Springfield City Council — September 7, 2021

0:04 all right i'm going to call the springfield city council work session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillors pitts here mo here rodley here woodrow here and pissionary i'm here [Music] well very good welcome back everybody i'm glad we all found the right place in the right zoom meeting we have one item today and it's the development code quarterly check-in with mark rust so i am going to turn it over to mark good evening mayor and counselors thank you for this opportunity to present you tonight your first item back i don't

0:49 know how i got first slot but anyway the code update as you know is a important project and here we are talking about it so i hope you all had a wonderful summer break and i am going to try and share my screen here really quick hopefully that works you can all see it i don't have a lot of slides tonight but do like to just present the purpose statement and some of the other items related to the code update so we'll just go through some of that but i do think we are if the city attorney likes us to go through the potential conflict of interest statements before this item each time so if

1:36 we could do that all right so i'm gonna start and then we'll go by ward um so i have a potential conflict of interest because i'm a property owner in the city of springfield uh no conflict ventures i have a possible conflict if this is steve my word too i have a possible conflict of interest because i own property in the city of springfield um this is corey radley ward 3 and i have a possible conflict of interest as a property owner in springfield uh leonard stairward for possible conflict of interest on property in springfield

2:21 merrily woodrow ward 5 and i have a possible conflict of interest because i own property in springfield this is joe pictionary ward 6 i have a potential conflict of interest i own properties in springfield inside everybody i sorry i lost track yes okay great thank you for indulging me on that and so last time i was before you was june 7th a few months ago and that was right before we launched into

3:06 our community engagement the council gave direction to staff at that time to go ahead and release the public review drafts of the code at that time i'm trying to re share my screen here and so we did that over the summer we launched our virtual open house as well as a community survey and so the first thing i want to do tonight is give you just a brief um summary of some of what we heard over the summer in response to that community outreach we are not i am not asking for any formal action tonight so it is just an opportunity for me to present some information and then for you to provide any feedback and ask

3:52 questions tonight i'm not going to dive too deep into any of the details but focus on the public engagement so over the summer we did as i said launch the virtual open house and that included a lot of information about the draft code concepts links to the code sections themselves a lot of the materials on the project web page it also included a survey that was primarily focused on the housing portion of the code update to remind you just the purpose of the project i'm not going to read this you've seen this all a number of times already but we did present this information the purpose and the objectives of the code

4:37 update to the community through the virtual open house as well so they could get an idea of the initial direction from the city council for this project and what we are trying to achieve as you all know and hopefully recall the state legislation requiring cities to do certain things with housing code updates the middle housing requirements house bill 2001 primarily at this point is requiring us to look at how to implement middle housing so the majority of the community survey on housing also related to house bill 2001 so just to give you some sense of the

5:22 level of community and involvement we got we received response 80 responses to the community survey and so that was open for two months that's not a huge number but it's about in the range of what we were expecting i have looked at our neighboring jurisdiction they did some similar work around they're not doing a comprehensive code update like we are but they are also working on um implementing the middle housing legislation and i believe when i looked they had received i think in the neighborhood of mid-200s i want to say 267 don't quote me on that but i

6:07 remember that being a rough idea of the number of responses they received to their middle housing survey so in comparison to the neighboring jurisdictions we felt the 80 number is a pretty good response um we had translated the survey into spanish as well and released both language versions of the survey we did not receive any responses to the spanish version of the survey however as part of the survey the last handful of questions were related to demographics they were voluntary questions they were not required out of the 80 respondents 12

6:52 people generally didn't answer the demographic questions but of the 68 responses to the demographic questions that we got ten percent it was roughly seven people self-identified as latino or hispanic in those demographic questions so of the 80 of the 68 people that actually answered the demographic questions seven did respond with that so we felt good like we are we were endeavoring to reach some of the underserved portions of the population of springfield i'm not going to i haven't actually processed all of the survey results yet we're still working that and putting it

7:37 in a format that's a better presentable format so i'm not going to share any slides about the information tonight but i will share some preliminary numbers this is based on the raw data at this point there were really only seven primary questions it took about 10 to 15 minutes for people to go through working with our public relations staff they felt like that was a pretty good timeline of expecting people to take a survey and not have them um get bored of it and not finish it so that 10 to 15 minute time frame for taking a survey was the goal so limiting it to seven questions got us to about that timeline

8:22 the biggest results that stand out to me weren't really a surprise and i think i've talked about these before to you the biggest one that jumped out to me was parking under the state laws for how we implement middle housing the most parking we can require generally for middle housing types is one parking space per dwelling unit and i've mentioned this before so for a new triplex the most parking we could require would be three parking spaces on site for that triplex one per unit as an example and so but we have the opportunity to require less parking to try and further incentivize middle housing because

9:08 parking is one of the most costly aspects of developing housing it eats up a fair bit of land and also costs to develop it so the response is on the parking question about and really we categorize the questions in three kind of categories and one is should we do the minimum required by state law and only and for this parking example require one space should we encourage more middle housing by maybe requiring slightly less parking or should we maximize the amount of metal housing we hope to get and that is potentially require no on-site parking so the responses to this specific question were overwhelmingly

9:54 that we should require the most parking possible under state law it was 80 let me find the number i'm sorry not 80 57 of respondents felt that we should require the most parking that would we can require the other two categories the require less or don't require any at all were 15 and 14 respectively so to give you some idea that is the one question where the it had the heaviest um lean towards having the most strict requirements the other one i'll jump to

10:39 um which this wasn't a surprise kind of i've i've categorized these two topics in in the past and to me the two hot button topics are density and parking and so the other question relating in my mind to kind of the density question is really talked about in terms of the lot sizes that are required for the different middle housing types so the state says that we have to allow a triplex on at least every 5 000 square foot sized lot that allows a single family detached home and for a four plex we have to allow four plexes on seven thousand square foot lots or more that allows a detached single family

11:25 home so the question again it was the three categories require what the state requires mandates we require encourage it by allowing less or maybe maximize the amount of mill housing we can have and not have any lot sizes potentially this one was actually surprisingly pretty balanced between the two ends of the spectrum they were um 38 and 37 percent respectively with require the largest lot sizes we can versus um allow the smallest slot sizes we could or not have any minimum lot size so it was pretty

12:10 balanced and then lastly the third one i'll touch on is the flexibility with how these metal housing types are allowed so we've talked a lot about plexus and i talk about triplexes and four plexes so we have to allow those to be attached units so a typical duplex or triplex are three two or three attached units but we can be more flexible and allow a triplex say to be three detached units on one lot like little cottages and that would still qualify as a triplex and similarly for duplex and fourplex

12:58 the results for this question were overwhelmingly that we should allow the flexibility to allow the detached units it was 80 of the respondents thought we should allow the detached units where only 14 thought we should require them to be attached so that's kind of all i'm going to touch on on the survey results at this time just to give you some sense and why i ended with the attach versus detached question kind of transitions me into the next topic i want to talk a little bit about and that is some even new legislation that i've mentioned before that we're trying to figure out how to incorporate into the code updates

13:43 it's senate bill 458 and actually mark can i go back to the survey first sure yeah if there's questions about any of that i'm happy to expand or elaborate so so in a world that were and this is me trying to get my head around it where we require no minimum lot size right wouldn't it work like small like mini homes that the building code would define it you know the code would define what the minimum is in different ways right correct that effectively we would have an uncoded minimum lot size right i mean building code i think the number i want to say it's 200 square feet it might be even less than that in theory you could have very small homes

14:28 so we wouldn't regulate the lot size so the smaller units provide the more the more of them you could fit on a lot so you could put four say 500 square foot units on maybe a 3 000 square foot lot i mean you still have to meet setbacks we we create essentially the building envelope so we have setbacks and we have a height we're also going to have still a lot coverage standard based on stormwater management requirements but so within that envelope if we didn't have a minimum lot size we would let that building envelope

15:14 regulate you kind of reverse engineer it you say how many units based on the size of units i want to put on the market can i fit on that law yeah and and i think that would be that would be an interesting question to understand i know that this is the early cut of the survey would be to say okay effectively if we've removed that regulation effectively there is a regulation but it's sort of between the setback rules and the building code rules what what would that even what would that even look like because i think that would put us in a position to respond if if there's a path there that we want to go down like it's a it's an out there idea but like it's it may be worth just simply asking a couple of questions and you know saying it out loud to see if how crazy of an idea it is

16:00 the other the other piece that struck me is odd when you kind of went through it i'd love to see i know you're going to send the numbers out at some point is that that parking standard right like i think that that i you know we the public works and planning does a ton of education right like and just being able to put more facts about about what you know what maximizing parking even looks like um i think would be become an important uh conversation around affordability because i don't think people connect they connect probably convenience but not they don't understand that you're just pushing costs into the project at that point um so that that was the only two comments i had great i appreciate those and just to clarify again on the parking when we're

16:45 talking about maximizing the amount of parking that state law will allow us to require is the most is one space per unit i'll just mention too that there there is rule making at the state level going on right now not in response to legislation but in response to the government one of the governor's executive orders for and i can't remember the title of it some of you may know it better than me i haven't been tracking it that closely emma newman with our staff is on that rule making committee but it's related to kind of the green um energy or clean energy executive order that the governor put in place and so it's anticipated that there will

17:31 be more administrative rules coming out based on that that we will have to respond to and i would envision some of that likely could impact the parking and other some of these other standards potentially so we are tracking that and would anticipate some future changes so so mark and then i'll let steve go um would you describe the amount of role making at the state at the state level as being a headwind to being able to actually move this project forward um i'm not sure i'd use the term headwind although i think that's fair but it is i think we can't we so first of all as you know we have to implement middle

18:17 housing and if we don't the the rules at the state level go directly applicable to us and we don't want that it would be a worse situation from my professional opinion so we have to adopt something by the end of next june for mental housing at the very least but i think what the level of rulemaking is doing is requiring us to continually respond to those rules and amend our codes to be in compliance with them so it is definitely creating more work for us okay thank you counselor mo uh the uh the document you're talking about from the governor is climate friendly and equitable communities rulemaking thank you and i've got it right here in front of me i was interested in that parking

19:02 parking section and uh so these are these are advisory and if these are amplified say those these are implemented do will they overlay the current billing code revision that we're doing now i think i said that the other day at the meeting so the the code update we're doing now isn't precisely building code but the the land use and zoning code so but there my understanding and not having a deep understanding of the draft rules is that it does involve some actual building code potential changes as well so not only does it have the pos potential

19:47 to require us to do some additional zoning code updates but likely or potentially some actual building code updates too typically the building code stuff is updated at a state level and then we just adopt it locally so it's more universal across the state but i'm not as aware of the building code changes anyway it's an interesting document and we'll see where it goes yeah any other thoughts or questions about the survey results at this point i will be sending out some more detailed information on that once we get it processed i was jumping into and i do want to i have one question i can unmute myself

20:32 when you're talking about allowing every five thousand square feet or seven thousand square feet is there a maximum you can allow it it gets tricky when we start talking about minimums and maximums so we have to allow a triplex on a 5 000 square foot lot or larger we can't say you have to have 6 000 square feet to allow a triplex but we could choose to allow more flexible to say well you can do a triplex down to a 2 000 square foot lot if you want so there no there is no floor i guess again it gets kind of confusing when we talk about maximums minimums or floors and ceilings but we could like i said the the question

21:18 was we could say you can do a triplex on any size lot if you had a 2 000 square foot lot which is very small even for a single family home if you want to put two tiny dwellings on that or three if they're you can figure out how to meet the other requirements there is no threshold or other sidebar on the other side to say we can only go so low okay okay that's that was my question yeah i knew i knew you know what we were supposed to allow but you know if we allowed three on a 5 000 square foot we could actually allow six if they if they were able to do it okay and that's a great point because that we have some of the public comments we received are advocating for what i've

22:03 mentioned in the past about deeper affordability option and that is so if somebody proposes to have permanent affordable housing that the point would be they could be allowed to do a even higher number of units if it meets the threshold of affordable to a certain percentage of income for you know a certain section of the population that there could be a bonus for instance for the number of units if it was truly affordable housing and would remain affordable housing okay thank you so any other thoughts i i wanted to provide plenty of opportunity at the end i didn't want to take up the full hour to provide opportunity for comments and

22:48 questions tonight too i don't have a ton of material to cover i was primarily focusing on the survey but i had jumped into starting to talk about this the middle housing land division legislation as well that we're still trying to figure out how to incorporate into the code update because this legislation came on much later in the process but the timeline is such that we have to implement it together with the new middle housing rules it's a bit more of a scramble to figure out how to incorporate but the new the senate bill 458 for the new middle housing land division requires us to allow division of the middle housing types

23:35 and why i had tied this into one of the survey questions about flexibility with allowing detached plexes versus attached plexes is that it impacts the ease of which you could divide those units onto their own lots so for instance you build a triplex that are all attached so it's side by side let's say with common walls then you you could still divide those it's just that the building construction type under the building code would have to meet a higher standard for the firewall separation versus if you were going to leave it as three units on one lot the building code requirement isn't as

24:22 isn't as high of a standard because they're not going to be divided but if we allow those same three units to be built on one lot and be detached with setbacks between them then it may be that it would be a little bit easier to divide those three smaller units onto their own each lot without having to worry about the construction type of firewalls and things under this new middle housing legislation i will mention one of the provisions for this new i should say middle housing land division legislation one of the other requirements for this land division is that each unit is on its own utilities so for instance

25:08 water sewer electrical primarily um so it really either would have to be a pretty expensive retrofit to come into say i'm going to keep using the triplex as an example but this applies across the board for the middle housing types to retrofit a triplex typically if you build just a triplex on one lot and are going to leave it on one lot it just has to have one water and one sewer service that's shared amongst those three units if you're going to want to ultimately divide them you would have to separate those three separate water and sewer surfaces and to do that after the fact would be pretty involved

25:53 but if you anticipate that you're going to build it and build it that way up front then it makes dividing them off easier after the fact you can essentially use this new middle housing land division legislation concurrent you can do the land division concurrent with building the middle housing itself is the way it's worded so anyway that's a really high level kind of introductory piece to that new legislation as well that we're trying to figure out how to incorporate into the that middle housing legislation so with that i just was going to touch on the timeline this you've seen this timeline a number of times we're still moving down the path as as most of you

26:39 will recall we've extended this timeline a couple of times one in response to the new middle housing legislation and then also to adjust for some setbacks related to covid with just having it be harder to you know do public outreach and things like that so we are running phase one which is the residential housing phase that's represented by these yellow bars in conjunction with phase two which is represented by these orange bars which is the employment lands phase so we are right here now moving into the fourth quarter of the year moving into this the next phase of going forward to start the adoption process which is first going to involve

27:25 taking what has been the public review drafts of all these code sections and now incorporating information we've received through the community outreach and preparing final public hearing drafts of all those code sections as well as preparing all the legal findings needed to justify the code changes and then preparing that is a big public hearing package that will first go to our planning commission for public hearing and they will make a formal recommendation ultimately to this body the city council where there will be another round of public hearing process and ultimately looking for an adoption by the city council for all this

28:11 that's represented by this nine-month bar of adoption process that we hope will be at the latest done by the middle of next year specifically for the housing phase due to the requirements under state law to adopt middle housing we have to have that in place by the end of june june 30th of next year the employment phase the employment lands phase isn't bound to that kind of a deadline but because we're running them concurrently that's still envisioned to be the goal for the timeline we are now also as you'll see by these blue bars beginning to contemplate how we're going to launch phase three of the code update project which i fondly call the everything else phase

28:57 we have just a portland state university has a fellowship program and we have engaged two fellows now there was a fellow that helped us over the summer and then also a fellow that just started today was her first day and will be working over the winter through most of next spring and um on this project to help us start that phase three work and the first steps will be doing what how we started phase one and phase two and that is doing an audit of the rest of the code sections to determine what does need to change how to prioritize all the other changes of sections that need updating and then

29:42 proceeding down the same path we did with phase one and phase two so we will continually update you as we start phase three and move through those steps and be seeking your feedback as well but we are focused primarily right now on moving into the public hearing stage for the phase one and phase two getting a public hearing scheduled in front of the planning commission for this fall there are portions that definitely have to go also in front of the lane county planning commission so this will be a joint public hearing process it'll be similar when we get to the city council level that it will also have to be a joint public hearing process with the county board of commissioners

30:31 there are some elements that don't necessarily have to go through both bodies but and we're still working with the county on some of those dynamics and logistics it may just turn out that it's easier to take the whole package through both bodies for approval rather than try and separate it out so again we're still working with the county on some of that but that's where we're headed and with that um i plan to be back in front of you for the next quarterly update after the first the year it's pretty tough as you all know to schedule the quarterly update in the over the holiday time in december so just after the first of the year probably right after your winter break i'll be

31:16 coming back to you maybe first thing and giving you an update where we're at in three months from now but with that i'm happy to go into any more detail or answer questions or listen to your feedback as well so i appreciate your time are there any questions or comments uh joe mark i am curious when you're talking about the parking structure those parking requirements or lack of requirements or whatever modifications that i'm curious you got responses and you got a committee were the

32:02 where were the developers at in on that subject because it seems as though i guess if you're querying people that don't have to do some of those things you're going to have a completely different perspective for the ones that can or cannot do certain things and they're the ones that will kill a project as opposed to have a project move forward just because you have a bunch of people that say hey that's a great idea let's move forward well those are the people that aren't potentially those are the people that aren't doing that and they are just pushing forward or we would end up pushing forward great ideas in other people's minds that's a that's a development killer so is that was that was that wade i would say yes it was wade as as you

32:49 know the the technical advisory committee was made up of um a broad spectrum of members of community that are involved with development at different levels but it included developers on our technical advisory committee for sure we don't know who all the 80 respondents to the survey were but i do know that specific people reached out to me and i directed them to the survey and some developers did take the survey i do know that but i think one way to think about the parking is and some of the direction for the project is to create flexibility within our code the parking requirement of one space per unit

33:35 is the most the city can require to be built but it doesn't limit somebody from developing more parking if they choose and so if they feel the market is demanding two spaces per unit for instance they can develop that we don't have a maximum but the most the city can mandate they develop is the one but if they propose and choose to develop two or more they can so i don't know if that exactly answers your question but all the perspectives definitely through the attack were weighed in figuring out how to to balance that and again the state law is the state law it mandates that that

34:20 the maximum we can require if we want to require less as a politics policy decision of the city council ultimately we could say what you the city's only going to require a half a space per unit or we could say we don't we'll let the market completely decide how much parking you want to develop we're not going to require any and let you decide how much parking you want to develop obviously that's balancing with the livability of the community and some of the neighborhood concerns with now parking's just going to be everywhere on the street or people parking in their yards or whatever some of the concerns might be around livability and the beautiful nature of our community

35:05 but so again it's it's a balancing act yeah no that that answers my question and i would just to put it out there is that i would not support having no parking requirement i think one makes sense and if a developer wants to do two per space which also gives them flexibility is because if they have a size in mind of each unit if a larger unit let's say it's a three bedroom two bath unit then one would one could easily articulate that it would probably uh be on the market for for better value if it had two parking spots available so i get that that makes a lot of sense i just want to and i appreciate allowing the maximum amount of flexibility i'm not i'm not supportive of the city

35:52 going in and creating a no more than type code i think that would that would be a deal killer development killer um nor am i supportive of the city saying okay you can't put so many spots you're going to limit it to one half spot per such and such so i think that's a you landed on a good spot and and it would be nice to be able to know though as if um there is uh and i'm not sure how you'd write it but to allow in development for some variances that interpreters or planners that okay plans etc think

36:37 that whatever they have in front of them is set in stone there i mean it just it just seems as though it's easy to follow the book and go black and white and say okay developer this is what the book says so this is what you this is what you have as opposed to having something in there that says okay here's where our area of reflexibility is something you know it just seems to be developers are running up against a brick wall when it comes to some things just don't make sense at times and when those things just don't make sense those are when the developers should be able to say this doesn't make sense and staff should be able to say you know you're right or at least have it to where the director or

37:22 whatever can immediately get pushed up to there instead of months down the road so that's that's the problem is is you know i like all the staff and everything but i i really think that we you know i guess it goes i don't know sean and merrily how long does this go back where we can say we got to get to yes we got to have the mindset of let's get this project to yes and if it requires a little bit of flexibility okay let's have a little flexibility if as long as it's not illegal immoral or unethical then let's do it i mean that's that's how i feel we just i would just like to see more of getting to yes and even staff becoming an advocate for the developers

38:07 to get projects done so anyway okay i'm that was my bandwagon i've been pushing corey sorry uh i've been pushing that too because the the guy that's getting the permit at the counter the guy or the staff person can only permit so much or i actually follow the rules i suppose specifically but there is a point there where maybe maybe we can bring the director in and make it more flexible and get the project done get it moving because that's really important make the customers happy and build the city corey thank you um so first i appreciate just my comment is just i appreciate the updates um for

38:54 me having just been just several months on council i'm really starting to wrap my head around the difference between land use code and building code and um you know i want more flexibility in all of it so that um my question about the parking though is is there any way to um to have different regulations depending on how many units you have so for example or does it just have to be across the board like it's a parking space per unit or if someone was to have a you know like seven thousand square feet and put like eight units or something on it could it be less or do we just have to do a minimum regardless or a maximum regardless so specifically for middle housing which

39:42 is duplexes triplexes fourplexes townhomes and cottage clusters the state rules are very prescriptive and this is the most we can require and is it it's generally the one space per unit so above that though when we get into um you mentioned say seven or eight units that to us would be outside of the middle housing standards and would be more kind of the medium density like apartment type style development so we're not bound by state law for that type of development and we can come up with our own provisions for what should be required for more more dense residential development a lot of our parking standards we recently updated we went through a tsp

40:29 implementation project and updated a lot of our parking standards um but the other thing i'll mention is is for back to the middle housing is and even for the other types of housing we can allow less we can't require more specific to middle housing but we could tie that say we wanted to provide allow less parking if it was in proximity to say main street or a frequent transit corridor so if you're within maybe a quarter mile of a transit corridor maybe that's the area where less parking could be required and even again for for um we built some of that into our updated parking standards for other types of

41:14 development as well so there is some opportunity or creative ways to do less but specific to middle housing we can't require more even depending on certain things hopefully that answers your question that does i appreciate that thank you and yeah i i think this is a really good discussion um the i guess the one comment i would make is i always hear us try to balance that that having clear standards that we tell developers get to yes with also understanding that each development is sort of unique and has its own characteristics and right like and you know needs to have you know be treated as its individual case so i just want to

42:00 sort of pull back the conversation and what i'm hearing folks say is not necessarily to add a bunch of process to you know make it clear what people can do but also a lot like if we can find places to like balance that and find you know apply some sort of common sense based on you know what's actually happening that would make that would make a lot of sense for us that's what ultimately what we're striving for and if if i could just chime in on that point a little bit i think you it's a great point and that is it's fairly universally recognized that our existing code is broken it it doesn't work it's very difficult to implement and it's very discretionary so

42:45 state law actually requires as you just mentioned for housing specifically state law requires us to have a clear and objective approval path for approving housing and we heard that a lot from the developers too they just want to know what the rules are very clearly here's what you have to do our code now is so subjective that they don't really know what the rules are it's it could depend on what day of the week you're asking or who you're asking or so even for staff for the developers for the whole community knowing very clearly what the rules are and as required by state law is required and and more usable at the same time we have built in and

43:32 counselor pictionary referred to kind of a variance process so along with having that clear and objective approval path we can have an alternate path and that is well we don't like or those clear and objective standards don't work for this particular project so they can opt into another path that has some subjectivity where they can ask for exceptions or variances to the clear and objective rules that does give discretion to the process to allow the more creative types of solutions so um i and i would just add two points of two points to that i think that's a really good description of where of of where we're going if it's really easy and i don't not into

44:18 your role you know your job mark because you're trying to boil all of this down into a workable code it is so easy if we want to be clear and objective to write 10 000 pages of code right so it's got to be we're sort of ju looking for just right right so and the other piece that that right anytime we drop drop people into a discretionary path that is gonna that is where all the sort of fallout and errors and anxiety is gonna come from so i'm you know i would be okay in a clear and objective space if we just we allowed people i don't know what the number is to come in within 10 of the standard right like and just build a variance in and say hey look we set the standard what we're looking for if you're over by 10 you're fine if you're under by 10 you're fine just to try to

45:03 keep people in the path where it's clear what we want and we get to yes yeah these are all great comments and feedback so i appreciate it um any other comments before we all right then we will talk to you again when it's um the next time mark and thank you very much for the time thank you we are going to reconvene here at seven so if you want to uh drop your camera and go and mute and we will be back on the same link at seven o'clock thank you very much we are adjourned

47:35 all right i'm going to call the regular session of the springfield city council to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here councillor mo here council rodley here councillor stare councillor woodrow here and counselor pictionary come here all right please note that counselor stare is excused for the evening for a work conflict um would you please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to

48:31 indivisible with liberty and justice for all as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us online to keep yourselves on you until you are called on to provide public testimony there will be two times this evening uh designated for public testimony and will be listed as public hearings and business from the audience on the agenda if you're joining on us online with a tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak during that time please use the raised hand feature when the agenda item is called when we call on you please state your name in ward or general location in the city for the record first item please first item is the consent calendar

49:21 are you ready for me i am ready for you i will make a motion that we approve the consent column second all right it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent calendar uh neil can you call the role please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor rodley yes counselor stare counselor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary yes the motion passes uh five zero and one absent next item please next item is public hearings you have two public hearings this evening public hearing number one is a request for metro plan diagram amendment and zone change for 1.4 acres of property located at the northwest corner of marcola road

50:06 and 28th street ordinance number one an ordinance amending the eugene springfield metropolitan area general plan the metro plan diagram by redesignating approximately 1.14 acres of land from median dead city residential mdr to commercial sea concurrently amending the springfield zoning map by rezoning the same approximately 1.4 acres of land from mdr to community commercial cc adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date this is the first reading and andy limberg is here for the staff report yes good evening mr mayor counselors i'm just gonna share my screen i'm gonna have a powerpoint

50:51 if you bear with me here i can show the site and let me start the slideshow from the beginning hopefully you can see a map of springfield the site is well known to councillors it's the marcola meadows neighborhood this particular site is right at the corner of 28th street and marcola road just at that northwest corner of the intersection counselors may recall that about a year ago much of the neighborhood was redesignated and rezoned from commercial and mixed-use commercial specifically zoning to medium density residential and public land and open space and that

51:37 was to facilitate um changes to the neighborhood configuration um since that time the applicant has revisited their decision to uh essentially winnow down the the commercial designation and zoning to about nine acres and to add back about one acre just a little over one acre of um commercial land at that intersection to facilitate a medical office development so this is um not the most current map of um marcola meadows things are happening happening fairly rapidly and i wasn't able to get the 2021 map which shows a lot of the construction that's occurred on the site so um hopefully be able to get that if there's another follow-up

52:23 meeting or anything like that but the site is in this extreme southeast corner of the neighborhood it's about 1.14 acres for read read the development and uh redesignation uh the site is identified on the metro plan the metro plan designation and it was changed with the previous action of the council um and so the applicant is proposing to redesignate from medium density residential uh to commercial it's a little hard to see at just one acre scale on the springfield uh map but um it does register um this is the current land use designation um a little bit of the western boundary

53:09 of the property is actually already zoned and designated commercial so it's just a little bit less than the actual property area and so the proposal is to have a consolidated commercial site um at the marcolo road and 28th street intersection so that would be commercial designation similarly the zoning would be changed concurrently with this redesignation from medium density residential uh to commercial and this is the master plan for the neighborhood um the current commercial area and planned driveway is west of the intersection of 28th street and marcola road um for the planning commission public

53:55 hearing adjacent residents had expressed their concerns about commercial development along 28th street they have cited traffic concerns and commercial vehicles entering the neighborhood staff would like to point out that the shared entrance for this commercial site uh should the redu rezoning and redesignation occur the site access is fixed at a shared driveway which is on marcola road uh west of the intersection with 28th street so there would not be additional commercial traffic introduced along 28th street with this proposal additionally the location of the planned driveway is

54:41 an appropriate setback from a major intersection such as arcola road and 28th street the marcola being an arterial street and 28th being a collector street there's a approximately 450 foot setback for the driveway to ensure that safe traffic movements can occur at that shared driveway so staff has the criteria available for the metroplan amendment and the zone change staff notes that the planning commission adopted a majority recommendation in favor of this action and i'd be happy to answer any questions i would note that in the staff report the

55:26 proposal is to rezone for the purpose of a medical office however the analysis that staff has provided would consider any type of commercial use that could be allowable on the site so the applicant has done traffic evaluation to look at incremental changes that could occur should a different type of use of uh be developed on the site under its commercial zoning so that has been taken into consideration all right great are there any questions counselor pictionary thank you andy did i notice that is there unless it's smacking me in the face here did you said that the planning commission said they agreed with most or

56:13 whatever it was kind of it sounded like there was a little bit of it they hedged on some stuff or whatever could you explain what they had what their concerns were uh there was a dissenting vote um it was not a non uh anonymous a unanimous uh vote in favor uh the dissenting uh um commissioner had noted that residential land use was important to the community and all housing was important however it was acknowledged that the majority of the property already had been redesignated from its original commercial designation to uh residential and also public land and open space for institutional facilities um a future school among that and so

56:59 um the count the commissioners acknowledged that the one acre uh did not represent a significant reduction of units that could be developed on the site it was also noted that um it's a busy intersection it's not ideal to have residential right on that corner and the exposure is more uh favorable for a commercial building that would kind of buffer areas to the north and to the end to the west uh in that neighborhood from um the current log truck traffic commercial traffic a lot of vehicles going back and forth so that also was um noted in the meeting so i guess what i want to clarify it says that you said there's one dissenting vote and

57:45 it appears as though everything i've read on this that this is a it complies with all of the land use laws it complies with all the coding it complies with everything but but we have someone on the planning commission that disagrees that it doesn't follow the law or coding is that or is that an opinion they said that that's what they think they should have on there instead of what they've applied for as far as it they think it should be residential is that correct correct they they felt that the criteria for housing one of the goals uh statewide planning goals for housing over road economic development in their view and so that's why they had cast that that vote okay thank you very much

58:33 spouse for mo the only thing that we run into here is is we need residential housing but we also need commercial to provide the jobs for those people to live in those homes so that's the balance we have i think they did the correct one counselor bradley i i don't i don't have an issue with this as it is um i just want to sort of go on record my concern is really around sort of traffic in that area and that's in my ward too um because we already have the and you touch on a little bit so i just somewhere want this to just be known that i'm aware of it and then just paying attention to the fact that you've already got sort of a road or a thruway that has a lot of mixed use there's a

59:19 lot of truck use on that and putting a school in there and just the more mixed use on there the more we just have to pay attention to the transportation along there and just i'm gonna i'm gonna trust and also probably pester that we're gonna be paying attention to that as that area develops um in order to keep people as safe as possible absolutely um please know counselor that there will be a new intersection at the extension of v street and marcola road that will not likely be a signalized intersection but as development occurs on the southern boundary of arcola meadows that makes the road seem a little bit more compact and there's there are buildings and trees and other

1:00:06 activity closer to the street it also allows the city to look at the current speed limits along that stretch of road which are higher than most residential neighborhoods that can be reviewed there will be crossings uh for pedestrians installed uh to allow for school access on marcola road so it will tend to uh mitigate and calm some of the traffic at least from the 28th street intersection west um and that's kind of the area of critical concern at least for residents before it gets more kind of the open industrial areas um west or sorry to the east towards um 42nd street and you your correct staff and the

1:00:51 developer acutely aware of transportation issues on this and so that's it's an ever evolving and very critical component of this neighborhood development all right mary bridget mayor van gorden i have a couple procedural matters before uh the council gets too far in its discussion because this is a land use hearing um just two things this is a first reading for the council so the council is conducting a public hearing tonight um i would ask that before you open the hearing that the counselors declare any conflicts of interest or ex contacts and um the other procedural items um for a land use public hearing occurred at the planning commission level so you don't have to go through the whole

1:01:36 script like we typically have done in other land use matters and then just said a word to counselors about holding off on deliberating and questions until we have a chance to have the hearing happen and then um you can chime in at this meeting or that when it's on for um approval or adoption at the next meeting all right perfect thank you um so then let's go through the uh declaring export day contact or any potential conflicts of interest i'll start and then we can go by ward order um i've had no exported contact and i have no potential conflicts of interest damian um saying no no conflict of interest in any shape or form steve mo word two i've had no ex

1:02:22 party contact or any con okay i'm a springfield property owner but i have no conflict of interest i think something like that so cory rodley um i have no i've had no ex partake contact with anyone and um no conflict of interest early woodrow ward five i have had no ex parte contact and have i have uh no uh conflict of interest joe pictionary ward six i have had no ex parte contact with the applicants and do not foresee any conflict of interest great thank you near then it's appropriate to go ahead and open the hearing okay i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing

1:03:07 and then we'll give people a minute to get in the queue specific to this item and just a reminder if you would like to speak on this item please use the raise your hand feature and we can call on you mayor we have one speaker waiting to speak it's kevin shaper and kevin you should be able to unmute your microphone hi thanks kevin shaper award too and i just wanted to uh have a sort of brief rebuttal to my counselor to say that we have a housing crisis and we actually have uh jobs that are having a hard time getting filled right now and so i think uh i think we should consider whether

1:03:52 housing is really what we need to prioritize over jobs right now thanks all right neil do you see anybody else i don't see anybody else mayor that appears to be all the speakers for this item all right perfect then i'm going to close the public hearing and then if then this looks like it's first reading and no action only so no action so next item please mayor your second public hearing public hearing number two is annexation of territory to the city of springfield annex 0.48 acres of property located at 186 deadman ferry road assessors map

1:04:38 17-0 tax slot 1500 and a portion of deadman ferry public right-of-way abutting the property this is ordinance number two an ordinance annexing certain territory addressed as 186 deadman ferry road assessors map 17-03-14-0 tax lot 1500 and a portion of the deadman ferry public right-of-way of budding the subject property to the city of springfield and will emeline park and recreation district adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date again this is a first reading and melissa courinho is here for the staff report

1:05:38 hi all sorry about that um let me just share my screen real quick i'm going to i'm actually at home today and hoping my new internet service will work but i just wanted to wish you all a good evening glad to see you all again i hope you all enjoyed your summer recess so the city council is requested to consider an ordinance to annex an approximately 0.6 acre parcel municipally addressed as 186 deadman ferry road in springfield it is highlighted in yellow on the image in front of you it is located on the north side of denman ferry road and the east side of international way the property owner has requested annexation in order to connect to the city's sanitary sewer for the current residential residential use on site

1:06:30 this is the current zoning and city boundaries around the property the site is zoned campus industrial with the urbanizable fringe overlay as you can see it is also very close to the urban growth boundary which is located to the south across deadman ferry road if annexation is approved the proposed zoning and city boundaries would look like this no other zoning changes are requested except for the removable i'm sorry for the removal of the urbanizable fringe overlay for annexations there are four criterion from the springfield development code section 5.7-140 the first criterion is the affected territory proposed to be annexed is

1:07:16 within the city's urban growth boundary and is contiguous to the city limits and uh you can see here that the subject territory is contiguous to the city limits along the western boundary international way is already within city limits criterion two the proposed annexation is consistent with applicable policies in the metro plan and in any applicable refinement plans 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 urban growth boundary and is currently covered by the urbanizable fringe overlay with annexation the parcel will be removed from special districts such as the urbanizable fringe overlay

1:08:01 as well as service areas like the rainbow rainbow water and fire district and then would be included in urban services such as sanitary sewer sub-electric and water eugene springfield emergency services and willama lane recreation next criterion where applicable fiscal impacts the city have been mitigated through an annexation agreement i think i skipped something apologies there we go if annexation is approved the subject territory can easily obtain key facilities and services from denman ferry road just south of the site again these facilities and services will include sanitary sewer connection sub-water and electric service fire protection services from eugene's springfield fire department police

1:08:47 services from springfield police and willamalane parks and recreation district now where applicable fiscal impacts to the city have been mitigated through an annexation agreement an annexation agreement is currently being drafted and a final version will be shared with council at the second reading scheduled for september 20th the agreement covers obligations for the applicant and for the city including any financial responsibilities the agreement will include details on future street improvements to denman ferry road connection to key urban facilities and services and decommissioning of the existing septic system on site if the annexation is approved by city council the agreement will be re ready to be executed executed by both the applicant and the

1:09:33 city and the agreement would then be recorded with lane county because all applicable annexation criteria have been met and annexation will help facilitate full street improvements in this neighborhood as well as bring this property into city limits staff recommends the council approve this application that's it for my presentation i'm here for any questions you may have and i believe the applicants are also in attendance if you have any questions for them counselor missionary not a question just comment that i read to this very thoroughly and also the application and i appreciate its thoroughness and i don't have i think it's a actually a better use of the land so i support this

1:10:27 anybody else before i open the public hearing then i am going to open the public hearing and see if there's anybody who wants to uh give public comment to this item just a reminder to use the raise your hand feature and we'll call on you uh mayor i'm not seeing any hands raised for this particular item all right then i'm going to close the public hearing and before steve enters a motion to roll uh over the public hearing i just have a i guess a procedural question here um if we leave the public hearing open until the 20th and the second reading are we going to have to we can't adopt this the 20th correct

1:11:20 but my understanding is if there are no public comments um made on september 20th i believe the council can then vote on it but again i defer to the attorneys sorry about that melissa to step on you that's correct you'll have the second reading of this that night and you could adopt okay perfect all right okay i make a motion to continue the public hearing for ordinance number two at the september 20th 2021 regular session second and neil can you call the uh role please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes council rodley yes counselor stare counselor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary all right all right the motion passes five yays zero knows one absent next

1:12:08 item please mayor the next item is business from the audience so as a reminder if you would like to speak during business from the audience please just use the raise your hand feature and we'll put you in the queue mayor we have one speaker so far it's holly s and holly um mayor if you're ready i'll unmute mute your microphone i think we're ready can you hear me we can hear you thank you welcome back marion counselors i'm holly shaper from ward 2.

1:12:53 i've spent time listening and thinking about previous council meetings i heard folks asking for change and for direction and how they can help make the change counselors have envisioned i have heard council's response to be trust us we are doing the work trust us you might not see it but we have made change trust us and give the new police chief time there is an old adage that is important here while it is good to trust it is important to verify so while you expect trust we demand verification we have trusted you almost completely for much of the past eight years in that time spd has gone through five police chiefs with 40 percent of them

1:13:38 leaving amid scandal they have shot six people killing half of them and there have been at least 10 police related lawsuit settlements both internal whistleblower complaints and external complaints from people harmed by spd while finding information on these settlements is very challenging the seven that have been reported on publicly have a sum total hundred of 5 one thousand dollars this is where we have gotten with just trusting and not seeking verification while trusting the city has been led to its current state of legal exposure in broad areas including wrongful death sexual harassment excessive use of force and civil rights violations from both internal and external plaintiffs it is shocking that even while they are the subject of public outcry this department

1:14:24 failed to receive the necessary support and interventions required to enact change and prevent these situations from occurring in addition to this the city's liability insurance policy has become incredibly but predictably punitive we now have a police in jail per claim deductible of five hundred thousand dollars which is only set to increase from here unless we lose coverage entirely this is deeply concerning so if you would like folks to trust that you are doing the work and to trust that this new chief as opposed to his four predecessors is going to bring about change and to trust that things are getting better and to trust that you are working diligently to shift away from warriors and to guardians you must show us your work given past history and the current legal and insurance liability exposures we

1:15:10 would be absolutely foolish to simply trust that this is happening and to take you at your word please show your work show us that you are doing to make these changes to ensure that everyone in springfield is treated with dignity and respect show us that you value our experiences and our feedback in monitoring that change is actually happening show us that the changes are meaningful and how they will impact the big issues officer involved shootings sexual harassment civil rights violations excessive use of force to name a few and not just public perception thank you

1:15:57 mayor will give folks a moment if you don't mind but i don't see any other hands at this point all right let's give them another minute and then we'll get ready for uh mayor we do have one additional hand um camila mirza um you should be able to unmute your microphone now hi there can you hear me we can hear you hi sorry i couldn't see the name of that speaker or i couldn't see who that was could i please just get that name again yes um that was holly schaefer

1:16:42 i'm sorry because holly s as is the name she's using right now and where is she a community member could i get some background uh she's a citizen in springfield like do you have any specific comments that you want to make for for the council to consider uh no sorry i was just trying to get information on who that was i couldn't see who the speaker was so it was a little bit confusing but thank you all right thank you

1:17:28 mayor the next speaker is listed as a community member so no name associated and you should be able to unmute your microphone now awesome can you hear me we can hear you awesome yeah i would ward 4 and i would just like to say um and absolutely our family agrees 100 with what the first speaker holly had said so we would just like to second that and thank you for your time thank you mayor our next speaker is johannes tedeo followed by lizzie utterback and johannes you should be able to unmute your microphone

1:18:18 hello everyone uh counselors and mayor i apologize right now i currently have vertigo so um but i do agree with uh everything that holly said and i hope that moving forward that we could also have folks who are speaking feel like they are safe when another person from the public also comes and comments specifically try to be able to identify who the first speaker was to me that sounds scary and this is coming from a person who comes from a disenfranchised community here in springfield who lives in fear i think everything of what holly said is on point we need to be able to see that accountability piece in order to build trust in order to feel safe and especially for the communities that have been targeted and traumatized and have

1:19:03 not been able to create a space to heal it's time to be able to have that space it's time for myself and my family to feel safe and the community that we contribute if you all know me you know what the little grain of salt would i add to the community and what inspire other and hopefully them inspiring other folks to be able to come out or when we have situations where there hasn't been any accountability uh there hasn't been um um the body cam so i apologize very good um but i hope i hope that we could be able to have that transparency and i hope that the videos especially the ones uh that the community has been asking for especially the one um i don't have it exactly on me but

1:19:50 there's a specific date oh here we go on um an event that occurred on may 30th 2021 um where alexander cunha was shot by spd officer um still waiting to be able to see those videos and when would they be released and if it's something that we have to be able to do a public records request then that's the next steps that we'll take but i hope that there is transparency to be able to build trust like i said and like you all heard various different times from other folks in the community folks in this community are scared of course for the folks in in privileged communities maybe they're not but that's because they're not living the same experience that we are i'm asking for a change and i hope with this new leadership going forward that you are willing to listen and find ways

1:20:36 to be able to get there when i ran for city council i promise to be able to meet folks where they're at and i'm still waiting to be able to see that from the council members not all of them i know some of them are actually doing that duties and being able to reach out or you all represent us i hope that you are able to hear us listen to us ask questions and come and meet us in the communities where maybe you all haven't been at too i'm more than happy to be able to give tours to anybody on the council who wants to be able to meet these communities learn their struggle and be able to find ways to be able to find a solution for us to feel safe thank you council and mayor for for allowing me to be able to speak here and i hope more folks are able to speak right after me thank you

1:21:27 thank you mayor the next speaker is lizzie utterback followed by jennifer potter and lizzy you should be able to unmute your microphone hello can you hear me we can hey this is lizzie utterback from ward 3 i wanted to welcome you all back to council it was really great to be able to meet some of you at the mural celebration it was great to introduce myself to you put some names faces to names i just wanted to say that i didn't realize our insurance situation was so bad off um so i'm really glad that the first speaker brought that up um and i was wondering what the plan was in regards to that um and like the most recent speaker i'm really disturbed that someone would use their public comment

1:22:12 time to try to get information about another commenter and i was just wondering what protections are in place or what your thoughts on are for keeping us all safe that's it for now thanks our next speaker is jennifer potter we do not have anyone in the queue behind her at this time jennifer you should be able to unmute your microphone hi can you hear me we can hi my name is jennifer potter and i live in ward 3 and i just wanted to speak in support of johannes and his comments and

1:22:57 to second what holly the first speaker said and i really appreciate the counsel taking the time to listen to our public comment thank you mayor it appears those are our speakers under business from the audience thank you um is there a council response counselor once upon a time when the public testified they'd give their name and address and there was no no fear in those days times have changed god i hate those i hate that change but nowadays we need to protect those people they need me to get out the public and speak what they think without fear of

1:23:44 anybody tracking down or saying something against is there anybody else counselor pits yeah first of all thank you to everybody that's spoken and and and i'll be completely transparent is that uh i was raised that you achieve in silence and i know that that might not be acceptable for some of the citizen members but one thing i've realized here uh the culture of oregon is very invasive uh to where when you do have ideas everybody feels the need to be a part of it and and that's okay at times but sometimes you know too many people at

1:24:29 the table can keep a plan from not happening but then also you have to move in silence certain things now i'm not talking about the police but i'm talking about you know many of you heard me talk about culture shifts and things like that and i can sit here and tell you hey i've been doing a lot of stuff and i have but you're not going to get details because i need to make sure that these things should come through sometimes people are quick to react versus sit back and think uh and i don't like to say that as a large black man i don't always have that privilege in society however you know i can say for me specifically once again i'm not talking about police like there are things that i'm doing my background because i truly feel that we need to be able to pull in citizens

1:25:14 who don't speak who don't have a voice uh and so a lot of things that i'm doing around any type of culture shift i'm not going to openly talk about just yet i'm not going to share just yet because i want to make sure that uh i'm checking my boxes you know dodging my eyes crossing these whatever the phrase is before i present anything because if it doesn't happen and then people are well you said you're going to do this no one's going to accept oh i couldn't do this because of this this this and that but then also just with my job there are a lot of things that inherently will benefit the citizens of springfield and i'm trying to find that balance you know my loyalties lie with those who kept me here i.e my office and so i want to do things to support them then as a

1:25:59 counselor i want to do things for the city of springfield and sometimes there's an overlap uh and i also need to do self-care and so i understand if you're impatient with certain things and you know and that's okay and i respect that and i understand that but realize based on my upbringing and based on the methods that i use to get things done i'm not always going to be very transparent so thank you um i think i have two quick points and maybe nancy you can comment uh somebody referenced a uh body cam video that or that people were asking about prior to us going out on

1:26:45 break um and i know we were still developing the policy under which conditions we would release it um do you know if that's been released or when the eta would be that it would be available to folks to my knowledge that particular incident has not been released i i need to double check this with chiefshare but it's my understanding that the district attorney um can make it makes kind of the ultimate determination whether or not body cam footage is released um because that's part of adjudicating your crime um and it's within um her purview to release or not um so that's kind of you know when you're when we're

1:27:30 working with body care because that's something that we have to uh kind of work out with the district attorney's office i know that chief sure has been in conversation with them about how to best move forward on when we have requests such as this do we have an adopted policy to do it i know that this gets a little bit tricky right because sometimes it's governed by department policy and sometimes it's governed by um by actually what the da needs because it's an active investigation but do we have the adopted policy yet we do have an adopted body-worn camera policy yes i would have to look into it to see if it addresses clearly as far as the release of footage but we do have the policy yeah

1:28:16 yeah could you check and you know i know we're not gonna know tonight but the next time you know maybe you can write us all a note about you know when that when that's gonna become available because i think the the challenge is to make sure that we're being right to the investigation but also making information available as streamlined as possible and you know if it's not being held up by uh by uh the the d.a then you know we should be releasing it okay and i believe mary bridget smith um has a comment to contribute as well yeah i really just to add on to what um nancy was saying the um in this particular matter pardon me um we did have a request for this but since our pending criminal charges out of this matter um we're

1:29:02 unable to release uh this particular video at this time our body-worn camera policy does have um reference to releasing records and public records it is um doesn't have a i would say it's based on the statute and purposely uh does not have a lot of detailed information because it's so situation specific about releasing uh body camera videos there are things to think about with releasing body worn camera videos in terms of um obscuring folks faces and the cost and time it takes to do that and then whether the release of that particular video is in the public interest or if any public records um exemptions apply so it is um i don't think it's intended not to be

1:29:47 transparent but there's just a lot of things you gotta think through before those records get and those cameras get released and i know that sbd is interested in looking at um how to do that and we're checking with other communities about how they approach body worn camera videos overall now that we have them in place and we're getting more of them um so i know that's something that's um been top of mind for them yeah and my concern is not us you know is not worried that like we're not being transparent it's more that this is our first time through this as a community and really trying to talk through okay well what does that look like and you know how does you know how does that sort of criminal investigation arm look knowing that we can't release things it is are part of a pending investigation

1:30:32 okay thank you i'll uh i can carry that back thank you councilman one of the things we're faced with is we went back and changed our budget a couple years ago to purchase the body cams the public was expecting that the footage from those body cams would be protect the public and the police and they some that and because of that some they somehow think they have that accessible for the common person to see apparently that's not true and and uh so i think that needs to be sort of communicated to the public uh because they're they'd be a little frustrated because they can't get in there now

1:31:18 well thank you counselor i i do know that the council has requested that spd provide them provide this body with an update i think it's the last update we did was in april so we are due to to have that scheduled so i will work with chiefsure to make sure that we address uh body-worn camera footage and transparency when we do do that update for the council one dilemma thank you yeah thank you nancy murray bridgette um yeah i think we just all recognize that this is you know we deployed in late may early early june that this is really going to be learning on us as elected officials and as a community and you know it's a department

1:32:04 so it's going to take a while talking through this um the one comment i also did want to make is just to reiterate uh you know back to the question about you know all the work that's being done in policing right now and just um i think damian had some really good points that some of this is not just isn't going to be seen involves personnel involves discipline it involves folks you know it some of its pending litigation right and you know um i think we're trying to sort through and give people look at the work that we're doing in a way that is productive that can be shared and then understanding that not all of this can be shared because of a lot of different issues so i would just ask that people be patient we're working on it and that we hear the concern

1:32:53 america if i may comment on that i do appreciate you uh saying that because um she sure has made a lot of changes internally in spd and we've seen a lot of really positive outcomes from that um some of these things have been you know really amping up policies uh providing clarity um making sure that there's accountability on all aspects of the organization um he's done some restructuring um making sure that people are you know um in the doing the the appropriate role for them so you know he he really is thoughtful in how he is undertaking this work but you know we we also have to um comply with uh labor negotiations and contracts and rules regarding public

1:33:39 employees which is why you know you don't hear about some of these internal things that we're doing because some of them may be related to discipline or protected under a contract in which case we wouldn't discuss it all right perfect thank you um next item please mayor the next item is any business from the city council counselor wrongly i just wanted to take a moment just to to say out loud that it's the one year anniversary of the holiday fine farm fire which happened this time last year one year anniversary and just um just my ongoing um appreciation for the firefighters whether they are are part of our

1:34:26 springfield eugene firefighters or wildland firefighters or all the folks who are continuing to work um in what is still a very challenging environment and just to just to commemorate that this is a challenging day for a lot of folks who have experienced the loss and that um i have appreciated sort of be having a front row seat to sort of the stories and the processes as we've been paying attention to what has happened just in that year and i know that the fact that it was smoky today in our communities just sort of exacerbated the feelings of like oh yeah this happened a year ago so um i just wanted to take a moment because y'all give me a little bit of a seat to say yeah it's been a year um and there's still a long way to go and just

1:35:13 sort of commemorating and and saying that it's been a year thanks now sir woodrow i had that feeling when i walked outside today and smelled the smoke the first thing i thought of was it's been a year you know we got past labor day but it's been a year for since that happened it was a it was uh uh a few seconds before i got myself oriented because that was really scary last year um to tag on to your uh appreciation for the firefighters i would just like to tag on and say yes we're about what today's the seventh so we're four

1:35:58 days away from three losing 343 uh firefighters 20 years ago so that's quite a that's quite a loss it's still a loss um i lost a girlfriend in the north tower so i think about it 20 years later and they may be on the other side of the country but it affected all of us so it's something to remember and think about for their families and everybody else that was connected with those north and south towers thanks marley anybody else

1:36:44 all right next item please the next item is business from the city manager there is one item is the dlcd grant applications for for pfsp amendments and there's two resolutions i'll read those into the record resolution number two a resolution in support of a grant application seeking planning assistance from the department of land conservation and development to amend the public facilities and services plan the pfsp a refinement plan of the eugene springfield metropolitan area general plan which is the metro plan and then resolution number three a resolution in support of a grant application seeking technical assistance from the department of land conservation and development to amend the public facilities and services plan the pfsp a refinement plan of the eugene springfield metropolitan area general

1:37:30 plan the metro plan and sandy belson is here for the staff report good evening mayor and council can you hear me thank you so tonight i have a twofer for you a two for one so this is one agenda item two resolutions and one project the idea behind it is that there are two grant applications that have potential to fund this one project and so we're asking for your support for both of them in case we don't get the first one that we can go ahead and apply for and maybe get the second one and they're both grants offered by the department of land conservation and development and as you heard in the title of the resolutions to help us update the public

1:38:19 facilities and services plan and to include specifically um the amendments that would be required to carry out the sub master plan the sub and rainbow water district are working together and have created a new water master plan for the community and so those there are some projects and maps that needed to be updated to account for that master plan and then the glenwood stormwater conceptual design that we've had done indicated that a need for an additional outfall to the willamette river for the big storm events and that would also need to be included in the public facilities and services plan to support

1:39:04 development in the north waterfront area so that's the background we don't have the capacity at this point to undertake this and it's also a metro wide project because it involves all of the metro plan which is eugene and springfield and lane county and so elkhog lane council of governments has submitted the first application and would submit the second one if needed and do the majority of the work on behalf of the local governments

1:40:04 okay i i don't have a question i just when i read through it i i saw the creativity behind it and then the ability to be able to use elcog and i just it sounded really good to me the whole the whole being able to put that all together i thought that sounded really good anybody else steve sandy's comment triggered a question in my mind we have to have a water master plan on the others do we have an electrical master plan i believe that sub does have one um i have not looked to verify that but the electric service is part of the public facilities and services plan and so we do have an electrical component and

1:40:51 i'm assuming that sub has a master plan for electricity but i'm not actually sure i know i i think thank you for that all right steve you got the motion oh okay uh i make a motion that we approve resolution number two and resolution number three second all right it's been moved and seconded neil could you call the roll please yes counselor pitts all right let's just keep going and we'll come back to damien councillor mo

1:41:37 yes counselor rodney yes counselor stare counselor woodrow yes counselor pictionary yes and counselor pits must be having some microphone problems then um the motion passes four to zero with two absent and thank you sandy for putting two of those letters in the same motion next item please the next item is business from the city um i'm sorry any other business from the city in the city before we get to the next item no further business thank you and then the last item is business from the city attorney we have one item a revision of bylaws

1:42:22 for the springfield police advisory committee that's back the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee the bpac the springfield arts commission library advisory board and springfield history history museum committee an ordinance amending springfield municipal code section 2.452 board membership uh mary bridget smith and aj knightis are here for the staff report and um let me read this ordinance into the record first sorry mary bridget ordinance number three an ordinance amending springfield municipal code section 2.452 board membership and adopting a severability clauses of the first reading thank you and mayor and council i'm here tonight to present to the council

1:43:07 some revised bylaws for your boards and commissions the ones that were listed in the item last year the council embarked on a new recruiting system and also part of that we took the opportunity to look at boards and commissions did some standardizations of bylaws put together a training guide for volunteers and met with each boarding commission to go over their bylaws and just make sure everything was going okay so um asking tonight to approve the bylaws for these listed committees the library advisory board actually has municipal code sections um that need to be amended and a bit different procedurally so this is just the first reading for that um kind of following up on this project

1:43:53 i still need to meet with the historic commission i'll have those to you later and then we've left alone budget committee cdac and planning commission those are different types of committees they have different staff support and different missions than the other boards and commissions that are in this item so those bylaws most likely won't change or if they do they'll come to the council in a different way um and then we're still going to work on doing a training video for the volunteers and your boards commissions and uh committees and then revamping the city's website to update that information so it's a little more volunteer friendly and updated um and if you unless you have any questions you don't have to do a hearing for the um change in the municipal code

1:44:39 and can just move forward with the motion all right all right i have some questions okay hi steve okay uh the uh i love our citizens that volunteer for these things but within the bylaws of these committees they're supposed to be appointed elias on i've seen it a board member liason shall be responsible for scheduling a joint meeting of the respecting board and the city council every two years those around this don't know that at all and so i don't think it's been followed up i think it should be put in the bylaws that that is one of the responsibilities that they have to do each well period

1:45:25 it's it's section section two point six point four steve could you read the section again oh sure i'll read it for you okay uh it's 6.4 and uh page 16 of 17. the board member liaison for the arts committee historic commission library board and springfield police advisory committee shall be responsible for scheduling a joint meeting of the respective board and city council every two years

1:46:10 the lord and in the committee bylaws they're not told that right they don't know that so you're talking about in the council's uh operating policies and procedures yeah right that's having joint meetings with um each committee yeah okay yeah that you're right that's not in the bylaws the bylaws for these each committees are really just their framework for how they do their work um but that is something that we can let the liaisons know and also cancel leadership as aware when they set the agenda if they want to have joint meetings with folks i think we left it out of the bylaws just to give a little flexibility in case the council schedule doesn't allow for a joint meeting with somebody um i think recently you might

1:46:55 have had a joint meeting with the planning commission was the most recent joint meeting that i can recall um so it was left out of these bylaws we know it's something that does that does occur we just wanted to give you some flexibility in case it just didn't get scheduled yeah i just think it's important that they know the res their response not responsible what what they can do they can communicate with the council or council meeting they can request that and they don't know that that's why yeah could could you clarify like because the way i would read that since it was in council bylaws that we as the liaison the counselor who is the liaison is responsible to work on schedules actually that's not it it's under 6.4 it's the board member liaison for the

1:47:40 within the committee and that's that's us that's not a counselor yeah i would have read that as us that's like we as the liaison to that committee should be coming back and you know maybe we can touch on this one either the section is communicating with the mayor and council and i read that as a member of that committee is responsible for trying to set that up so um anyway that's right that's where i see it that's where i'm coming hey there it is yeah maybe we can talk about this at a goal setting to get did it to get it clarified about how to make sure these meetings get set up but i would have read that as uh that because we are the liaisons to from the council to that committee we're responsible to

1:48:26 communicate back to council what's going on with that committee so i would have read that as us is whatever boards you sit on you've got to get that meeting scheduled but maybe we can just take that one and clarify it when we get that far in the year yeah it needs to be wordsmith yeah marilyn yeah um that's one of the things i'd written down but if you read through what mary bridget has brought through to us tonight it identifies us as the liaison board member non-voting member but at the liaison so that helps to clarify that sentence anyway helps it helps to clarify it may be better to you probably clarify better but that helps to clarify it i had a couple things when i read through them um

1:49:11 one was um maybe a better clarification between of i know we're trying to we're trying to streamline and make sure it down to nine members per committee um or as close as we can get to that uh voting members um and i as i read through it i i got confused into some of them nine nine whoever they represent and then underneath was non-voting member council non-voting member whatever um but one of the things one of them in the under the arts commission specifically at the top it clarified who the voting members who the nine members were it went through the non-voting member the liaison or that got down to the bottom

1:49:57 and then it clarified where the springfield arts commission members would come from in the community being a business or whatever and it was it was further clarification of the first line and i thought it should be maybe should be put together with um with the nine voting members at the top because it really further clarified who they were it's that being separated you might lose you could read through it and easily lose that clarification that they needed to be connected to springfield somehow either through a business or living or being a resident or whatever and the top line doesn't necessarily state that specifically the the number one underneath arts commission

1:50:48 well i think it's 1a so some clarification that the voting um outlaw at large folks though need to have the qualifications that are listed in like b c and d right okay right yeah that i think i think it's like one a and then when you get down to one d it clarifies who's one are and if they got put together it would further clarify make it more make it more make more sense that they are connected to each other um and that was that was where my confusion came as i read through it i understood what it was saying but it was i wonder if it would be easier to have two sections or two um points underneath the membership one that clarified the voting members

1:51:33 and then the second part to clarify is the non-voting members just to keep it streamlined because it was in it was a little bit confusing uh and i knew and i knew i was reading so but it's a little confusing from from that standpoint that uh you know voting and non-voting um uh members for the different committees and like i said i know that we're trying to keep them at nine members to kind of you know to make it more universal with each committee that it's nine members and so um maybe just sectioning them out between the two might be a little bit easier the liaison question um i'll i'll be very honest when i first became a counselor nobody told me what

1:52:18 the liaison to the committees was i i didn't have a clue i didn't know what my job was i didn't know what i was supposed to do i didn't have any explanation as to what a council liaison was to a committee the first one of the first committees i was liaison to i never went to the meeting i didn't know i was supposed to i thought i was just the person that if they had a problem they'd get in touch with me and i would take whatever their concern was to counsel i had no idea that i was supposed to attend every meeting that they had so somewhere along the line that information has to be transmitted to to everybody on council so it was a hard lesson to learn but i feel i learned it but i had no i i was clueless i had no idea i was supposed to attend every meeting so i think it's

1:53:04 it's important just to bring that stuff up and make sure that it's it's it's inserted in there somewhere so somebody's paying attention steve i want to add just one more thing to what i said earlier under 6.1 each year each each board commission each board commission committee or task force shall designate one member to serve as liaison with city council and not a city council that's somebody from that board so i and i applied at 6.4 so i read it differently so yeah i think i think it's like we've got two different issues coming on one of them is to sort of update you know the you know and clarify the bylaws and then i think there's a valuable conversation

1:53:51 to have about making sure everybody's on the same page about what's our role how are we like how are these additional meetings getting scheduled and i think that can happen oh i'm going to say october 18th when we do council goal setting but i'm not i don't have the schedule right in front of me but i think it's about that's a valuable conversation to have to make sure we're all kind of going the same way um so [Music] all right other questions good thank you um just to follow up on counselor woodrow's question or suggestion about the arts commission bylaws since that's not a substantive change to the bylaws and the councils required to approve them if it's all right with you you could still approve them in substance you know as they are tonight i can make that change since we're not really substantively

1:54:36 changing the text you know that um the text of the bylaws and then go back and make that a little more clear under that section that's no problem oh sure okay so so we have to trust you right we do i do you'll be able to verify it though definitely it'll be on the website somewhere [Laughter] joe but with some historical perspective that each year or each year the cap we would meet with each of the separate committees at a work session and just do and have a lot of 20-minute briefing so not only allows just a liaison but that was that was a liaison position so to speak was

1:55:22 eliminated we just met with each committee and gave them a 15 minute or 20 minute slot and they can meet with us during a work session give us an update and they can all go and we can all talk to them that seems to me i mean that's what we used to do and it was pretty effective and it opened up communications plus it included all the members and included them as part of council and it seems to me that would be just a lot easier if we just put plug like click you know got a list of the committees plug them into a work session give them 15 minutes so we can go over any issues so they can raise any issues and see them next year yeah and again i think separating this is important because i think that's part of getting back to normal business in

1:56:07 the post 2020 world where we have a better a more consistent view on what's kind of going on the next you know over two like over two year period i might i actually agree with that approach um seems a lot easier and it seems like we wouldn't be excluding anybody would be most inclusive for all the members plus it gives us a chance to meet them and we can and reconnect with those members and it's not that big a deal to have them come in for a meeting or we can still zoom if we're still zooming our crazy heads off yeah right that's what i would i would like to see that and it just seems like that answers all the questions and people concerns takes care of all that any other comments um or

1:56:52 or emotion okay then trust you trusting mary bridget uh i make a motion that we approve the proposed revised bike bylaws second all right it's been moved and seconded uh neil could you call the role please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor bradley yes counselor stare counselor woodrow yes and counselor missionary yes sir all right the motion passes five to zero with one absent next item please uh mayor i um have one more item it's not on the agenda but i wanted to take

1:57:37 the opportunity to introduce um to the community and the council you've already met him but our new presiding judge james tierney is in the audience um and i think we're going to try and bring him up to be a panelist and to come on camera if he can um judge cherny is uh starting with the city he is our new presiding judge and he had asked me a question late last week and i just thought it might be nice for you to meet him and he'll also be reaching out to you individually to try and make a connection and see if you'd like to talk with him with some of the items that came up during his hiring process uh but judge tierney i think i can see his box here anyway on the screen i'm not sure if you can get his camera on but he's here today just to follow up with an introduction and say hello

1:58:24 hi good evening everyone i'm ensuring you can hear me yeah we can hear you judge i i'm clicking on the start video button but it will not work for some reason but thank you for your time i i'm very happy to be a presiding judge and i would love to extend an invite to all the council members to come and visit the court and see what we're doing including all of our access to justice efforts and just to start a dialogue between the court and each council member to see how we're doing and what we can do to ensure that the mission of springfield is being accomplished as well as following them following the the rules and regulations of the springfield municipal court it would be great to see a schedule

1:59:11 so that we might know when we when we might visit sure my plan was going to be if if if accessible excuse me if if acceptable to email council members and let them know when would be the best times to visit and then so that we can walk through the court and answer any questions we have a really packed schedule most days but i'm happy to provide that and see what works for everyone that'd be great that'd be exciting well i certainly appreciate that i'd like to ask question or answer any questions that will help the court just a couple of things that we are doing we are ensuring that all members of springfield can

1:59:56 attend court virtually or in person we have virtual dockets every day we have in-person dockets three times a week we're still continuing jury trials and we are doing our best to really expand accessibility for individuals who speak spanish and spanish only we're drafting spanish plea petitions and we've passed out some new information for any defendants who need interpreters so that the local court appointed attorneys can ensure that that is is working appropriately so we're working with access to justice issues and uh other than that it's been a very fruitful three weeks on the bench so far and i'd love to discuss all of that with the council members when we have an opportunity in the future

2:00:45 perfect well welcome aboard judge we're so glad that you uh you got got here and you're hired and you're in the job at least for the first three weeks so thank you for stopping by and and saying hi to everybody well i i do appreciate that and i'll be emailing in the near future and i hope they can come by and visit thank you thank you looking forward to it take care thank you uh just uh one last thing from the city attorney um back on the boards and commissions i neglected to see if aj had any feedback on that project she'd done a lot of work there too and definitely does a lot of work with your board's commissions and committees so just that opportunity there if she had something to add

2:01:30 um the only thing i have to add um this evening is in regards to your batch recruitment we will be posting a number of openings um on the website this week we currently have an opening for our lrapa citizen position that we've been that we are accepting applications on so again if the public that's listening is interested or um if the council knows anyone that would be interested please spread the word i'm happy to take calls emails and assist in any way to get more people applying for our board's commissions than committees amy i sent you one for el rappa yesterday

2:02:17 i didn't see it so i will look for it and i appreciate you um um once they'll wrap a position closing aj of course i promoted it and didn't have the answer to that as i promoted it we can pause for station identification i apologize i i like to show that like lots of people i am human um and i am pulling that right now because i don't have it off the top of my head

2:03:07 our deadline is 5 p.m on friday september 17th please note that because of covid if you have any questions in regards to how to submit your application if you are unable to submit it electronically via email if you call my number which is listed on our website um i am happy to schedule and make arrangements to make sure that your you are able to provide your application one way or another whether it be electronic or hard copy perfect thank you all right do we have any other business mary bridget uh no other business thank you perfect thank you everybody we are

2:03:53 adjourned for the evening take care bye