the arguments from neighborhoods and the building community. He encouraged a collaborative effort to approach the University. Jim Peterson , Eugene, described a housing project with ground floor units accessible and adaptable for those with disabilities that he had planned to construct, but was forced to terminate because the extreme MiCAP parking requirements made it too expensive. He said the project would have encouraged the use of alternative transportation and MiCAP requirements encouraged car use. He asked the council not to readopt MiCAP parking requirements. Timothy Shinabarger , Agate Street, Eugene, supported readoption of building height limitations. He cited a recent situation where a seven-story apartment building was being proposed, but negotiations between the neighborhood and the developer resulted in a reduction to four stories. He said the need for less permissive building height standards was recognized during the ICS process and asked that MiCAP standards be readopted until the ICS process was completed. He submitted written testimony. Dan Neal , Pearl Street, Ward 2, Eugene, stated he was involved in the green building initiative and spoke in opposition to readopting MiCAP standards because they conflicted with sustainability. He said that green building required community sacrifices; it was more expensive and involved greater density of housing. He asked the council to be guided by its growth management policies and neighborhood refinement plans related to compact urban growth and reduction of parking. st Malcolm Wilson , East 21 Avenue, Eugene, a SUNA member, agreed that the ICS task team should be allowed to complete its work, but the neighborhood needed interim protection against incompatible development until ICS standards were in place. He asked to have the remanded MiCAP amendments reinstated. He cited examples of neighborhood problems created by greater density of student housing and the neighborhood was working with University administration to deal with student conduct in the near off-campus area. He said zoning that did not take into account the actual social facts destroyed neighborhoods and cities and MiCAP amendments were reasonable and should remain in place until ICS standards could provide a more permanent solution. th Gena Hutton , Hendricks Hill Drive, Eugene, one of the owners of the Hutton Apartment Building at 19 Avenue and Harris Street, spoke to the benefits of the project, including jobs and convenient housing that allowed students to walk or bike to campus. The project would not have been possible under MiCAP requirements. She understood the concerns of SUNA, but the University was growing along with the demand for student housing. The most prudent and sustainable response to that demand was to provide quality housing as close to campus as possible so students did not need to use cars to get to class. She said there were also initiatives under way to provide shared vehicles for students. She asked the council to vote no on the MiCAP amendments. Mike Russo , Potter Street, Ward 3, Eugene, asked that the MiCAP ordinances on building height limits and parking be reinstated. He said LUBA felt the impact of the amendments had been overstated and there was still a building boom in the neighborhood. He asserted that the neighborhood was not against development around the University. MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 21, 2009 Page 4 Public Hearing He said planning staff had provided responses to LUBA’s concerns and noted that the neighborhood had contributed hundreds of volunteer hours to achieving a favorable outcome for everyone. th Paul Conte , West 10 Avenue, Ward 1, Eugene, remarked that the ordinance was not the problem; there were minor technical deficiencies that resulted in the remand and those could be easily addressed. The remand did not require rethinking the entire issue. He said LUBA determined that building heights would not limit density under MiCAP standards and parking requirements did not increase car usage. He said students used their cars for purposes other than getting to and from campus. He said MiCAP represented the council’s best efforts; taking it away would allow more damage to be done and remove incentives for the building community to meet the neighborhoods halfway and get ICS standards adopted. Carolyn Jacobs , Agate Street, Ward 3, Eugene, stated she was involved in both the MiCAP and ICS processes. Progress was slow and interim measures were necessary to protect the neighborhood from incompatible infill and redevelopment. She urged the council to readopt the MiCAP amendments because the conclusion and results of the ICS process was uncertain and the neighborhood should not be offered up to a handful of developers who were only interested in dollar signs. Will Shaver , Peppertree Drive, Eugene, said the City and the council had frequently reaffirmed that sustainability was important and growth should be up and not out. An expensive and complicated analysis of buildable land was being done and part of that analysis was density. He said that zoning was factored into the land use equation and transportation plans and the MiCAP proposal was a subtle way to change zoning in certain areas instead of doing it properly by deciding as a community that those areas should be rezoned for lower density. He said the area now had bus rapid transit and a shift to more bike and pedestrian uses, along with a much higher student population. He opposed the readoption of the MiCAP amendments. Kevin Matthews , Eugene, president of Southeast Neighbors and Friends of Eugene, was tired of the Sustainability Commission chair making anti-neighborhood statements to the council; there was no dichotomy between the quality of traditional neighborhood livability and sustainability. He said there was a way to address density of the community without a debate about how much damage to inflict on neighborhoods. A small amount of growth could be accommodated through residential infill; a large amount of growth could be accommodated through aggressive mixed-use development of core commercial areas. He said the remand from LUBA was on the basis of weak findings from the Planning Department, which continued to encourage appeals. He encouraged the council to adopt the MiCAP amendments on the basis of the improved findings. Mayor Piercy closed the hearing and called for comments from councilors. Mayor Piercy commented that there were admirable goals that moved in conflicting directions: jobs, sustainability and neighborhood protection. She said all sides of the issue had valid points to consider and urged those who spoke to have a respectful conversation and not to vilify others when defending their positions. She agreed that the University could have a more active role in meeting the housing needs of students and more work was needed on the parking issue. Councilor Clark agreed that people should not demonize others in order to make a point as it diminished their credibility. He said many of the concerns revolved around parking and the increasing student population would thth exacerbate problems. He suggested making 18 and 19 avenues between Alder and Agate streets one-way and adding angled, meter parking to dramatically increase parking. MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 21, 2009 Page 5 Public Hearing Councilor Taylor stated it was important to reinstate MiCAP measures while other solutions were being developed. She did not want to lose stable neighborhoods if steps were not taken to protect them. She did not think that building height limitations would pose a large hardship and was convinced the parking requirements were reasonable. She admired neighborhood residents who worked on those issues and urged the council to quickly readopt the MiCAP amendments as an interim measure. Councilor Solomon thanked Mr. Peterson for his comments on housing for disabled students; it helped to clarify how the ordinance impacted development projects. She was opposed to readopting MiCAP and preferred to wait for the ICS task team recommendations to come forward. Councilor Brown agreed that the University was not fulfilling its duty to provide for student housing and parking and that forced pressures into the neighborhoods. He asked staff to rework the findings before the ordinance came back to the council for action. Councilor Zelenka commented that all sides of the issue made good points, but urged everyone to maintain a civil discourse that would lead to solutions. He did not think it was choice between jobs and livability; those did not need to be in opposition. He agreed that the University was not meeting its responsibilities to the increasing student population. He was interested in further discussion of Councilor Clark’s suggestion regarding a new parking design. He said the council’s job was to see that irreversible actions did not permanently, adversely impact the neighborhood and the ICS task team was working towards that goal. He urged the council to maintain interim protections until ICS recommendations were received. Councilor Clark said he took seriously testimony that the MiCAP requirements meant loss of jobs. He asked if both of the MiCAP amendments would sunset in June 2010 and when ICS recommendations were scheduled to come to the council. City Attorney Emily Jerome replied that, as drafted, the amendments would sunset in June 2010, but that was something the council could change. ICS recommendations were scheduled to be acted on by the Planning Commission by the end of October and the council’s first work session on the recommendations was November 9, followed by a public hearing on November 16 and action on December 14. Councilor Clark questioned the need to move quickly on MiCAP if the council was going to complete the ICS process in December. Mayor Piercy pointed out that the ICS timeline could change and take more time than currently intended. She stated that the hearing and the record were closed. The meeting adjourned at 7:33 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Jon Ruiz City Manager (Recorded by Lynn Taylor) MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 21, 2009 Page 6 Public Hearing