Springfield City Council — June 7, 2021

0:05 all right i'm going to call the work session of the springfield city council to order with roll call mayor van gorden here counselors pits here no here rodley here here wood bro here pationary present all right we have one item tonight and it's the development code update project check in with mark rush so take it away mark well thank you mayor and good evening councillors thank you for having me tonight i appreciate the opportunity to present to you tonight um i see this is a pretty big moment in the life of this project and so i'm excited to share with you the update and we'll be asking for your direction

0:50 tonight to move into the broader community engagement steps of for phase one and phase two of the code update project and i'll remind you a little bit about what that is and what that means but i just wanted to reflect for a second on where we started with this project and for me i started working on this project the last half of 2018 the council has been talking about this project long before that i think dating back to 2017 possibly before one of my mottos coming into this project as the project manager back in 2018 was figuring out a way to do this differently

1:35 and unbeknownst to me or you all at that time that took on a whole new meaning as we've moved into the era of covid and a global pandemic so doing it differently has really become even more so of a motto for me and the project team but um what i meant by that at the time is that you know springfield staff or as you all know and us here in planning in particular our lean and mean team is kind of what we talk about there's um a group of us that do a lot of work but this project is a huge undertaking the original direction from council at the time of initiation of the project was envisioned to be a three-year project as

2:20 a project manager on similar projects in the past over my career i um highlighted in my opinion at the time that that was very optimistic even if everything went smoothly i think with the pandemic thing that's thrown us a few kinks into the project and hence we've extended the project timeline a few times to react to that to the covid and also to some new statewide legislation that has mandated we do some things differently than we originally anticipated one of those big things is the intent of the development code update project at its origin was to remain comprehensive plan policy neutral so to be consistent with

3:06 our existing comprehensive plan policies it guides how we grow in the city the new legislation passed by the state has moved us away from that it's requiring us to not be consistent with our existing existing comprehensive plan policies and so we're figuring out how to implement that and integrate it into the project we had already begun so with that i'll jump into kind of the discussion i want to have tonight and that is again presenting to you some of the draft community engagement materials which some of those are in your packet tonight one of the pieces that you haven't been able to view as part of your packet is a virtual

3:52 open house that we've prepared that i want to go through with you tonight seeing how we can't really meet in large groups in person still quite yet we're looking at conducting a virtual open house to reach out to the community and engage them and get feedback from them so i want to go through that virtual open house with you today tonight it is still a draft we are still working on polishing this virtual open house up but then just to briefly go through kind of the attachments that are in your packet tonight i have a memorandum in there that outlines some options for implementation of the new middle housing legislation that the state passed that i referred to

4:37 it's referred to as house bill 2001 i'll go into a little bit of that there's a community engagement summary that i provided as an attachment that highlights the community engagement we have done over the last few years so far also a list of significant code changes that's a fairly short list in my mind at this point we plan on building on that as additional sections of the code are highlighted that need to be included in that list you may have some ideas tonight to provide feedback to me on and then as the vast majority in terms of page numbers included in your packet tonight are hundreds of pages of code

5:22 which i don't expect that you will have all read although i might quiz you toward the end i'm just kidding but um you can quiz me how about that and uh see if i can even remember it all having been steeped in it for years but that's a pretty big undertaking that represents years worth of work working with technical advisor committees city staff it's 12 different sections of our development code it's this project is in phases there's three phases overall in vision to be part of the project this we're basically because of the adjustments to the timeline doing phase one and phase two concurrently i do include at the end of the packet also the project schedule that kind of shows that

6:08 phasing so with that unless there's any preliminary questions right now what i want to do is share my screen and jump into giving you a preview of the virtual open house if that's all right mark yeah sure counselors need to declare potential conflicts of interest if they have any this project will affect all residential property within the city of springfield so if any city councilors own residential property they would have a potential conflict of interest to declare at this meeting you may also have potential conflicts for other reasons i mean you would need to declare those as well at this time the city council is not making a final decision um and so we are dealing with potential conflicts at this point in time all right so i'm

6:54 gonna start off and then we'll just go down uh down by ward number so um i declare that i've got a potential conflict of interest because i'm a property owner in the city of springfield damien no no conflict steve i do have a potential conflict of interest type of house in springfield plus some commercial property cory i declare that i have a potential conflict of interest as a property owner in springfield leonard potential conflict of interest as a property owner springfield mayor lee i have a potential

7:40 conflict of interest because i own a residence in springfield joe a potential conflict of interest on properties in springfield perfect thank you everybody all right back to you mark great yeah and thanks christina for the reminder um so were there any brief questions before i jump into the virtual open house i don't see any happy to entertain them as we go although i'm gonna try and get through a lot of material tonight and um there will i intend to leave uh time at the end for questions so here is my screen hopefully you can all see is that showing for people yep head nods good so

8:27 we've used this virtual open house platform recently with other projects in the city you may be familiar with the one we did for the wetland inventory project i'm not sure how much of that you saw monica our other staff here prepared a similar virtual open house that was quite successful our gis department has helped us put this together together with our staff from our public engagement folks so this is kind of the just the entry screen the the format of this is you scroll through and so i'll be scrolling down the page here i don't intend for you to read all the text and i'm not definitely going to read all the texts but to give you some idea of what we're looking at here and again the

9:13 idea is to be interactive in some respects with the public provide them information to then be able to provide us informed input and feedback on the project again there are we're covering two phases of the project phase one of the project is focused on housing and the residential lands phase two is the employment lands phase and then we're not covering it here but just as a reminder phase three of the project is what i kind of refer to as the everything else phase there will be a lot of sections of code that come later for updates land division section of the code the floodplain ordinance there's quite a few other sections that will come you can there are links across the top

9:59 of the page so you can click on a link and it'll jump you forward to a specific section of this page if you want to skip some sections there's also all of these links that will link directly to other information fact sheets frequently asked question sheets that we have prepared the project schedule that sort of stuff the photos we have the ability to change in and out there's a couple still we're planning on adding but we go through we talk about you know what is a development code in general what's it do specific in um to the city of springfield as well we go into why we're doing the development code update so we talk a

10:44 little bit about the history some of the direction the direction we've received from the city council on doing the update project we talked a little bit about the new state mandates that i mentioned the house bill 2001 there's some other new brand new legislation that just has passed within the last couple of days even or weeks i could touch on later but there's going to be new state legislation in addition to even the middle housing legislation that was passed in the last legislative session and that would have been 2019 that we're also going to have to incorporate the state's keeping us pretty busy and on our toes with all this

11:29 new legislation and needing to update our code this talks about the phased aspect again i mentioned this this virtual open house is still being reviewed by internal staff one form of comment was this this diagram that you've seen a lot of the timeline the project schedule is pretty busy for this purpose probably we can still provide a link to this diagram i probably will be removing this project schedule diagram and providing a more simplified project schedule diagram so hey mark i've got a quick question yeah sure so when you're kind of scrolling through the the language on the side it you know and it still reads pretty

12:14 technical to me yeah and and i don't know if this is just the iteration that you guys are on from the staff perspective but if we're trying to pull in the lay layperson you know um it would read pretty technical technical to them yeah i i agree for sure with that and it's a great comment thank you mayor and i'm really good at the technical stuff i am not as good with the kind of i mean i i feel like i can articulate it um but putting a lot and i think it was counselor mo even that commented previously in one of these work sessions that it's going to be hard to convey all of this material that is very technical to the general

12:59 public in a way that is understandable and and that is um something we've recognized and will probably continue to struggle with and i i would just point back to some of these other links of frequently asked questions fact sheets um other the community engagement plan and some of these other the material you have in your packet tonight that is the list of significant changes and things like that will rely on yeah so before i uh pitch it to corey the one place that i would tell you to spend a little bit more time on that welcome section because if you get that right you'll pull them into it right probably the most critical piece

13:46 of course and i think also not to tell you all how to do your job but um i think that there's a way to incorporate video into this i think it's a really accessible way so that if we even if you did the welcome and you had some of the key things of just you know somebody walking down the street explaining how these affect ordinary folks i think that that's and some of those you know facts to incorporate some video i know we have the capacity to do that internally and then maybe in addition to this there's a way to also sort of overlay some social media with you know just some just some like key facts and things to just sort of get people interested so that they can go and access it but video is just such a

14:32 much more accessible way to tell the story in addition to the technical piece for those who care did i see you with your arm joe no it was merely merrily um just going back to that to the section we were just at about the that the development code will will ultimately be replacing i think that was the first sentence in that paragraph um if we could scroll down to that yeah this project will ultimately be replacing all existing development code within the project scope i mean that could be narrowed down to about seven words it it i i i guess what i'm saying is

15:17 we already gave the reason why we're doing this and we don't need to defend it which is almost what that sentence sounds like and we could just say the project is gonna it will replace all existing development code it doesn't have to be um it doesn't have to be as as much of a sales the sentence it just has to state facts it doesn't have to be um it's so contextual i guess is what i want to say but i think if if somebody could come in and look at it from that angle it might help uh trim down some of the wording great that's all great feedback i appreciate it

16:06 fish and of course can i see exactly what mary is looking at too but the other side of the coin is it's also saying that it's not going to be done till around 2023 and so maybe you know they're saying the project is ultimately replacing it's not like i want people to think like it's going to happen next week it's like you know maybe at some point this will replacing the existing code but but it's it's uh it still needs to people need to know that it's still several years out i was just gonna say it's definitely is a balancing act in terms of how much we say or how little we say i will mention and i do mention it in the packet in your memo tonight but we received a grant through the oregon

16:52 chapter of the aarp and they have paid for a consultant smart growth america to help us with our messaging around this project specifically mostly to housing that's their biggest kind of concern but it'll help with the overall project messaging we are expecting a feedback memorandum from them soon hopefully maybe even this week or next but that we will then incorporate that feedback into this so we haven't received that feedback yet but trying to and they understand they work all over america and um they have a whole marketing arm to smart growth america in terms of

17:38 messaging and getting that right and so trying to get the technical jargon part of it out and really conveying in more of a layman's terms is a big focus of the help that they're going to focus on for this project as well so again this is a work in progress we are still polishing it up our own public involvement folks within the city are helping us refine this as well and there's review happening of this language and these slides by other folks that aren't technical so they can give us feedback before we release it to the public but we i definitely appreciate all your feedback and i'm making notes and we can incorporate some of these thoughts and ideas

18:25 a lot of this language comes directly out of the community engagement plan that the council approved at the outset of the project really trying to lay down what are the objectives and the purpose so this language basically is directly out of that pre-approved community engagement plan that we had at the outset just really identifying what is the end goal what's the purpose and the objectives for the project these kind of build on that and identify again we worked on these statements with the council and the planning commission early on but identifying um what what's the vision what are we going to end up with hopefully at the end of this we also felt it was important to identify what this project is not going to do

19:10 plenty of people in talking with people we have talked as you'll see from our summary of community engagement so far we've talked with a lot of people a lot of the people that we have talked with are folks that maybe are a little more in the know generally or work with this stuff on more of a day-to-day basis but even for our technical advisory committee members and other people we've done outreach with they felt it important to make sure and be clear about what also is not being updated so it can even be confusing in terms of well as building code part of the development code or sign code regulations so there's a lot of different pieces that the city has to administer that aren't that are not actually in the development code um and so this is a list of of some of

19:57 what that involves that we won't be updating these things it's not to say that some of these maybe do need work and do need to be updated and as a follow-on to some of the development code stuff um it may be worth changing some of this and i'll just point to number four on this list i think you'll be hearing soon maybe i can't remember if it's tonight or your next meeting in june but we're i know our engineering division is doing some updates to the engineering standards language now so there's ongoing processes to clean up other sections of our regulations in addition to the development code mark there's always a lot of work in this world going on how do you how do you guys as a staff keep uh

20:42 connected left to right to make sure that that there's sort of a consistent story and all the documentation that we're producing yeah you know we rely so laura lynn is my main contact and her department and her staff with the public kind of i can't even remember off the top my head what she refers to her kind of work group as but i refer to it kind of just generally as the public involvement folks within the city but so i rely on her a lot to do some of that coordination but i'm also internally coordinating with all the other departments within the city that have an interest in the work we're doing so jeff in engineering you know i'm coordinating with him and his group a lot so i have kind of i have my technical

21:28 advisory committees that are made up of the public the outside folks but i also have technical advisory committees that are made up of internal city staff that i coordinate with so that a lot of that is going on i would say another check and balance on being consistent is a huge help from the city attorney's office christina krabs is a huge help and she sees you know all these regulations and that might not be so much related to the messaging but just making sure that we're consistent in the implementation and the wording and language from a legalistic standpoint as well this then we're going to give a little bit of background um

22:13 how we've gotten here recognizing that we've been going on for a number of years some future steps i mentioned the three phases um talking about again what we're doing now with this outreach versus the continued outreach we'll be doing then i get into a little more specifics about the different phases so i touch on the housing piece itself again state law is playing a large role in terms of housing specifically into what we have to do or what we can and cannot do i mentioned this clear and objective standards it's an existing state law that we need to make sure and be in compliance with

22:58 there's a lot of opportunity within our existing code to provide more clear and objective language where it may not be meeting that threshold now there's a lot of case law that evolves through lawsuits and appeals and things over time that help develop that or refine the meaning of this clearing objective standards that we continually look at to build into our code to make sure we're in compliance with kind of the most up-to-date um interpretations of law just a curious question sure i just how how do you how do you keep up with that how is that from how does that information come to to you or how do you know it's out there

23:44 i just a curious question well i would say i rely heavily again on christina kraz i can't give her enough praises she's excellent and provides us a lot of information i'm involved with a number of statewide committees and and things specifically to middle housing and some of the new rules that are coming out our our lobbyists help us keep track of a lot of that league of oregon cities helps um so it comes from a lot of different directions but it's it's a lot i mean i was just on a conference call meeting today with a big statewide group that is convening with the state department of land conservation development themselves

24:29 and and literally as we're in this hour and a half long meeting the governor signed and another piece of legislation a brand new bill that has to be in place you know within less than a year that we'll have to incorporate now into this project that we didn't even know existed or anticipate would exist when we started this so it's it's a constantly moving target yes thank you thank you so mark you can go on so fast um back before where it said you had things it's like three or four slides ago um a list of items that will need to be done or is that right there stop okay so what it will not do but it also

25:15 says that um while important from a customer service perspective there are many aspects of the development process that are outside the scope of the development code update project below is a list of what topic areas that are not anticipated to be addressed to subject so those are areas that are not anticipated so is that the am i supposed to assume that those are areas that should be addressed at some point at with on some other project or some other course yeah i mean they all have different aspects involved with them again i mentioned number four you are currently considering and the engineering department is currently working on updates to the eds pm the engineering standards so that i would say is ongoing work it just doesn't happen to be part of this project um the building code i see what i'm just saying is i i think

26:02 that's a good list yeah i think there's some things on there that definitely need to be addressed and i just don't want them to this list i hope is memorialized somewhere so as far as i'm concerned that should be a list of what we will be looking at in the future at least how that's addressed or why a list or something's been scratched off and who scratched it and why yeah i mean that looks like a great uh shopping list or marching order for in the future i agree with that and i think you know some of them i'll just number pick on number six also number six is is something that's mandated by state law house bill 2003 we have to have that item crossed off our list by the end of 2025 as mandate by state law

26:48 so that's on our work program list and i know sandy belson is is you know already contemplating how we're going to do that work we've we're already applying for a grant to help us start that work um so you're right i mean there are a lot of things and early on in this process too we talked about what is technically part of this process but what will also be a natural outflow from the completion of this project and through the implementation phase of this project i'll highlight say number 10 is it's going to necessitate us updating our forms but also that there's opportunity for process improvements internal processing improvements

27:33 as a result of updating the code and streamlining things and creating more efficiency so i see it that's what i'm just saying is i just don't want to see that list disappear i want to be able to see that come back i can i can capture it in a way that we could um i think there's many many people sitting here that would concur with what i'm saying yes i agree and mark the other piece of it is a lot of these are getting uh worked under on other projects so we're talking about the um sort of virtual town hall uh open house if you can somehow indicate that some of those are being worked under other projects um i kind of keep thinking about uh you know the street bond we just passed the number one question we get asked about it is where's mill street and we keep saying it's worked under a different project right

28:18 so just share that share the information because i would bet half of these have a different project in flight yeah that's a great point is indicating that a lot of this is happening or you know may happen in the future so the good point oh i'm making a note of that now and you know interesting to me mark is that it keeps coming back to what the council brought up and sean or marilee you'll have to help me historically we asked for some sort of document in the form of a like a spreadsheet etc of what things are out there pending what the status is who's who's supposed to take care of it and let us know when they get checked

29:03 off the list otherwise you know there's things here that that we talked about five years ago that are now on this list going oh hey that's right but we don't have any any central spot to look back and i think i spoke with uh with the city manager about this a while ago and even uh neil i think ledotti about having some sort of place where the counselors can go to that tells us where our things are going or where the city's projects are sitting at and um you know there's a couple different projects that i asked about that have been dropped off the face of the planet and we don't know where they're at so this is a good reminder of having some sort of process in place or systems in place where we can go back and see where those things are sitting yeah and i think there's a broad and

29:48 there's a broad conversation on a legislative error is to make sure we're telling that our state delegation that just take a deep breath for a moment right you don't need to help more here right we got to get caught up with everything else right well i mean if someone says what's going on in the city it'd be nice to be able to go okay what part do you want to look at yeah as opposed to i'm not completely sure we hear about these things periodically but i don't know exactly where everything's at anyway sorry mark that was my two cents sure thank you um this is an interesting slide so this is in regard to middle housing

30:33 specifically and how it's allowed in the city and where it will be allowed this is an interactive map so you can zoom in and scroll around on this map you can really get in tight there is a legend a pop-up legend that indicates you've seen a similar map to this i've shared with you in the past we're trying to analyze you know what kind of impact middle housing will have on springfield so these are lot size differentiations in terms of where triplexes and duplexes will be allowed so this map is still being refined but this gives you an idea this provides a little bit of a tool for folks to look at their own neighborhood and see what kind of impact middle housing might

31:18 have on their neighborhood then the phase two part of the project is the employment lands phase this definitely isn't as large of a piece of the overall project right now because there's such a focus on housing something i mentioned earlier tonight was that our original intent was to stay policy neutral with our existing comprehensive plan policies and because of the new middle housing legislation that's not really the case with housing any longer so that's going to be generating a lot more input we've already experienced that just at the the developmental stage of the draft code sections there was still the opportunity for

32:04 providing comments and input it's just that i would say there's not as much structural change a lot of it's staying policy neutral so it's not as drastic for a change it's just streamlining making it easier to use and some of the original objectives of the code you know to have it be easier understand the way it's presented and formatted so a lot of the employment land sections of the code are more in line with that some of the focus areas within the employment lands phase some of this does bleed over to the housing development part of the code as well but fits better in the employment lands phase has to do with site plan review

32:50 process so these are a bit more processed pieces of the code the minimum development standards or mds section of the code is kind of a a site plan light way to get some level of development approved really streamline that to create a true clear and objective path for approval the procedures section itself which is truly how all the processes we do here at the city has been a large section that we've worked really hard on trying to one bring it in to conformance with state law requirements and things like that but also have it be as clear concise easy to use and streamline as possible sometimes in making things clear

33:36 it actually takes more explanation in terms of process how to how to do something um so sometimes there's more words on a page to explain something to make it clear but then the ambiguity is taken out to the extent that we all kind of know the the rules that are being played by so going in there's less discretion needed to interpret how something should be done the development standards themselves are was a really big opportunity to clean up and create consistency within the code the code was pretty messy in terms of different standards in different places and you refer back and forth to one another but so really trying to streamline those and create a more of a consistent

34:23 one-stop place that you can really get an idea of what the development standards are and then asking for feedback so this will link to a comment form and that's i'm going to jump into kind of some of the it's not in the exact survey form that will the public will see but the attachment in your packet tonight um attachments to it's the memo on options for implementing the middle housing is really the the survey questions that we're going to release to the public on housing so this will be a link to that survey form for the community members to provide feedback on on different pieces and then ways to

35:08 engage reach me as the project manager also go to the project webpage so that kind of covers the virtual open house and i can jump to this the um attachment to the implementation of middle housing and then try and go through that fairly quickly and leave time for more discussion and questions that sounds good to me okay let me stop sharing this for a second and then share the screen and again this is in your packet so you may have perused through this um this is focused on the middle housing and the new house bill 2001 language

35:55 so the the new legislation is i would say quite prescriptive in in requiring how the city has to allow new middle housing we've gone over before some differences between you know the state themselves developed a model code that we could use versus the minimum development standards that if we're going to do our own code the things we have to the minimum things we have to do the minimum development standards we are choosing to not just take the state model code but integrate the minimum development standards into our code i think that the feedback we've received from technical advisory committees and other members of the public we've reached out to has been that that would

36:41 be a better fit for springfield although being that it is fairly prescriptive there are a couple areas where we have flexibility in how we allow middle housing and that's what this document does is kind of highlights those areas for flexibility where there are decisions to be made so that we can get the public feedback on these questions and then bring that to you as the council for you to ultimately decide after we have a sense of what the community feels around some of these ideas just to recap middle housing as defined by state law includes these five housing types duplex triplex four plex i say four plex instead of quadplex but

37:27 townhomes and cottage cluster duplex are treated slightly differently than the other middle housing types in that duplex duplexes basically are treated the exact same as any single family detached home these other middle housing types are what are can be referred to as higher middle housing types are have a little more opportunity to control how they're developed but duplexes we really it's kind of hands off they're just allowed the same as a single family home we kind of structured this in a way that has it in a tiered format so this allow option that you'll see um versus an encourage option or a maximize option is is three different ways of thinking

38:13 about it i'm going to scroll to the end of this document it's another visual of kind of how we could talk about um the allow column here is really the minimum we have to do we we have to at least allow this we could encourage it by allowing a little bit less or we could really try and provide as much middle housing as possible by maximizing the opportunity to do it in some cases the allow and maximize there's really only two options there's not necessarily a good middle option this is just a different way of looking at a summary of some of what's asked above so just trying to present it in different formats visually for people to consider

38:58 i don't know that i need to go through all of these if there's specific questions on some of this i'm happy to highlight but just to get into a few of the questions is justin oh yeah thank you sean so just out of curiosity mark i guess it's from a matter of perspective where you're talking about allow and minimize and using words like those and encourage so i guess i'm okay with allowing whatever the law allows or whatever you know it is expanded to but are we taking a position of requiring whatever the law will allow and saying okay well i want to build a triplex here but but the city of springfield is requiring me to build a fourplex

39:46 so i mean are we getting into that part of it because that's certainly something i absolutely am against i would say the short answer to that is no we're not requiring more than we're being mandated to require by the state so that so the perspective you're from and from the technical advisory committee et cetera are looking at okay what is the state making us do as a minimum and then allowing development occur naturally beyond that point yeah and so staff is formulating our ultimate recommendation based on all the public feedback we're getting to this point to develop the draft codes that we're proposing to release to the public has been informed by that summary of

40:31 community engagement we've done so far and that's mostly the technical advisory committees over the last couple of years as well as some develop developer interviews and some certain focus groups and things um i would say there's there's groups out there that are going to want to re you know i want everything infield everything we can possibly see every stitch of grass we see i want someone to be able to build a house on it as opposed to their stump there's there's groups out there that and people out there that that don't want those requirements on them right but so there's special interest groups out groups out there that i'm hoping that that the tac is not loaded to go that direction yeah and i

41:16 could share with you a list in fact i have the house tax this is the who was on the tack for the housing phase i don't did that switch screens for you there yeah absolutely that's the list of names that was on the tac but i just had that up in case that question came up but let me just give an example so we can talk um specifically so the state is requiring us to allow duplexes on every lot that a single family home is allowed on period we have to do that so the first question is how do we define a duplex and so if we want to provide a little bit more flexibility in in those duplexes coming in to the neighborhoods is we could define a duplex instead of

42:02 the more traditional sense and the the way it's defined that it has to be at least defined in state law is that it's two attached units that's a pretty traditional duplex a lot of the feedback we heard at the technical advisory committee is a concern with losing our existing housing stock because it's really hard to build new affordable housing and when i say affordable in the sense i don't mean subsidized all i mean market rate housing that is generally affordable to the vast majority of population as we all know lumber prices have been high land prices are high real estate's high so preserving existing housing stock was

42:47 seen as a piece that was important so if we define we have an option or a choice to define a duplex as being two detached units and that was seen as providing flexibility to say similar to how we're allowing adus now and that is you can preserve the existing house if there's not a good wall to attach a new second unit to or something like that maybe you have a large enough backyard or side yard to add the second unit but don't want it to be limited to the 800 square feet of adu so a true duplex would be a similar size unit or even a potentially larger unit but in providing the flexibility of allowing a detached unit as a duplex

43:34 that could provide more middle housing potential and potentially help ultimately with more affordable housing would it be fair to say that when you if your option one is to allow and your option three is to maximize option one is the one that has the most regulations to it meaning that it's got the most restrictions on what you can build and options three would be the least restrictions about what you could build yes is that an accurate reading yes in general yes and there's no there's nothing in the packet or that we've heard that would keep people from if so if somebody went to a traditional single-family home area and you know had bought a piece of land in in there that and they wanted to put a

44:19 single family home on there they could still do that or they could turn it into duplexes or any number of these middle housings that there's just flat out more more allowed uses is that accurate yes okay that's that's very well put i appreciate that i'm ready to move forward let's do it all right so anyway whether or not we define these different housing types triplexes and fourplexes even as attached versus detached that's one of the flexibility areas so we're asking the public's input on that should should we allow duplexes triplex's four plexes to be detached or should we only allow them to be attached

45:04 and so we talk about you know allowing or encouraging we don't really provide the maximize option here again there's not always a great middle option in this case there's really only two we could change this encourage to maximize and those are the two options but anyway i think you get the idea this second question actually goes away altogether because of some of the brand new legislation that was just passed the new senate bill 458 requires the city to allow division of new middle housing types this might also play into this idea of whether we're allowing attached versus detached units because now the city has to by state law as soon as somebody builds a second unit

45:51 a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex or townhomes or cottage clusters as soon as they build that we also have to now allow them to divide that land into each to allow each unit to be on its own lot sorry what was that i said ownership that's important yes right so fee ownership was um obviously by the state saw as a priority for you know many families i would say the majority of families build wealth the the most common way for them to build wealth is through real estate ownership so that was saw as a you know important way to allow that to happen more often rather than just creating more rental housing those are

46:37 detached then correct well so they could if if somebody builds uh like this would be a triplex all these three units attached on one lot we would have we have to allow those to be divided down the common wall for them so zero lot line as long as they meet building code and right infrastructure requirements and things like that so on that lot in that example of the triplex you could have three tax slots yes correct okay thank you so this question about whether we want because it was some originally with house bill 2001 by itself there was some flexibility in the on whether or not we allowed cottages to

47:22 be on their own lots or not but now with this other brand new legislation that becomes moot we have to we have to allow it um there are some questions on how much citing and design standards we require i don't necessarily want to get into all the details of this we can regulate some aesthetics in terms of how i'm going to scroll down here so parking is a big issue i'm going to jump down so entry location how much window coverage we require if we really want to get into those design elements or not i would say from the allow standpoint in terms of the most regulation is fairly minimum regulation at that

48:09 even though it's the most in terms of the options this was the one area that the technical advisory committee weighed in and said we should require everything that the state will allow us to require because it's so minimal it's not too much of an ask to ask people to do these minimal design standards but there's opportunity we don't have to require any design standards and could just let the market decide how they want their houses to look they don't have to have any windows or they could put the door on the side of their house similar to how we we don't regulate any of that now with a single family home one of the biggest controversial topics is parking

48:58 so the most amount of parking that the city can require is one space per unit we had a lot of these conversations through the tsp implementation project in terms of right sizing the parking the state has kind of made some decisions for cities and said well now this is the most parking you can require so for a triplex for instance the most on-site parking you can require is three spaces one for each unit we could choose to be more flexible to have less standard to allow less than that we could allow them to count on street parking spaces that's an existing provision that was adopted by this council in general to allow counting on street parking

49:43 but then you might have a triplex with only two on-site or one on-site parking space or to go to the maximum maximize end of the spectrum is not require any on-site parking again this is probably i would say if not the top number one controversial issue maybe the second under density but this will be something i'm sure you will hear about ultimately this winter um when this all these questions come to you in a public hearing um that parking will be on the top of the list i can imagine so that's a fair warning but if you have thoughts now i'm happy

50:28 to listen otherwise i think at this point i want to provide you plenty of time for questions or discussion and so i'm going to stop presenting unless you want to go into more detail about any of this but i'm happy to be available for questions other questions if there's not i'm happy to go into go through this in a little more detail as well i just don't want to cut any time too short i'm not yeah we can keep going for a little bit longer um people seem like uh they're okay peppering you with questions as we go okay i think you've done good mark acknowledging the parking thing is going to come up as we get into the public and we'll we'll sort it out then that that in the design standards yes

51:14 yeah so that's what you said so far so i'll differentiate quickly the state law differentiates between what are called siding standards and design standards citing standards are your more typical setbacks lot coverage height so creating kind of the building envelope so the site signing standards first have to deal with lot size so again the state law mandates that we have to allow a triplex on any lot that's 5 000 square feet or larger and a four plex on any lot that's seven thousand square feet or larger the duplexes it doesn't matter a lot size we have to allow them on

51:59 any lot regardless of size that a single family home is loud on so part of the question is should we should we keep those minimum lot sizes or should could we encourage or maximize by reducing those loss sizes even lower or even just not matter at all and not have a lot size i'll just say one of the premises at the state level um counselor prisoner mentioned kind of some special interest and things like that there's plenty of that on the at the state level with statewide committees and developing the rules how to implement this a lot of the input is that really

52:44 you could have and i've i think i've said this example before but you can have a 2400 square foot house on a lot and have it just be one house you could have that same box the same house size 2 400 square feet and have it be two units inside each unit 1200 square feet or you could even divide that same structure size into four units inside and have four 600 square foot units houses or apartments and have it be a fourplex the the statewide thinking is that the smaller unit sizes will be more affordable ultimately provide a better housing stock more housing units so that's some of the idea behind

53:31 if we don't have a lot size if we're really just regulating massing in terms of the building envelopes setbacks lot coverage height those types of things then we really leave it up to the market to decide how many units are going to be on each one of those lots the other thing i'll just mention too is that we have to also allow conversion of single-family homes into these middle housing types so somebody could take an existing single-family home say and convert the garage to an apartment and create a duplex or even divide up a house somehow with a firewall inside and create two halves or three units within um so even if somebody initially builds

54:19 a single family home it could ultimately be divided up internally to multiple units so that's something then these citing and design standards would not apply to ultimately so mark one of the as we allow more sort of variation and you know we're trying to do both things sort of simplify and allow more things in the in the code itself has there been any thought to get given to um is it reducing the total amount of workload that the staff has to has to carry do more options necessarily mean more workload or have we managed to find sort of a unicorn here that said more flexibility allows us to process uh you know process these quicker so and i'll just share a little bit of i

55:05 don't i'm sure most of you are aware that jim donovan retired from the city that he was a former current planning supervisor i've been um allowed to step into that role on an interim basis and so until they figure out until tom and others figure out how to fill that position permanently but so i'm going to be juggling both the this code of the project and some of the roles they've also divided up some of the duties that jim formerly did with code enforcement and some of the other things among other staff but all that to say is i think it's a great opportunity to look at the process piece of how this is ultimately implemented and part of the state requirements to

55:52 have clear and objective standards is and specifically for these middle housing types all have to be approved through a clear and objective process means that they can be what we call a type one process which in my mind equates to essentially an over-the-counter checklist kind of approval so in my mind even though there's all these options it's really streamlined and it's they're basically structured in yes or no question type of format and so you either say yeah i meet that or no i don't and if they're all yeses then it's yeah go build it go get your building permit you have planning approval similar to how single-family homes essentially are now

56:37 unless you're asking for a variance to a height or a setback or something but um i mean we could you could easily make this more complex in a lot of city jurisdictions around the state in my coordinating meetings and things with other jurisdictions on how they're looking at doing this you could make this really complex really quick but i think in its simplistic form and how whichever one of these options we decide to land on i think it can it can be really easy and really straightforward yeah okay yeah that that's what my sense of it is more options but keep this as easy as possible you know process the work product because it's going to make it easier on everybody right

57:25 some of the other areas lot coverage is one of those things a lot of jurisdictions are considering going to what's called a floor area ratio which we haven't proposed at this point it's a different way to calculate massing of a structure how you know how much floor area of a building in terms of comparison to the lot size itself so the bigger the lot the bigger the structure you can have kind of idea the smaller the lot the smaller the structure area you can have that would also regulate the number of stories so some jurisdictions that go towards a floor area ratio as an example they get rid of a height limit altogether they let the floor area ratio regulate the height of a structure if somebody wants to build a really

58:10 small footprint a tall skinny building that goes up high that's you know they could do that versus regulating height and lot coverage so we've proposed to keep the lot coverage that's how we've done it for a long time it's a more common way of regulating but again there's options but this is the one we're kind of proposing at this point i touched on design standards um this is asking generally from the public you know what level of design standards do you think the city city should require and so that is you know the most we can require by state law which is still pretty minimal and then versus don't require

58:55 any design standards i'll just say this kind of a quick aside is that there's a lot of cities or at least some cities around oregon right now that are proposing to require design standards now for their single family homes so that they can implement them onto new middle housing types in a way because they're kind of afraid of not having any control over these middle housing types so mark can you read the language that you that you guys have chosen there um so the questions what level of standards should we use for middle housing right and maximizes the most under law the law but we're looking for examples to sort of simplify the language right but it reads

59:41 the most under the law reads requires the fewest or no design standards right so it's upside down it's sort of upside down world if you're not up to date it's really counterintuitive there yeah the the max i agree you're right and it's tricky to find what works for all of the examples the idea i have in my head is what maximize is talking about is maximizing the amount of middle housing that's allowed or that could be developed and so you're maximizing the amount of middle housing through having fewer standards if that makes sense but i agree depending on which of these standards you're talking about some seem upside down there's a lot of

1:00:27 double negatives or you know anyway i know you guys are still working on it um and you know it's always good to sort of point out good examples of what i think we've been talking about as a as a council as you guys can keep refining how to communicate about it so that's kind of the end i touched on this table before it's just a different way to structure it to hopefully help convey the message of how we're trying to explain it because it is very complex and technical and just trying to create multiple visuals and options for people to look at it differently lots of words oftentimes don't help so this is fewer words in a table format but i think with that that's really all

1:01:13 i had in terms of kind of a formal presentation and again we are asking for council direction tonight to move to launch into the community engagement phases that would mean within the next three weeks by the end of june that we intend to release the virtual open house after it's polished up the draft code sections will be released the public all these other community engagement materials there's more you haven't seen tonight fact sheets and frequently asked question sheets all those types of things i did mention but want to reiterate a dlcd grant that we've are planning to apply for we'll likely

1:01:58 be back to you on june 21st to request approval of applying for a dlcd grant to help us continue to implement some of this i did mention that aarp grant the feedback from that for kind of the messaging part is is coming and will be integrated into all this and then we will i will be going to our planning commission next week on tuesday the 15th to check in with them in their capacity as the committee for citizen involvement to get their eyes on these same materials to get any feedback from them for the community engagement and then when we have not if we hit it

1:02:43 tonight then we're going to launch the virtual open house and then we will not see anything else of that back as a council until after we get some feedback from the virtual open house is that accurate that's correct okay so i'm just looking around for leonard hey um thanks mayor mark thanks for this presentation um i i think i'm going to take you up on your uh challenge to uh quiz you um the uh um i i think there are setback requirements for any building and or any residential building or the are the setbacks determined by the size of the building or the number of dwellings within the building or both i would say neither actually they're just set

1:03:29 setbacks so the side setbacks are 5 feet the front is 10 feet except for a garage has to be 18 feet and then the rear is proposed to be 5 feet as well so if you're if your house is a mansion and it's got 20 bedrooms then it's the same setback correct now the caveat to that is there is still a lot coverage requirement so even though you might try and meet your minimum setbacks you're still likely not to be able to cover all the area within the setbacks with structure because of the lock coverage maximum the other thing i'll just mention here and this has become more and more of an issue but we're just receipt have just received a new ms4 permit which i'm sure um

1:04:16 you will be briefed on at some point but it's the stormwater permit that is a federal stormwater permit that's comes down to the state deq that mandates how we regulate storm water in the city so that is also being worked on in terms of how it will impact development in short more even for single single-family homes we're moving towards likely looking at retaining more storm water on site and so regardless of lot coverage how storm water facilities are going to be needed to be provided on even individual development lots will regulate how much development on each lot can

1:05:01 happen because area needed for storm water facilities so i just mentioned that as even though you might want to build all the setbacks you're you're practically not going to be able to because of one lot coverage and two new stormwater requirements thank you i um if you're asking for my two cents at this point um i would come down firmly on the side of maximizing our housing right now there's a desperate shortage here in springfield and i um i would like to be as permissive as possible i'm on team green for go that's all i got thanks all right corey first i just want to express my appreciation i know you all have been

1:05:47 working on this for a long time and this is a lot of work and things have shifted and laws have shifted so i just want you all to hear my appreciation and thanks for that and i am really looking forward to seeing and hearing back from the public in terms of what they're thinking because i know we've been talking about internally so thank you all right anybody else pish i just wanted to you briefly mentioned it did you i hear you say the group aarp is involved in this correct we received a grant um i forget the name of their program but from the oregon chapter of aarp they're actually really excited about the work we're doing

1:06:32 they have helped us with the adu stuff too but yes they awarded us a grant to pay for a consultant to help us with the messaging around you know kind of the topic of being able to explain this in layman's terms to the general public on what it means and what it will ultimately look like on the ground okay well i'm just saying that that i re i recall clearly the angle that aarp was going in regards to design standards and that it really ran afoul to being allowing good developments such as counselor steer talks about some of those standards that that group really wants to push for every city

1:07:17 is very um development inhibitive because because of the inherent cost in which they want to require some of these buildings built under so i don't i it kind of surprised me i'm hoping that you know i appreciate their help and whatnot but if they get a ton of traction i can see this going sideways yeah and i'll just chime in there quick that i agree the the uh the the code you're talking about or the form you're talking about and it is true i mean in my professional opinion what they advocate for is a form-based code that's what smart growth america is all about we made a decision early on in this process with consultation with the council that

1:08:02 we were not going to go down the path of a form-based code and in addition to that and i explained this to the consultant smart growth america that the aarp is paying for just last week that really house bill 2001 the state law prevents us from actually going down that road as well so i think they heard that message they understand how we're trying to implement this but you're right they do advocate for that okay i just didn't want to see a surprise down the road thanks all right steve take us home we're under 60 seconds oh i'm okay go ahead all right mark it looks like you've got what you wanted um are you guys good flipping meetings or

1:08:48 do you want two minutes to stretch your legs i'm good to go let's go all right thank you thanks mark i'm going to adjourn the work session and we will reconvene in under 60 seconds for the uh regular session we can stay here right same lane here okay there you go so the east coast has our heat wave from last week

1:09:40 it just my friend in maine is not used to 94 degrees in maine ugg yes all right aj let me know when you're ready ready when you are all right i am going to call the regular session of the springfield city council to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here councillor moe here councillor rodley here councillor stare here councilor woodrow here encounter pictionary

1:10:55 all right we're gonna do the pledge all over again we'll get it right this time i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america into the region the republic for which it is all right so as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us online to please keep yourselves on mute until you are called to provide public testimony there are times two times this evening designated for public testimony and will be listed as public hearings and business from the audience on the agenda

1:11:40 if you're joining us online with a tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak during that time please use the raise hand option to be called upon to provide comment when the designated time is announced when we call on you please state your name ward our general location for the record the order of the public testimony is as followers anyone who has raised their hand and then anyone who submitted an email in advance if there is remaining time neil will read the emails into the record first item please the first item is springfield upbeat mayor's recognition item a june 2021

1:12:26 is lgbtq plus pride month and that is a proclamation and mayor ben gordon that is your item i'm grabbing the resolution so please bear with me for the proclamation whereas our nation was founded on the principle of equal rights for all people but the fulfillment of this promise has been long and coming for many americans whereas the historical riot riot at stonewall in new york city on june 28 1969 is considered a turning point in lgbtq plus liberation in the united states whereas for more than 50 years june has been celebrated as lgbtq plus pride month nationwide in

1:13:13 honor of the lgbtq plus citizens they rose up and fought discriminatory laws at stonewall whereas everyone should be able to live uh live without fear of prejudice discrimination violence and hatred based on race ethnicity religion class gender identity sexual orientation age mental or physical disability and be supported by their peers educators and community leaders whereas june has become a nationally recognized moment to celebrate and honor lgbtq plus americans have having overcome adversity and it enriched our society whereas springfield oregon celebrates and honors its diverse lgbtq plus community that includes people of all races ethnicities religions and professions

1:14:00 whereas the city of springfield strives to be a community where everyone is celebrated for our differences rather than being limited by what may divide us now i sean van gorden mayor of springfield proclaimed june 2021 to be lgbt lgbtq plus pride month in recognition in celebration of the many ways in which the history and culture of lgbtq plus americans and advancements discoveries and achievements of lgbtq plus americans have contributed to the history culture social fabric of the nation in the city of springfield

1:14:49 all right we also have a proclamation for juneteenth independence day yes item b under springfield upbeat is june 19 2021 is juneteenth independence day proclamation and mayor you have that one as well and we're reading this one just a little bit on the early side simply because we don't have a public meeting in between here and then um whereas each year june 19 commemorates emancipation from slavery of those who have been slaves in the united states and is the oldest african-american holiday observance in the nation whereas september 22 1862 president abraham lincoln issued the celebration celebrated emancipation proclamation warning confederate states that he would declare enslaved peoples forever free paving the way for the passing of the 13th amendment which formally abolished slavery in the

1:15:35 united states whereas enforcement of emancipation proclamation occurred only in the confederate states of america that were under union army control and texas was the last of the confederate states to receive orders requiring the end of slavery whereas june 19 1865 union troops marched throughout galveston reading to the people of gallatin that all slaves were free informally enslaved citizens in galveston rejoiced in the streets with jubilant celebrations whereas juneteenth celebrates celebrations began in texas the following year and have continued to the present day whereas juneteenth is an occasion to remember and reflect on the struggle over the past 158 years following emancipation

1:16:21 to advance equality and justice for african americans whereas juneteenth is a day to honor and reflect on the significant ways that african americans have enriched society through their steadfast commitment to promoting freedom and equality and whereas juneteenth celebrates african americans freedom and achievement while in encouraging continuous self-development and respect for all culture cultures now i sean van gorden mayor of the city of springfield for going june 19th 21-21 to be juneteenth independence day in recognition in celebration of the many ways in which the history and culture of african americans in advancements discoveries achievements of african-americans have contributed to the history culture

1:17:06 and social fabric of this nation in the city of springfield thank you all right next item please mayor the next item is the consent calendar oh mayor i would like to uh before i ask for approval of it i would like to pull item d for a comment so a 5b that's cl5 by d okay yes insurance insurance okay so can you make an emotion to approve everything else absent 5d please okay i'll uh i'll move that we

1:18:05 consent calendar and leave item five d out for just a comment in a minute second it's been moved and seconded um neil can you call the role please counselor pitts hi councillor mo yes councillor rodley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow yes any count sufficient air yes all right the motion passes six to zero um and then if we can go to item 5d please and i think stevie just do you need the staff or do you just simply have a comment you want to make well i'm getting i'm getting comments and concerns about the cost of our liability insurance and i wanted to bring it to the council's attention that uh we all realized

1:18:52 the issues with the police going on we've got to we've got put in effect ways to make that go backwards and uh i guess my last con question might be for staff and that is exactly what are we paying for liability insurance this year i'm sorry so you wanted to know the total amount just the amount yeah um i don't have that at my fingertips right now but i can ask our finance director um to get that for you in total i yeah i may have it but i i sort of wanted sort of one of the counts to hear the amount but well we can bring that to you and i i

1:19:37 certainly don't have a problem i just want to make sure i'm bringing you back the right information are you asking for the amount of claims paid out or are you asking our total cost of premium or reliability insurance okay that is easy enough to do um how about i report that back to council um at our next meeting i can do business from the city manager would that be acceptable i'm good with i'm good with an email if that's easier for the council and for you okay so what at that time then i would move for approval of that at another time is that how that works yes okay thank you sorry about screwing

1:20:22 it up i had some questions and i wanted to to bring them up steve are you are you just wanting the information and wanting to hold off on approving this tonight or are you no we can approve it it's just a number but again i'd like to make the number to be public to the council so should i go ahead and look for a pool oh just hang on one second because just gotta say no that's the same that's what kind of what i was going to ask because i wanted to know if by holding this off is it going to stop or prohibit something from moving forward and if so then i would suggest doing it tonight but if not i don't want to do that so i don't know if it's going to or not i just wanted to make sure that

1:21:09 well i'll move for approval of it but again i wanted to bring the question there okay so wait a second all right it's been moved in a second to approve item 5d from the consent calendar um neil could you call the roll please that's the pits all right counselor mo yes council rodley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary hi all right motion passes sixth hero next item please next item is public hearings you have four public hearings tonight the first public hearing is the fire code ordinance and then i'll read the ordinance here ordinance one an ordinance adopting

1:21:55 a fire code for the city of springfield by adopting amending adding and deleting sections to the state of oregon 2019 fire code regulating and governing the safeguarding of life and property from fire and explosion hazards arising from the storage handling and use of hazardous substances materials and devices and from conditions hazardous to life or property in the occupancy of buildings and premises as herein provided providing for the assurance of permits and collection of fees therefore in repealing ordinance number 6320 adopted june 16th of 2014 by the city of springfield this is a first reading and roy emery is here for the staff report

1:22:44 good evening mayor and counselor my name is roy emery and i'm the interim fire marshal for eugene springfield fire like we discussed in the work session the 2019 proposed fire code will replace the 2014 fire code that's currently in the ordinance for springfield and eugene's running a parallel process at this time and so periodically through the code cycle uh every three to five years or so the fire code gets updated and that's basically what's happened here and we got a little behind the game with amy leaving and then that's why i came on board so that's why we're doing this now instead of two years ago um do you have any questions on the code at all

1:23:34 all right any questions well when we when we get our code for springfield together will it exactly be exactly the same as your genes i believe springfield has different different differentiations doesn't it yes sir you're you're absolutely correct i had thought that the copy that we gave to you had highlighted sections and those highlighted sections would be the springfield specific language and that's right right it's cleared out on my file all right any other questions before we uh before i open the public hearing all right i'm going to open the air yes really quick i wanted to call attention for the public hearing to just two small changes that will be in the um

1:24:20 proposed ordinance for the second reading one is that we're not proposing to add appendix m as stated in the in the first reading version that there was a change in labeling of appendices and that one is regarding high-rise buildings and is not planned to be included and then the second change is a removal of a definition for protective property which is a state law definition related to arson and is not used in the fire code at all so it's extraneous all right thank you joe i'm just a quick when uh chief under page 12 of 16 of uh attachment one um 901.6.4 is excessive false automatic fire alarm activations this

1:25:06 was added is that added to the springfield code by charging those folks there's a charge if uh in excess of three false alarms in one year right is that new to springfield i don't believe so but i don't have the historical perspective on that i'm happy go ahead please christina i'm happy to jump in we were already require alarm system um business and agent fees and i believe that there is false alarm language under that section yeah and i know i know there was false alarm language but i don't know if it was codified as to how many and and in this it says that

1:25:54 they were cited under the provisions but i don't see where it indicates how much the citation is or what type of adjudication is required after that and that's it's in the springfield municipal code chapter 7 section 7.010 through 7.026 and we can follow up with more information as well i just didn't know if it was i just was um trying to make sure it wasn't a a huge deviation from our standard operating i believe that has been in prior versions of the alarm of the fire code previously something carried over from prior years and it's the same in the city of eugene and it's mixing in my head is that also

1:26:39 we have something similar i know this off base but something similar to um burglary activation lines and burglary alarms false for the pd as well yes that's the alarm system sessions that i was referencing i i believe those okay all right um one covers the fire code and one covers the police code and i believe they've been consistent over or police call outs and i think they've the intent was to make them consistent over time okay thank you sorry for taking up the time all right any other questions all right i'm going to open the public hearing and i'm going to give neil a moment to see if we have anybody that wants to testify specifically to this item this mayor will ask any of our attendees and there are 46 this evening

1:27:25 if they would like to speak on this particular topic i do see one hand zia wang is um has her hand raised and you are unmuted if you'd like to comment on this item can you hear me we can hear you yes okay uh thanks for your time uh i invited five bipark people from the community to listen to the city councilor's responses from the last meeting neither for this bipark people agree is this specific to the fire is this specific to the fire code no sorry i can attend the wrong place yeah yep so we'll save your spot um and then uh then we'll get it to it in business from the audience thank you

1:28:20 okay so we will um bring z back up at um business from the audience we have no other hands for this particular item all right then i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing um and this is no action required it is a first reading so next item please the next item is an ordinance uh public hearing number two an ordinance amending springfield municipal code section 5.220 that is noise and mary bridget smith is here for the item let me read the ordinance real quickly ordinance number two an ordinance amending springfield municipal code section 5.220 noise and this is a first reading good evening mayor and council mary bridget smith city attorney

1:29:05 presenting this item to you tonight this is a um asking the council to adopt a small change to our noise ordinance to officially delegate the ability of the city manager to issue a special noise permit instead of having it go to the council we overhauled our noise ordinance in 2019 and this was an oversight to not uh include this delegation this uh council has delegated similar authority to the city manager for example for parades and special event permits this would just allow the most cases the police department to issue a special noise permit sometimes well emily will ask people who for example rent a shelter at willamelain to get a special noise

1:29:50 permit or they may even ask for one sometimes if they're doing an event or if someone er or group is um wanting to have some kind of um event for example there were nurses union who wanted to have an event next to mackenzie willamette at a church parking lot asked for a noise permit just to give you an idea of some of the things we're talking about um it would allow for an appeal to the council which is required under the constitution for due process and it's the same as you have for parades and other administrative um permits and then also for private construction for example if there was a big construction project that would do construction work outside of regular

1:30:35 hours they could also get a special noise permit for this this is a first reading tonight i believe there's a public hearing and then this will be back to the council if you're wanting to approve it on consent there is no uh permit fee for this type of permit it's not a very common permit and it is often um in conjunction with other permits that people pay for just to give you an example since 2019 there have been like 18 applications for these types of permits so it's not one that happens all that often or all that consistency consistently and then also just keep in mind there are some free speech considerations with not regulating the content of a special noise permit but just making sure that if someone comes that it is being evaluated um not based on content but on reasonable

1:31:21 time place and manner and if you i'm happy to answer any questions and then move forward with the hearing are there any questions all right um then i'm going to open the public hearing and neil do you see anybody that is interested to in testifying specifically to this item here we'll just give folks a moment i do not see any hands for this particular item no i do not all right then i am going to close the public hearing and this is a first reading so it's no action uh next item please next item is public hearing number three annexation of territory to the city of

1:32:07 springfield annex approximately two acres of residential property located at seven three nine nine thurston road map 17-02-35-0 tax like tax lot 2700 ordinance number three an ordinance annexing certain territory addressed as 7399 thurston road map 17-02-35-00 tax lot 2700 to the city of springfield and willamelain park and recreation district withdrawing the same territory from the mckenzie rural fire protection district adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date this is a first reading and melissa courinho is here for the staff report thanks neil and good evening mayor and councillors

1:32:53 it's good to see you all again so the city council tonight is requested to consider an ordinance to annex an approximately two acre parcel municipally addressed at 7399 thurston road in springfield it is located on the south side of thurston road just east of thurston elementary school the property owner has requested annexation to facilitate a residential subdivision on this property zoned low density residential currently this is what the zoning and city limits looks like for this subject site it has also has so you can see that the city limits are on the on the western end and the site is zoned low density residential it also has the urbanizable fringe

1:33:39 overlay on top of it now if the council does approve this annexation sorry this is how the zoning and city limits would change so in fact the zoning would not be changed from low density residential but the urbanizable fringe overlay would be removed there are four criteria for annexations from the springfield development code section 5.7-140 i'll just go ahead and read each of them the affected territory proposed to be annexed is within the city's ugb and is contiguous to the city limits as you can see on the western boundary two the proposed annexation is consistent with applicable policies in the metro plan and in any applicable refinement plans

1:34:25 or plan districts policies from both the city's metro plan and 2030 comprehensive plans urbanization element are met through this application the subject territory is within the city's ugb and is currently covered by the urbanizable fringe overlay three the pro the proposed annexation will result in a boundary in which the minimum level of key urban facilities and services as defined in the metro plan can be provided in an orderly and efficient and timely manner if annexation is approved the subject territory can easily obtain key facilities and services from thurston road just northwest of the site these facilities will include sanitary sewer sub water and electric fire protection services from eugene's springfield fire

1:35:11 department police services from springfield police and willamelain recreation district fourth where applicable fiscal impacts to the city have been mitigated through an annexation agreement or other mechanism approved by the city's council an annexation agreement was also approved by the applicant if the annexation is approved by city council the agreement is ready to be executed by the city and recorded with lane county this agreement can be found as exhibit b in attachment 2. the agreement covers both obligations for the applicant and for the city including any financial responsibilities one thing to note is that we have revised the annexation agreement from the one in your packet to reflect the city's transportation

1:35:57 system plan city staff took a closer look at the city's thurston road priority project which is number us14 and determined that it required 67 feet of road right-of-way with thurston road is currently 60 feet wide the annexation agreement has been updated for the second reading to reflect the thurston road project under under the third item listed under obligations of applicant wherein the applicant shall dedicated um dedicate a minimum of seven feet instead of five feet of additional right-of-way at time of future land division to meet the required 67 rate week sorry 67 feet right of way with and because all the applicable annexation criteria has been met

1:36:43 and annexation will help facilitate full street improvements in this neighborhood and bring this property into city limits staff recommends the council approve this application that's the end of my presentation i'm here for any questions you all may have i believe the applicant's representative is also available all right joe okay thank you uh thank you everything looks really good um i do have a question in regards to the right of way so if these if there's some road requires 67 and it's currently 60 and they were gonna give up five and then go to seven so what about the properties to the north is that right of way how does that make it i guess how do you balance that with ones that with properties that at

1:37:30 some point will probably come in and are they going you don't you know i'm getting that i totally understand and that's a great question um yeah we were thinking of actually splitting that that right-of-way with with the northern property however the northern property is outside the ugb so we cannot enforce that a long time yeah okay so i guess it's they're just they're just lucky to live there counselor fish and airy in addition the the tsp project was developed based on the needs of urban development and in this case for that long section of thurston road impacted by the property only southern properties are capable of urban development based on the size of the ugb so the northern properties are also not

1:38:15 generating any of the traffic demand necessary for that urban standards project so it i it seems at first glance somewhat inequitable but it is um i think correctly balanced to the property owners to the south of the road because if the properties to the north also could develop to urban densities then the tsp project likely would have required more overall right-of-way and then more from both sides of the road right i think there's my guess is right there there's a the problem with that would be there's a waterway right there so to the north so that's prob that's probably likely why that's like that so okay that makes sense agricultural property as well yeah

1:39:00 right all right thanks i'm okay with that steve did you have something no i just was looking at the city limits so apparently thurston road in front of the thurston elementary school is is in the city limits and this will extend the city limits part of thurston road down to the east property line that goes north so just adding a little bit more this road in city limits is that correct that is correct okay very good um then i am going to go ahead and open the public hearing and neil do we have anybody um with her

1:39:46 in the queue to speak to this item here does not appear we have anyone wishing to speak on this particular item all right then i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and just note that this is a first reading so we are ready to go to the next item please your next item is the final public hearing of this evening and it does have a motion um public hearing number four springfield community enterprise zone redesignation resolution resolution number two a resolution requesting the springfield community enterprise zone be redesignated and authorizing the springfield city manager to submit this resolution to the state of oregon for approval courtney greasel is here for the snap report

1:40:32 good evening i'm going to share my screen and provide an image of the zone boundary for this discussion as noted in the resolution this is requesting the board's authorization for us to apply to the state for redesignation the enterprise zone is a 10-year program i want to note that in the packet we say that upon redesignation this zone would be in place for springfield through march or through i'm sorry 2031. i need to note that actually the entire program statewide is currently set to sunset by state satch statute on june 29th of 2025 so that assumes the legislators do renew the program but i do want to kind of flag that piece

1:41:29 so for this evening the final proposed boundary is shown here and it includes a couple key elements which are incorporated into the resolution the proposed boundary and program is moving springfield from a rural zone to an urban zone so this does mean that companies within our urban growth boundary area and incorporated to the city also falling in traded sector categories increasing investments in equipment and employment would be eligible for the program the proposed boundary now reflects some feedback from the council based on the april meeting where we did incorporate some of the parcels along main street specifically

1:42:15 to the south so if you were to zoom in on the map you'd see it sort of jog the parcel lines a little bit like broken teeth if you will it also provides us adequate space into the future so the proposed boundary for adoption this evening under resolution is the orange area and totals 9.7 square miles which is well within the limitations of the program it also provides us adequate space as properties incorporate to the city limits in green that we would amend the boundary to include them in order to make that space we've done a couple things we've removed some of the public lands and infrastructure facilities that were within the boundary previous

1:43:01 which is these yellow kind of lighter colors also as part of our redesignation and to prepare resolution for this evening we had an affected agency meeting this was a meeting where formal notice was sent to all affected agencies and those are taxing agencies who would have property within that proposed boundary in total we sent out 14 notices um i'll note that two of those 14 were city of springfield agencies so one being the city and one being ceta 12 we had 12 attendees of the meeting not including myself representing eight different agencies and we did not receive formal or written

1:43:46 comment or notice during that although it was a great discussion and uh just good relationships so this evening's resolution is to redesignate uh and also reappoint staff as the zone manager once that resolution is passed we would then send along with a finalized zone boundary to the state before july 1 for submission an application and assuming their approval would then take the next several months to really form a new urban enterpriseone program strategy and handbook that come back to the council for discussion and review and adoption in the fall

1:44:44 all right it looks like we need a public hearing so i'm gonna go and open the public hearing and give give folks a moment to uh hop into the queue mayor it appears we have no hands for this particular item all right i'm going to close the public hearing and then entertain a motion to adopt it or not adopt it well i can go the wrong way couldn't i i'll make a motion that we adopt resolution number two oh neil already read it i'll read it again anyway the resolution requesting the springfield community enterprise zone to be redesignated and authorized in the springfield city manager to submit the resolution to the state of oregon for approval second it's been moved and seconded to

1:45:29 adopt resolution number two neil could you call the role please counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes councillor rodley yes counselor stare yes counselor woodrow yes and council visionary all right the motion passes six to zero uh next item please mayor the next item is business from the audience give folks a moment to raise their hands and just a reminder we have 40 attendees on right now um we have currently three speakers waiting to speak

1:46:14 our first speaker is uh zia wang followed by amy cothron and zia your um microphone should be unmuted now okay now it's my turn can you hear me we can hear you thank you uh i'm surprised you just proved the spd liability insurance payment without knowing an amount i don't think so how you should spend taxpayers money anyway i invited the five bipark people from the community to listen to the city councilor's meet responses from the last meeting neither of this bypass people agree with the comment that we need the more please and police funding to make us safe why don't we hear more voices from bipark people to comment on this meeting i immigrated from u.s when i was 35 so i didn't grow up

1:46:59 through generational racial oppression trauma in this country and i still have the initial courage speak up against police police brutality as you know i'm not a norm a lot of the talented marginalized population is afraid of using the public platform because they don't want to put themselves in a risk for racial profiling by police and targeted by white supremacy however there's still many ways for city councillors to connect with our bipolar community by reaching out and creating safe space for us to talk i made a public comment here over two months ago that the multiple white people yelled the racial slurs at me outside of a long cane trudy restaurant but i have never received any personal contact or reaching out from city councillors to follow up my experience and the wonderful city councilor still

1:47:44 said that there is no antarctician hate in springfield i see the counselors you should do more creating work than listening and then saying no to the community's voices and efforts talking about the culture change all bipark people i talked to strongly agreed with that but also expressed it defined the police and the culture change should happen imperially because the culture because the current culture of springfield is spd collaboratively working with the local white supremacy supremacists to a prize to a press bipod community spd has never made by power people feel safe especially black people there is a there are tons of research on the cases showing there is a deep skepticism on the right of any assertion that the criminal justice system is racially biased i'm open to being educated on anything i

1:48:31 don't fully understand and i would love to provide different ways to support if a counselor could provide a clear picture of the culture change what the culture changes that they look like for you how to make that happen and what are the steps can lead us to make a culture change in springfield which is white supremacy dominant community lastly i encourage i encourage counselors to learn and improve your communication skills stop using personal attacking language in your public comments anymore every single community member who spoke up in the last meeting has completely continuously contributed their hours hours of spare time and the labor work to help springfield become a safe space for the bipart community neither of them deserve this especially women of color thank you

1:49:22 mayor the next speaker is amy cothran followed by mike cuevala and amy you should be able to unmute your microphone yeah i think i was able to get it uh my name is amy cothran formerly of ward 5. uh first i would like to speak to the whole council especially councilman pitts regarding the comments a few weeks ago if you are in this job to dismiss people's comments and make up their motivations for speaking uh you're in the wrong seat five counselors spoke up saying similar things so it's not just counselor pits many of you backed them up so that's pretty inexcusable

1:50:07 i did reach out to each and every one of you on the council for you know policies that i could help build public support behind you know something actionable i received emails from two of the counselors uh neither of which that had anything actionable uh if i'm the one being performative and i have plans and i have ideas for things why am i the one that's performative if none of you have anything to bring forward as far as actionable ideas for changing the police culture in springfield i will say that i was involved recently with the springfield police advisory board and i will say that the new chief

1:50:52 did make chiefshire did make a good impression on me he definitely addressed some of my concerns that i've had with spd and has followed up so i will give you kudos on that but now we need to focus on hiring someone more permanent and with that here is something very actionable that all of you can be involved in we need community leaders to be involved in this decision of the our next permanent police chief talk to the aclu the naacp talk to the kinney family talk to people like scott mckee talk to people who have and are still being affected by spd's horrible culture and get their real input have them be able to actually

1:51:38 be involved in this decision because we've talked about defunding it's something that seems like like a complete non-starter you know just earlier this meeting you like zia said you approved the insurance budget without knowing how much it was um so yeah that's your actionable piece today when you're hiring the new chief get people involved who are affected by spd i.e or the rest of my time our next speaker is mike cueva followed by colin johnston and mike you should be able to unmute your microphone

1:52:30 uh good evening city councillors and mr mayor i'm mike coyvala from ward 2. i'm a 30-year resident of springfield and i'm a long-term volunteer for planning and development and for the library i'd like to stand in support of our citizens that are working towards police reform in the public comments to the council and also on the budget committee i believe this work is essential to the health and safety of springfield and i'm very supportive of them the recently increased deductible and liability insurance issues this the city faces as well as the monetary claims against the city for police issues are potentially

1:53:15 financially ruinous for the city the people who keep police reform as an open subject and discussion in front of council need to be respectfully heard and their war and their work should be appreciated by the council by the citizens by the city staff and by the police department please keep us informed of police reform it's essential and it's very important for the city thank you our next speaker is colin johnson followed by rodney peterson colin you should be able to unmute your microphone

1:54:00 yeah thank you very much my name is colin johnston i live in ward one um as you can tell my accent like here i am not from around these parts i've chosen to make springfield my home um i first of all like to echo shia and amy's comments um based about the last uh commitment i honestly i teach high school and i actually i see better behavior from most of my high school students um but the main thing i really want to talk to you guys about is again about 5b which i cannot believe you've just passed despite claiming not to know the amounts those amounts are in your agenda for tonight so to claim you don't know that is unbelievable uh my questions relating to that are it appears from again the agenda

1:54:47 packet that the deductible for police in jail um claims is five hundred thousand dollars now uh complained to what compared to one hundred thousand dollars for general and if there is a budget shortfall as a result of these increases and will the departments which cause those increases will they be paying more out of that budget shortfall or will we see cuts to schools to libraries to other social and community organizations while the police are allowed to keep 14 positions open uh including i believe two possessions uh one cso you guys are talking about one community information and you haven't

1:55:32 had a cso in position for over a decade and the other one is community records which i believe is still open and again a police force that cannot respond to its community records why are we expecting our insurance premiums go down when you are allowed let's continue thank you i yield my time our next speaker is rodney peterson followed by thomas lawrence and rodney should be able to unmute your microphone okay can you hear me yes we can hi uh rodney peterson ward six i was born in springfield graduated

1:56:17 springfield high school i'm a veteran i joined the military right out of high school basically left oregon for 15 years got married wanted to raise a family and couldn't wait to move back here love springfield love springfield pd a lot of respect for my counselors i heard some chatter here recently about a proposed or a possible fireworks ban in springfield and i am just completely shocked and taken aback and i really want to voice to you guys how important it is for us to be able to celebrate our freedoms especially after the last year and everything we've been through as a veteran and a resident it's so

1:57:02 important for us to be able to celebrate our country that i'm proud of and love and we'll continue to support where our next speaker is thomas lawrence followed by emily peterson and thomas you should be able to unmute your microphone i too would like to add on to the idea of the last meeting and how uh frankly disgusted i am at the responses um that we got from pretty much all of you

1:57:47 it was defensive and disrespectful we as a group of the people who've been coming into all of these meetings for the majority of the last year were called trendy and performative if trying to make a positive difference is trendy and performative then i'm glad to be called that but i think that was just pure defensiveness and i get it this is an uncomfortable topic but change is supposed to be uncomfortable these are uncomfortable times what i would really like to zone in on though is once again the budget meeting um with the 250 000 and the idea that one of you um called the idea of taking that money away would be punitive so first off i disagree

1:58:32 entirely that it would be punitive um had it been discussed in the meeting where it was proposed i think you would have found that there was actually a yearly allowance for most of that money that spd has admitted on multiple occasions they have unhired officers who have been held open positions for i think one of them was like 14 years getting rid of those unfilled positions alone would basically cover the entire cost of that but since we didn't have a discussion we didn't really get a chance to talk about it um but i also like i said i disagree that it would be punitive so let me explain why i think it's not punitive it's what is supposed to happen when you do something wrong that's not punitive those are consequences

1:59:17 if i do something wrong at my job i get in trouble right like that's what's supposed to happen the idea that it would be punitive to make them pay for their own mistakes is again dismissive and i don't understand how we can continue to talk about how big of a deal this is but then when one chance to change it we say oh no we can't do that that would be that'd be awful um by the way since that last meeting we've had yet another spd officer fired for some sexual harassment claims he was on three months paid leave during this investigation so that's a significant amount of money paid to him and yet another officer down um you want to talk about culture change which was also brought up last time then let's make a change not giving spd more money

2:00:04 to let us down and hurt and affect people negatively would be a culture change let's try that instead of once again doing absolutely nothing and then saying that we're the problem by being performative that is not what you guys are here for you are here to listen to us and 90 of the people who come to these meetings are saying the exact same thing in repetition and then we are told that we're the problem just like the last mayor did before she left office or as she left office let's try to do better than that thank you for your time the next speaker is emily peterson and then it appears our last speaker would be stacy holt

2:00:50 emily you should be able to unmute your microphone hey guys can you hear me yes we can okay perfect okay so i'm emily peterson ward 6. i am the wife of rodney peterson who called in previously i'm a stay-at-home mom i am a neighborhood watch coordinator through the national neighborhood watch association that works with um with the sheriff's office and i was originally gonna call in about fireworks which i'll get to in just a second but i did i just wanted to throw out a kudos to the the police department i think they're wonderful every time i've ever had any sort of run-in with them which yes includes i have had a speeding

2:01:35 ticket they've been wonderful i've never had a negative run in i've never had a negative encounter um and i know there's a lot of negativity going on around it right now which i'm i'm saddened about but i want to say that they have my full support and i appreciate them okay so that aside because that's where i was going um the fireworks ban if there is going to be one is heartbreaking i understand why some people would want that however um with small kids it's the funnest thing to see their eyes light up with just delight and entertainment and seeing the wonder in their little eyes when they see a ground bloom go or holding a sparkler or or watching you know the little dumb goes it's silly

2:02:22 but it's fun and it's family oriented and it's really important to keep those family to keep the family alive right now right now it's crumbling and i really feel that we need to do anything we can to keep it together the fourth of july is one of those things where families and neighbors come together and doing just a small little show not the big ones but just the fun ones is really important so um i really hope that this is just a rumor and it's not real because it would be heartbreaking that's all i got thank you guys for listening to me

2:03:10 all right our next speaker is stacy holt and we did have a joni gerald's hand up earlier and so she is also in the queue so stacy you should be able to unmute your microphone now hi there um you know i hadn't i hadn't planned to speak at all and then i heard those first few comments and i just really had to jump in um i think we need more funding in our police departments law order on our streets is out of control neighborhoods are victims of crimes on a daily basis now i mean honestly it's to a point where we have to kind of take care of ourselves you know we're so short-handed in our police forces since they started quitting and retiring over all this the problem is actually just getting worse we do need police reform

2:03:57 we need to actually get back to policing our tax dollars are in place to make our city safe not to fund unnecessary programs that only cause more divide and certainly not to defund the programs we wanted and chose to pay for in the first place i would also like to see the city council adopt a resolution calling abuse towards our leos in the form of name-calling hitting spitting etc as hate crimes yes hate crimes the protesters do this very openly they they openly hate police i've been to many blm in antifa rallies riots whatever you want to call them openly hate police they say things to them like your mo your wife wishes you didn't come home she hopes you die you know this they

2:04:43 they they deal with this on a daily basis and then the community in returns want wants respect from them i don't understand that thinking so yes please adopt a resolution calling these these very openly hate crimes hate crimes towards police it's time and i'll relinquish my time thank you all right um we we still have two people into the queue and i'm just looking for a little bit of a head nod because we're right at 20 minutes now to extend for these final two folks

2:05:29 okay neil then let's keep going great uh joni gerald's is our next speaker followed by neil box and joni you should be able to unmute your microphone okay i think i unmuted it can you hear me we can hear you okay great my name is joni garls i live in the thurston area of springfield near thurston high school and i wasn't going to really get involved tonight but when i heard that the idea of a possible fireworks ban was being brought up and so many people discussing it on the neighborhood next door neighborhood program i think it is i had to jump in to let you guys know my feelings i am a

2:06:16 veteran my husband's also a veteran and i have ptsd i am in no way affected by the fireworks i know how to deal with it i do not think fireworks should be banned the community needs this the children need this we need to show this and stand up for ourselves and our country and not let our city our country be overrun by those few that their voices are louder than the others and i also wanted to let everybody know and i agree completely with what stacy had to say i am a volunteer for the city in human resources and for the police department

2:07:01 but since the lockdowns i've been on hiatus until everything's opened back up again i have complete respect for our police department i have volunteered with them there i went through the citizens police academy learned a lot i value them and just one example i came home one night from bowling with my two little girls in tow and our gate was open my husband was deployed i called the police department scared that someone had opened my gate and was in my yard i had two police officers come out and they went through the whole yard and they reassured me that there was no one there

2:07:48 i guess in conclusion don't take away our fireworks don't ban them we're not eugene we're springfield and i relinquish the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is neil box neil you should be able to unmute your microphone at this point can you guys hear me we can hear you neil okay um i do agree with the last couple speakers in regards to uh any consideration of banning fireworks that would be a horrible idea um we need to celebrate

2:08:35 our country we need to celebrate our freedom and we need to celebrate our unity and um if we ignore our traditions then then we're just ignoring all of it um so uh greatly consider what that would do to families and our culture if you guys start taking all this kind of stuff away um number two i am had many um instances with the police in springfield and they've um they've all been they were always professionally handled by the police

2:09:23 and i do support them i do uh thank the counselors for uh the continual funding and i do encourage you guys to consider um the way they were treated um in their in the protests that happened in the last year and a half and i would love to see some kind of resolution to keep protesters off of private streets um and well and just residential streets i'm sorry residential streets um i think that the i don't think we the city owes protesters rights of way in residential streets i think that's absurd and i think that's

2:10:09 asking for trouble and the trouble is what we what we saw on many many occasions even on on my street fortunately there was no trouble on my street but that was due to the professionalism of the police officers definitely not from the uh protesters they were looking for trouble absolutely you all right um so i asked neil to give us a little bit of a break um neil daddy not neobox um between between these two we still have somebody that jumped in the queue after we sort of head nodded um sort of closing the queue for the day

2:10:56 um i'm looking for a little bit of direction about what you guys want to do do you want to uh finish the last person or are you ready to move on to council response i think we ought to do what we've been doing all right all right then to me then you know let's go with the next person okay the next speaker is ronna frank followed by sj and uh rana you should be able to unmute your microphone okay yes we can hear you okay um i'm ronna frank i'm in ward 6.

2:11:41 my name is ronna frank and i've lived at the top of the thurston hills for the past 21 years tonight i'm speaking on behalf of many other residents who also live up here we're asking the mayor city council council and city manager to please declare an emergency declaration for a ban on fireworks in the thurston hills before july 4th and for the rest of the summer meteorologists are predicting hotter drier conditions through september fire season started earlier this year and is already more active than normal oregon officials utilities and emergency responders are preparing for another potentially severe wildfire season and are saying to prepare for the worst drought in over a century at drought.gov today

2:12:28 lane county is shown again in extreme drought we're still living up here with tremendous fear from the effects of the holiday farm fire nine months ago how quickly it spread how much it destroyed and the terrifying effects of waiting for two weeks to evacuate while breathing the worst air quality in the world this fear isn't something that just goes away we were in the midst of the kobe pandemic and most of us had not been driving anywhere with the fire approaching rapidly i was in my garage and i had packed my car with my cat ready to leave but my car battery died i couldn't leave the fear of that fire is still very real and terrifying to all of us what do all of you think the blue river residents who were made homeless by the

2:13:14 fire would reply if you ask them about using fireworks this july 4th would they be excited or terrified the national fire protection agency reported more than one quarter of fires started by fireworks between 2014 and 18 were reported on the 4th of july in oregon the eagle creek fire in 2017 was started by fireworks on a forest trail that burned over 30 000 acres in the columbia river just outside of portland last year in oregon on the first day that legal fireworks sales were allowed the weigel road wildfire along the south umpqua river was ignited by fireworks the report of that fire also warned about the temperatures of sparklers

2:14:00 fema has reported that sparklers which are legal in the majority of states burn at temperatures of approximately two thousand degrees fahrenheit i spoke to deputy fire marshal keith hagis who confirmed other reports i had seen that sparkler can burn anywhere from 1800 to 3000 degrees he said he considers a sparkler an emission source that has the potential of causing a fast spreading wildfire we need to prepare for all of that so we ask the mayor city council city manager to take all of this into consideration and to please declare an emergency declaration for a ban on fireworks in the thurston hills before july 4th and the rest of the summer

2:14:51 and mayor it appears our last speaker is sj and sj you should be able to unmute your microphone hello can you hear me we can hear you perfect thank you yes i just wanted to um with this whole firework um situation that apparently i hadn't heard that but i just wanted to comment um i did not grow up in oregon i grew up in washington state i also grew up in a county that did not allow fireworks so i grew up not doing fireworks personally it was tradition that we would all set up and watch the wonderful city fireworks show so yes i understand that people are a little upset because something you've been used to doing for so long

2:15:37 potentially could be halted um but it's not the end of the world and um you know i it's interesting to me how fireworks are somehow declared a veterans thing um i don't believe that i'm supporting our veterans and supporting our country um correlates to fireworks um and having a wonderful city show is is good enough so i just wanted to share that it's good enough and if it's responsible because of you know what rona was saying with the upcoming fire season and the predictions i'm all for it thank you mayor those are all of our speakers for this evening very good um

2:16:24 anybody want to have council response counselors there uh thanks mayor yes i um first of all wanted to thank everybody for their comments this evening i would like to address the concern over the liability insurance i i think that regardless of the cost of the liability insurance it's a very good idea for us to retain liability insurance for the police department in fact just to give you a little window onto the operations of the city the our city manager has has used heroic measures to retain the liability insurance that we desperately

2:17:09 need here um if you think that the budget cuts as a result of the judgments against the city have been bad so far imagine what they might be without any kind of liability coverage also i wanted to entry all of the commenters always to welcome the perspectives of people of color in our city people from both sides of the political spectrum people of color are not a monolithic front um they are human beings they each have a unique perspective and i think that we would do well to listen to all of them regardless of their perspective on issues that's all i got

2:17:55 thank you anybody else uh counselor pitts yeah uh once again i want a second what counselor said i really do appreciate all the comments uh but one thing i i want some of you to think about is that whenever i speak i never speak out of anger because as a large black man i don't have the ability to get angry because i could die and i say this on the the the coattails of tulsa uh which destroyed one of the most thriving black communities and realized that um regardless of how progressive or uh conservative i may come off somebody's gonna have an issue

2:18:40 with things that i say and i'm okay with that you know both of my parents are civil rights activists before i have even before i ran for this position before i spoke uh and after i spoke i spoke with my parents i spoke with other people especially black transplants who aren't from here and they agree with everything i said now does that make what i say completely right no uh but it doesn't make it didn't make me wrong either realize that a lot of the social justice groups that i witness here in lane county don't really include uh the voice of various groups of color especially those of us who aren't originally from here and so my blackness looks a little different than somebody who grew up in lane county and that's okay

2:19:26 and you know another thing that uh council there said is that you know poc bypoc whatever the phrase is that people want to use is not a monolith i've never walked into a room and saw a minority and said oh wow okay there's my ally there's somebody i can trust because it doesn't work like that if we were to do a deep dive actually not that deep of a dive and we look at the various groups and entities that consider themselves to be people of color there's a lot of strife between our groups and until we get past that we'll never be unified and so once again i really do appreciate your comments i'm not backing down from anything i said and i guarantee you that if you talk to a lot of other people they agree with me 100 and so i question who you are allowing

2:20:13 in your space to have these conversations to where what i said was so off-putting uh and also you know once again a lot of people talked about this cultural change it's not something that's gonna happen overnight and i think the people who think that they're the most enlightened when it comes to a lot of stuff around race and gender and sexuality they're often wrong and they're often the greatest problems my greatest enemies have never been racist uh because i'm from the south i'm okay with that i want you i want to know if you're racist so i can avoid you uh one thing that my dad said is that we have it worse than him and my dad martha and selma he said that he fears for his sons because no longer do the races have uh hoods

2:21:00 and and ropes and burning crosses but they sit across from you they call themselves allies they pack themselves in the back because they have a black spouse or black partner black kids or they're part of a black space and so i i challenge you to think about that and realize that i'm not speaking for myself and if my opinion is so off-putting i question the people that you surround yourself with who are in a position to want to actually have an openness conversation with you because it seems like those people aren't represented period so we can talk about representation all day but if you only want representation for people who think like you then we are doing a disservice to all of us thank you

2:21:49 counselor mo i don't know what to say there's no way i can come close to the power that damien just spoke that was that was intense thanks david uh what i want to speak to is is the fire danger this year particularly the fear that the people in thurston hills have right now i'm not against fireworks uh but i'd like to see something out there to help control that mitigate it so they can have their fireworks and everybody feels safe out there it's every all the organizations out there right now are declaring fire emergency situation right out of drought and it can happen and when it happens we're gonna have big problems we gotta figure out some way to eliminate all sources of that if we can fireworks is one of the sources

2:22:35 i don't want to state that i want to eliminate it but we need to we need to find some way to take care of that thank you joe thank you yes i think we have a fire marshal that's get gets paid pretty good money that monitors the humidity and moisture etc temperatures and they do their job very well i think we have a fire department i think we even have a thurston fire station 18 around the corner of 69th and maine that is right at the base of the thurston hills we have police that patrol they know what the laws are and it is illegal to shoot off illegal fireworks and our police department is in charge of finding those folks that are shooting them off and either educating them and if they don't feel like they need to be educated or

2:23:21 not getting educated or change your behavior they get cited the police will find and if there's any fireworks that are illegal they'll find them and they'll seize them so you know we have many things in place we already have those the systems in place and i will completely back if the fire marshal says hey based on these current circumstances i'm a red flag which we went into last year red flag this narrative in this neighborhood and i'll support that 100 percent i i i stand behind our professionals that we pay our public monies with to do their job i'm not going to second-guess them and i'm not going to sit there and try to put up regulations in front of people when i don't feel the professionals don't have the need to then why should why are we step trying to even think about stepping up in front we are supposed to trust our folks our

2:24:08 staff and that's what i do all right so i just had a couple of things i wanted to uh wanted to call out first like in especially in the conversation around policing and i would just encourage and recognize and just talk through the fact that you know this city goes all the way from the furthest point on the left all the way to the furthest point on the right and i think we have to sort of respect the fact that it is a big politically diverse city and that we're trying to get to the right place as a community and because we have you know we all talk about sort of culture change and what we want from the police department and we want them to be great and how we we begin to work there those are all themes to the conversation

2:24:54 now that doesn't mean that any specific idea or concept or anything like that really mean like you know that we've got any agreement on it but what i would just ask people who had so much frustration about how fast we're moving on police and it's just recognized that i think everybody's on the same page that policing is going to be a big issue for the next year to five years hope hopefully it will not be that long but we've got a lot of work to do in regards to that and we may disagree on some of the how um but we're we're there as a as a community that we've got there's things we that we have to fix the second thing that i would ask and i'm asking for a little bit of a personal favor in this um in the conversation because we've got a

2:25:39 large group of folks that uh show up sort of week after week and just bring this to our attention and you know and you know there's an ask that from them to be for us to be a little bit more sort of compassionate and understanding about the work and time that they put into it um and i would just like we're not each other's enemies here right like i would just ask that we all give each other a little bit more grace and compassion as we have this discussion because it's actually really hard and i think that it's really important that those ideas keep coming to the table so that we can sort of talk about them and address them and talk through them my personal ask for you guys is there's a long history about what happened at this point and what happened at this point i heard

2:26:24 um uh community service officers come up like three times those were pulled out of the budget and i would just you know if you need me to help right run those things down but those sort of questions and experiences where you're at point a and we need to get everybody to point b including us and the rest of the community is just we don't necessarily have to litigate everything as a as some guy who works in process improvement for so long we just have to figure out how to go forward from here so i would just encourage you guys if you have questions like what happened here shoot them to me i'll help run them down to the extent that i can um but i would just ask that when we get the answers is just find a place to move forward because that's where the healthy conversation is because i we want you guys at the table um it's going to take a collective community

2:27:10 uh community work to get there and in the last i guess point about policing that i would like to make and i'm hoping i can um tag nancy in to talk the question about the fire chief um i'm sorry not the fire chief the police chief the permanent hiring it's not our hire but nancy could you maybe talk to us about the the process that you that you would follow for this i thank you mary yes you know this i intend to have a very extensive uh recruitment process and i'm putting a lot of thought into this i think that um short of say my position and maybe the city attorney the chief of police is probably the most visible and consequential hire than a

2:27:57 city manager can make and so i take that very seriously i would want to have a process that involves all members of our community i would seek out input from various groups in the community that maybe aren't always represented here um people that maybe aren't always the most vocal um and of course i would involve the council um and i would want to involve the bipart community i would want to involve um you know springfield police alumni association you know there are a lot of voices that

2:28:44 i want to hear from and i remember when i had my recruitment process and we had that community reception and i thought that was such a valuable experience for me because it really gave me um that's when i really fell in love with this city quite frankly because i was just astonished at how many people came to that event and really wanted to talk about um substantive issues and they really knew about their city i was very impressed with the community members so i you know obviously i would you know we we have a pretty small um hr department this type of recruitment i would definitely um need the skills and assistance from

2:29:31 a professional recruiting firm um and but before i even you know start on that journey um i would like to give um chief shearer some time to really um help affect some change immediately and he's already done that in a lot of ways i'm i'm so grateful for him because um of his experience um the way he has just jumped in i mean consider this this is his third week on the job and he has absolutely been digging in and looking at things with a fresh set of eyes asking questions making improvements um being in great communication

2:30:16 with the community um with the department and with me um so i i feel like we could do a little bit of housekeeping uh while we're contemplating um starting another recruitment so and it will take um some months to get a recruiter because we would want to do a competitive process for that and let peop issue an rfp for people to respond to so that's what's on my mind on that i would say just as a side note um some of you know that i i'm talking to the community in a little bit um i prior to coming here i worked for sacramento county in california one of the things i was in charge of was doing the outreach for the 2010 um

2:31:01 2020 census and so if you can imagine that was a very large community process that i um was in charge of and i would look to use those same types of engagement methods that i did to try to engage people in the census um by conveying to them the importance of of their input and why that matters in in their own personal lives so this is a critical hire for the city especially in this point in time and i take it very seriously i appreciate that nancy and i you know and i just want to emphasize that as as a council and as policymakers right i'm behind nancy in this um right we

2:31:46 hire nancy as a way is the person to administer the city she's one of our three employees and when we when we talk about getting the police culture right right like the person that we go to is nancy and um i'm gonna be supportive of whoever she hires to be the police chief because that's our role is to really as a policy body is to talk about where we need the community to go and then support nancy and hold nancy accountable to getting us there i just want to make sure that that point's really clear is that you know is that when we talk about the police chief and where we're going we're going to get there we can't control what happened in the past but we can control how we go forward and i just want to make sure people hear that that this council is on board the community is going to get there

2:32:31 we'll we'll get to the finish line here all right last thing while i've got you here nancy fireworks ban is there anything in the works we heard that come up you know i don't know where that where that started because um the council has never discussed um having a fireworks ban that's never been part of our agenda planning i will say though it is important that we deliver a strong message about prevention and um being safe when engaging in these types of activities um you really just have to be very prepared and and and not take for granted oh this is just a little smoke bomb and it can couldn't

2:33:16 cause any damage you know really um even when uh what's known in the fireworks industry is safe insane fireworks as opposed to illegal fireworks um those two those have you know they can ignite a spark and you have to be very careful so i would caution people to use extra attentiveness when using those so that's something that i would want to push out citywide in our communications in conjunction with our police department and our fire department um i will say i have had some experience on this one as well it's very difficult to enforce any kind of ban unfortunately um what it's i i

2:34:02 actually did this again and sorry to use sacramento as an example but it was it was a big issue there clearly california has a lot of wildfires so um although they didn't have a ban um what the county did was um in they invested a significant amount of money um to do uh enhanced patrols um july 2nd through the 6th to the 5th um and what what yielded that was really um it was a lot of money spent and it really only resulted in um two arrests and um why that happened is because you actually have to physically catch somebody in the act of igniting the firework that's illegal um and it's

2:34:49 very difficult to do it's very difficult to pinpoint where people are even with enhanced patrols um our police force is um as you are are well aware very uh ex to call them lean would would all would be almost be an exaggeration i mean they are very very bare bones right now and they're all working hard so you know when you put a ban on the other side of that equation is enforcement where we just don't have that capacity within our police department right now um i would just really call on the community to please exercise caution and safety over this holiday weekend and also anytime they are looking at igniting or shooting a weapon or anything like that

2:35:35 that could potentially produce a spark um just be very very careful all right thanks nancy for jumping in here on the fly um next item please next item is any business from the city council do we have any other business from the council okay i had one quick item now that now that uh um and maybe nancy uh you you guys can take a look at this um eugene pd had a big long article probably uh maybe four or five days ago about how they tracked use of force um and could we trigger a discussions with them to make sure that we're using the sort of same standards and maybe brought more broadly with the

2:36:20 sheriffs as a whole because even if we could get to the same the three of us could get to some the same definition and you know i'm waiting for for pitch to jump in and help me here it would help it would help the conversation a lot because then we were we'd be talking to the community about the same thing i will definitely talk to uh chief sher about that um as an update we are in the process of purchasing the software that we talked about earlier when we had the use of forest report in april um we should i think that will be coming in line in about a month but i know um that she sure is interested in uh making sure that we track all of that right away we're not going to wait all right thank you all right joe and uh

2:37:06 just to jump on that a little bit nancy i would i would like to see that software at some point i know that i i asked um for the for the benefit of the spac committee there's the advisory board committee for get have them have an opportunity to take a look at it because you know it would be great to have any comments or any protect potential edifications or changes or changes to that or recommendations for that software to be put out there first thing before it gets the horses out of the barn understood um we can look into that it's it's not too difficult to set up a demonstration with a vendor they can typically do that in over a zoom format yeah it shouldn't be a big ask it

2:37:52 shouldn't be it's a very common software program that's used within law enforcement yeah cory i imagine you were mouthing my name i didn't think i had anything to say but i do um i just as i was listening to all of this and thinking back to the beginning of the meeting which we opened with those um two proclamations and i just i just wanted to sort of stitch together a few things from tonight and say that i i think that um i have a great appreciation for the fact that we are leaning in to the diversity that we have talked about so much in springfield and when we say diversity it often sounds like a fun party in the

2:38:39 park and that's not necessarily how it goes and i i've said this to the mayor and i said this to a few others that i think that one of the things i am proud of in springfield is that we are getting to these conversations in an authentic way faster than maybe some of our neighboring towns and i appreciate that and i appreciate the kind of growing diversity on this council of which i am fortunate to be a part of um and councilor pitts is fortunate to be a part of or maybe he's not feeling fortunate enough to be part of it but i feel fortunate that he is here um folks who are coming and who are getting engaged and who are participating and who are asking questions and i i want to just echo what the mayor said that we have to make room

2:39:25 for that and we have to try to to make space for us to have these conversations over time as opposed to thinking we're enemies because we all care passionately about the future of springfield we all want to feel like we belong and our kids belong and we we can you know folks can start businesses here we all we all want that we just have different ideas about where we're at on that and i just want to say that this is this is what diversity looks like it doesn't it looks it's looks like we learn how to have disagreements and figure it out so i just want to say that i i appreciate that we are doing that even if we get crabby at each other because

2:40:14 thanks corey merrily i just want to quickly respond to cory and and damien as well too i think one of the biggest things that's happening within us that hopefully is spreading out to the community fact that the culture change is organic you can't tell somebody that they have to think different you have to live it you have to show it you have to be the person that you want to see and and i think we're i think we're seeing that and we're seeing the the um we're seeing it take place but you can't pass a law that says somebody has to believe something or think something or act a certain way but you can show them what it's like to have that happen i mean you can i i'm not going against

2:41:00 something you know when somebody's being nasty or abusive or whatever i'm not i'm not talking about that i'm just talking about people who have lived their lives in an entirely different way or an entirely different culture they have to be able to see what can be different or what can be we're all the same we all we all look at goals in our lives and we all strive for them and we all want to work towards them and for the most part we all want to help each other do the same thing we just don't have it all be the same we're all different and what a dull world it would be if we all want the same thing so i agree with corey on her standpoint and her comments on diversity i'm not saying it very well um uh in my own words but i'm i'm

2:41:47 writing with both corey and damien and i i'd like to say that this is a this is a council that i'm really proud of um for how we listen to each other we spread respect to each other and i know if we were to sit down and take one of those personality tests we would be off the charts from each other but but we're doing it and we're getting we're getting it done as a council and i'm i'm proud of all of this all right thank you i think we are ready for the next item next item is any other business from the city manager just really quickly if you don't mind i'd like to close the loop on the discussion that counselor mo brought up earlier regarding the cost for our insurance for this um for the 21 22 fiscal year our total premium cost

2:42:35 is 926 431 dollars by comparison in our the prior fiscal year from fiscal year 2020 to 2021 it was 900 861 dollars thank you nancy you're welcome i'm sorry i didn't have it readily available oh no that's i didn't expect that thank you um and if if i may just one if you'll indulge me one final comment um tonight we did a proclamation for um june is pride month for our glbtq plus community um you know it's interesting how um uh councilor woodrow was talking about how sometimes your life can be changed just by your

2:43:22 experience that you have in 1989 my cousin david died of an aids-related illness and in that time there was a lot of stigma around that disease and they were in the virus um and it was very difficult for people to get treatment and medicines um and i just want to say it really did shape my life in a lot of ways i educated myself about the gay community about the aids virus about the types of medicines available and i learned about the type of stigma that my cousin endured in his life so much so did that he love he led most of his life in a in a closeted way

2:44:07 um and really didn't even come out um authentically to our family until he was dying of this virus and and he really had no other choice so i just say this to say that um i love david very much and i i hope that i can um continue to uh support him even in his legacy and so i just like to convene in his honor his name was david anderson all right neil next item mayor the next item is business from the city attorney item one opioid mdl litigation

2:44:53 authorization for settlement fund distribution proposal uh mary bridget smith is here for the staff report and this has a motion council this is mary bridget i'm just asking for the council to approve the settlement distribution in the packet ready i was born ready okay counselors i would like to make a motion that we approve the settlement fund distribution model for the operate i can't pronounce it uh and the mdl litigation with 15 to the state 85 to local entities as put forward by lane county as part of the litigating entities megan neil could you call the role please

2:45:38 counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor rodley yes counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes main council missionary yes the emotion passes six zero and it looks like we are done actually mayor we just have one more small item in business from the city clarification on something then i promise we'll be done so sorry i'm so sorry i wanted to follow up on incorrect information i stated at the council earlier in response to cancer efficient areas question about the false alarm um activation um you are correct cancer efficiency that is new to the city of springfield um that's uh this is on page 12 of 16 on

2:46:23 attachment one overall package packet page 412 if you wanted council needs to navigate back to it the city of eugene has had a false fire alarm um requirement previously the city of springfield has had false police alarm restrictions previously this would be the first time springfield has a false fire alarm the way that this would work is after three false alarms in one 365 day period one year period those um that person would be referred to code enforcement the first step in our code enforcement process is a warning citation or a letter notice a violation which is a written warning um and so practically uh individuals wouldn't be cited into municipal court until the fourth

2:47:08 violation most likely um although if someone is a repeat offender and has had violations many many violations in a prior year then those process processes could look different it would be our standard code enforcement process used for all kinds of violations and the maximum the the fine in the first year would be 500 and then if there were future violations it could be up to a thousand dollars but the municipal court makes the final call on that i kind of thought that was the case yes you were correct so oh go ahead go back sean oh i was going to ask if that got your question answered and make sure that uh cg were wanted to have it have a longer discussion when it's second reading well it just brings me to cup pot across

2:47:56 it creates me pause uh cause for pause because that's that's a pretty significant deviation from our our what we've been doing to all of a sudden put in some sort of uh code that has got some uh penalties and without some but without involving counsel at least allowing us to be advised before we say hey vote on it tell us whether you like it or not um and and then i'd like to hear from the business community or even our department i want to know is it a problem is it does it is it something that that we are just um creating or mirroring the uh codification of of of eugene

2:48:43 because it's more convenient to have it written that way is i just want to see the justification of a change in enforcement to be fair with the businesses if it's if they if it's if they can't justify it for example do we have a rash of false alarms or is there has have we had a several businesses that are our problem um that's that's the way i approach things because i'm not into regulation unless it's justified we can follow up on that information for the second reading and so it's the first reading now so it's not we haven't codified that that code have we no it will be presented for adoption in

2:49:28 two weeks on june 21st um and then uh it's planned to coincide with taking effect at the same time as city of eugene so there's one general fire code all the springfield does have our own specific provisions the intent is for it to take effect august 1st so there would um unless we delayed that effective date there would not be another date for the council to take action before fall okay so it looks like i need to look at that closer to look for the add-ons to see if it's i'd like to know if there's whatever is added on if it's new or just modified you know you know what i'm saying because that to me is a significant add-on going to two weeks christina can we make sure we just add a little extra time for

2:50:13 for this discussion i can i can confirm with um the fire marshal's office about that that sounds appropriate that'd be great i just again i just want a fair shake for everybody that may be affected by this and for us to be able to say hey you know we looked at this it's justified we're going to vote on it and it and it makes sense to us et cetera et cetera et cetera otherwise it's just something that was added on because someone thought we should based on that information and and to me that's i'm not again not into regulation especially when it's not justified i understood um and i will say that we do not have to have the same fire code as the city of eugene identically we have several provisions that are different between the jurisdictions the goal obviously is to have as uniform of

2:50:58 a code as eugene and springfield can get to for enforcement purposes but our code enforcement sections run differently for each jurisdiction anyway right which is kind of an issue why we let's create it because we joined all right thank you thank you unless are there any more questions no ma'am thank you i appreciate you coming circling back around on that and i apologize for the incorrect uh information at the beginning don't ever let it happen again christine all right neil do we have any other business no other items mayor all right last call no all right thanks everybody have a good night we're adjourned