Springfield City Council — April 25, 2022

0:02 Hey, Jay, you want to kick us off? And AJ, are we doing the recording for the county as well? Okay. Um I'm going to open the uh Springfield City Council regular session uh with roll call. Mayor Van Gordon. Here. Councilor Pitts. Here. Councilor Moe. Here. Councilor Rodley. Here. Councilor Stair. Here. Councilor Woodrow. Here. Councilor Pishioneri. And Councilor Pishioneri is excused for the evening. I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner Farr to open the uh County Commission meeting. Uh thank you, Mayor. I uh this is uh Pat Farr. I open the Lane County Commissioners meeting and uh call the roll. Uh Commissioner Bovey. Here. Commissioner Tigger. Here. Commissioner Buck.

0:48 Here. And Commissioner Bernie. Here. All present. Thank you. All right. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Allegiance to the flag the flag of the United of the United States of America. And to the republic republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. We've got a long script this evening, so please be Please be patient as we get

1:35 everything started. So, tonight, Springfield and Lane County elected officials are holding a joint public hearing to hear testimony on a city-initiated amendments to the Springfield Development Code affecting residential and employment lands in Springfield. Lane County must co-adopt any amendments to the Springfield Development Code that apply to properties outside the city limits. The code amendments include changes to sections of the code that apply outside the city limits, such as changes to the code affecting applications, procedures, and decision-making processes for development applications. If you are here this evening and would like to speak to about this item, you can fill out a request to speak card to testify in person. If you are joining online, you will have

2:20 the opportunity to raise your hand after the staff report, and you will be called on to unmute yourself and to speak. I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing on the ordinance amending the Springfield Development Code related to the middle housing and other residential uses, employment land uses, and application review and decision-making procedures. Adopting a a savings clause and severability clause, and providing an effective date. First, we need to need to declare potential or actual conflicts of interest. Would the city attorney office please provide us some direction on declaring conflicts of interest? Thank you, Mayor. This is Kristina Cruise, Assistant City Attorney. Because the City Council and Board of Commissioners are making the final decision on these code amendments, you may have actual or potential conflicts of interest as defined by state public

3:06 officials ethics laws. An actual conflict of interest occurs if these code amendments would affect your financial interests, those of your family, immediate family member, or household member, or a business associated with you, immediate family member, or household member. A potential conflict of interest occurs if these code amendments could have such an effect. Because these code amendments broadly impact properties in Springfield and in the Springfield UGB, councilors or commissioners who own property in Springfield or within the Springfield UGB have potential conflict of interest. A potential conflict of interest must be declared, but then you may participate in the hearing, deliberations, and decision-making. An actual conflict of interest would exist, for example, if you know that you, your family member, or household member, or a business associated with you or them has plans to use new code

3:52 provisions to develop or redevelop property that benefits you or them financially. If you have an actual conflict of interest, you must declare it and then you must recuse yourself from participating in the hearing deliberations and decision-making on these code amendments. And if you have any questions about whether a particular conflict is actual or potential, please declare it and then we can review whether it is actual or potential. All right. is now the time for the Springfield City Council to declare those conflicts of interest. And then I'll start with myself and then we'll go by ward order. Um so I have a potential conflict of interest because I'm a property owner in the city of Springfield. Damian, you want to go next? No actual or potential conflict.

4:39 Steve Moe, ward two, I have a potential conflict of interest cuz I own property in the city of Springfield. Kori Rodley, ward three, I have a potential conflict of interest as a property owner within the city of Springfield. Um Leonard Stare, ward four, I have a potential conflict of interest as a property owner. Thanks. Marilyn Woodbury, ward five, I have a potential conflict of interest as a property owner in Springfield. All right. Commissioner Far, we're going to turn it over to you to open the public hearing on the County Commission side. Thank you, Mayor Van Gordon. I hereby open the public hearing for ordinance number 22-03 in the matter of amending Lane Code chapter 10.600 to co-adopt amendments to incorporate

5:25 changes in state law and modernize the Springfield Development Code for the urbanizing area between city limits and urban growth boundary of the city of Springfield and adopting a savings and severability clause, file number 59-PA21-05996. The date today is April 25th, 2022. The proposed Lane Code amendments are subject to Lane Code 10.315-20 and applicable statewide planning goals. The board's decision may be appealed to the Land Use Board of Appeals in accordance with ORS Chapter 197. At this point, I will call for conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest from the Board of County Commissioners. Here. Uh Commissioner

6:10 Commissioner Bernie. Yes, I'm proud to say that I have a potential conflict of interest as a property owner in the city of Springfield. Thank you, Commissioner. Any further declarations? Chair. Uh Commissioner Buck. I have a potential conflict of interest as I own property within the city limits of Springfield, but I do not believe I have an actual conflict of interest. Thank you, Commissioner Buck. Further declaration. Seeing none, Mayor Van Gordon, uh that completes our declarations. Thank you. The order of proceedings for this hearing will be first the report by the staff, followed by public testimony, and then any additional comments by the staff. Could we please have the staff

6:55 report? Well, good evening, Mayor, city councilors, uh Chair Far and Board of County Commissioners. Thank you for um taking the time to be here tonight and uh helping us through this exciting process of adopting a majority of our new Springfield Development Code. This has been a long time in the making, and I do have a fairly long PowerPoint presentation tonight. I'm going to try and move through it relatively quickly. Um at the end, I'm happy to take questions or go back to slides and discuss anything in more detail. I would like to give an opportunity for Lindsey Eikner, staff from Lane County, to say anything if you want to, Lindsey, to open it up for um the county.

7:41 Thank you, Mark. Good evening. uh Chair Far and Commissioners and City Council members, I'm going to let Mark do the majority of the presenting, but I'm available for any questions or discussion afterwards. Great. Thanks, Lindsey. I am going to share my screen for these PowerPoint slides. And we should be pulling those up here now. Hopefully, you can see that. Introductory screen. Getting some thumbs up. Thank you. And I'm just going to try and adjust my screen so I can see some or all of you. I may not be able to see all of you during while I'm sharing my screen. So, if there are questions, they could be called out if I don't

8:26 notice a hand up or something. So, with this, um This is This presentation's going to be a pretty high-level overview of how we've gotten to this point tonight over the last 3 and 1/2 years we've been working on this project to get the majority of our new development code in place. I will go into some detail on a couple of points that are being asked to be considered more specifically by the the bodies tonight. And we'll just get right into it. I like to share these same slides at every presentation for the public's input or not input, but information. This is the purpose statement of the overall project. And this was developed

9:13 as part of the community engagement plan at the outset of the project. The community engagement plan was developed in conjunction with the City Council and approved by our Planning Commission acting in their capacity as the Committee for Citizen Involvement. The direction from the City Council at the beginning of this project was for the most part to remain policy neutral in regard to our existing Springfield comprehensive plan policy framework while also complying with state law requirements, which was some of the reason for doing the code update to begin with. These objectives here were also approved as part of that community engagement plan. I'm not going to read through them, but um overall, the the city council recognized

9:59 that our code was antiquated and out of date having not been comprehensively updated since 1987. It's difficult to use um for the public and even for staff here at the city that uses it every day. So, this will be a huge leap forward in terms of modernizing our development code. A quick look at the time frame. This This is the overall project schedule we've been working on. This red line vertical red line indicates where we're at here now in the middle of the second quarter of 2022. These These yellow bars here represent phase one of the project and we are running two phases concurrently now. Phase one is the housing phase and phase two represented by these orange bars is

10:45 the employment lands phase. So, we are right here nearing the end of the adoption process for phase one and phase two and we'll move into the implementation phase once it's adopted. We've actually already started moving towards implementation, but you can see that we have been going now for over three and a half years getting to this point on these two phases of work. Some of the messages as part of um developing the timeline is figuring out a way to do it differently than um some past processes have done being that the timeline has been critical. Looking for efficiencies in the process and recognizing that this code update is not or was not a visioning process or exercise. It was really just um

11:32 implementing our existing Springfield comprehensive plan vision that's contained in those already adopted policies. I do want to recognize the extensive amount of time and effort that's gone into this. A number of different people and organizations have been involved. At the outset, we had a governance committee that was comprised of two city councilors and two planning commissioners that have met periodically to provide policy direction. We've also had an oversight team, the director of our department here at the city of Springfield, Tom Boyatt, and the planning manager, Sandy Belson. I know they're on the meeting tonight. Um and they've provided also great oversight direction. The project staff has been extensive work. Uh myself as a project manager,

12:19 but together with Kristina Kraus, assistant city attorney, Laurelin Speer, our communications coordinator, Brenda Jones, administrative assistant, Arva Hussein and Katie who have both started helping us in their capacity as a fellow through a fellowship program with Portland State University and have actually now moved on in that capacity to be uh city employees on a temporary basis to help through the um this process. Additional code update team members, we had two different technical advisor committees, one for phase one and one for phase two with different specialties whether it was housing or more of the economic development side. We also had internal staff um technical

13:05 advisors representing a broad array of different departments within the city, as well as consultant groups. And one of our consultants is on the meeting tonight as well, Elizabeth Decker with Jet Planning, has been a great help in two different capacities. At the beginning of phase one, the housing phase, um Um, a grant we received from the Department of Land Conservation at the state level. Um, that grant helped us hire Jet Planning through 3J Consulting to do a housing code audit that helped us identify areas of our code that were not compliant with state law and also helped us identify barriers in the code um, to development happening in a efficient

13:51 way. Just a These are a couple quick lists of the Technical Advisory Committee participants. This was the list of 12 people involved with the housing phase, phase one, of the Technical Advisory Committee. And then this is the list for the employment lands phase two of the Technical Advisory Committee. I will detail in a minute how many meetings were held as part of the public outreach related to those. I do want to point to the packet tonight. Um, it's as you've noticed, I'm sure, it's pretty extensive package of material. Um, just briefly going down those uh, briefing memo that's included as well as the attachments of all the code sections to the actual ordinance that we're holding the public hearing on.

14:37 It also includes the staff report or findings justifying the proposed changes. There's some attachments as well including a significant code change table that tries to um, succinctly summarize a lot of the high-level changes. There's some flowcharts describing the different process pieces as well as some maps showing the MDR and HDR properties that have some specific impacts from the code changes that I'll go over tonight in a few minutes as well. As part of that staff report, the approval criteria for the city part at least are detailed in the staff report, but these are directly out of the Springfield Development Code for a

15:22 amendment to our code. And those findings um demonstrating compliance with these approval criteria are contained in that staff report. Just briefly going over noticing requirements, we held already a joint planning commission public hearing process earlier this year. For this public hearing process, we did another round of notices including publishing notice in the Register-Guard, sending required notices to the State Department of Land Conservation and Development, as well as mailing what we call measure 56 notices to property owners of properties owned medium density residential and high density residential. Due to the um impacts that the proposed

16:07 code changes will have on those specific properties. And I'll just touch on what that is really quick. Um we're proposing to no longer allow detached single-unit dwellings in those two zoning districts, the MDR and HDR. We're proposing to change the names of those as you'll see or probably have seen to R2 and R3 land use districts. The existing MDR and HDR as they're titled now do allow detached single-family dwellings currently. By no longer proposing to allow detached single-family dwellings in those zones, we're hopefully will preserve that limited supply of medium and high density residential land for an

16:52 increased number of new dwelling units, rather than potentially having some of that land used up at um for fewer dwellings. And part of that um is a nuance of how the state rules were written to implement the new middle housing laws. And I can go into more detail of that in a minute, but um or if there's questions at the end, I'll just leave it there for now though. Uh well, here's a slide on it, I guess. I'm going to detail it a little bit more now. The um the new state laws are written in a way that would essentially not allow us to regulate by density all these new middle housing types, which I'll get to in a minute. Um are required to be allowed anywhere that

17:37 we allow a detached single-family home. So, by eliminating those single-family dwellings from R2 and R3, then we don't have to allow the middle housing as well. It seems a little counterintuitive, but when you really kind of sit down and look at a specific property or kind of crunch some numbers in terms of density, it has the potential to um result in fewer numbers of dwellings being built on those lands than our density range that we're trying to accomplish in our comprehensive plan. So, a little bit about where those impacts are, because obviously the broad set of code updates are applicable both within the city limits and outside the

18:22 city limits inside the urban growth boundary, the Board of County Commissioners um are going to be more interested likely about the areas outside the city limits. So, this is a map that kind of shows the areas that are impacted by those MDR and HDR properties. This is the areas only within the city limits. The city limits are shown a little bit darker gray color than outside. This pink line or this smaller dashed line is represents the city limits. The bolder dashed line is the urban growth boundary. So, the area that's not shaded between those two lines are the areas that are in county

19:08 jurisdiction still outside the city limits. When I switch to this next map, you'll see these are the properties that are still considered outside the city limits inside the urban growth boundary that are zoned MDR HDR that will be impacted by this proposed change. You'll You'll notice a lot of these pockets aren't necessarily even on the fringe. Um some of them are, but some of them are interior to the existing city limits. It's just there's a pocket of unannexed land. So, there's a seven of these areas identified. It's a pretty limited number. A total of 49 tax lots. County staff and our staff worked together to identify the impacts.

19:53 When you look at what all 49 of these lots include, really, I think there's only two of those tax lots that are currently vacant. The rest of them are either already developed or um being used as say parkland or utility properties. So, I'm going to just touch on the high-level summary of the public outreach that's taken place throughout this project. All of this information is included um linked in the packet to our public outreach report that we summarized all the different ways we've done public outreach. As you're all aware, the

20:38 global pandemic has changed the nature of the way we had to do some public outreach not being in person as much. So, midway through we had to get a little more creative. We used some different techniques um in terms of virtual outreach to continue with the project. I'm not going to go through all these um one by one, but I just want to give you some idea. These do detail the number of meetings, those technical advisory committees, how many meetings were held through those. Some of these numbers have actually increased just recently based on some of the noticing and electronic communications we've done for this public hearing process as well. Our project webpage has been the primary source of easily accessible information

21:23 for the public that we point to for most people to get the current most accurate information. We've sent a number of these e-updates through our communication staff. There's more than 400 recipients on that list. This 11 number has been increased by at least two just within the last couple of weeks. We've sent out a couple additional e-updates. And then again, here's we've throughout the course of the project been doing outreach throughout the community to different organizations trying to spread the word and provide information about what we are doing with our code update. So this is list a number of different presentations that have been conducted throughout the process. And just a few more

22:08 ways we've been doing outreach. I can touch on just the the outreach survey that we did. We did a virtual open house instead of being able to do an in-person open house due to COVID. And then as part of that virtual open house also doing this public outreach survey. We had 80 people respond to that survey which from our perspective is a win. That's a pretty good turnout. It's not necessarily statistically significant in terms of the broad community, but if we had held an in-person open house in pre-COVID times and 80 people had shown up, that would have been a successful open house. And that would also represent if 80 people testified say tonight or in front

22:53 of the planning commission at a public hearing for 3 minutes each, that would be 4 hours of public testimony that that would be hearing. So, again, we see that 80 people participating as really good input. We did just recently in response to the public notice. I can actually read this. This is the first time any of you would actually be seeing this. I know it's probably hard to see on the screen. This was one email that we received in response for this hearing. I'll just read it really quick into the record. And please bear with me. Actually, I'm going to take a quick sip of water if you don't mind. Just a second.

23:41 So, the email reads I live at 2019 E Street, Springfield, Oregon 97477 and I was just reading the proposed code and have some concerns regarding the proposed accessory structure setbacks and setbacks in general. I'm concerned with accessory structure setback requirements changing from 3 ft for the side and rear property lines. The new code indicates accessory structures must meet the primary setbacks of 5-ft side and 10-ft rear. This change means I can't put a garden shed in the rear corner of my property anymore, which will limit usable rear yard space and a huge change from what is currently permitted. I think the rear and side yard setback could be maintained at 3 ft side and rear for accessory structures.

24:26 Further, I would like to see the rear yard setback change to 5 ft for primary structures and garage. This change would allow for greater separation between multiple dwellings {slash} structures on site while maintaining separation between adjacent properties. If we are removing as many obstacles as possible from housing development, we should be allowed to utilize as much of the property as possible. Andrew Larson and then a phone number. And I can speak to this a little bit more. I'm happy to come back to it. I'll I'll just keep going for now though and then happy to revisit this topic and and where the changes in the code. So really trying to highlight the accomplishments that we have done with the, you know, almost, what is it?

25:11 Three or 400 pages of new code that is in the packet for tonight. A lot of the direction from the city council at the outset was to make the code easier to use and easier to understand, more streamlined and um provide easier ways for development to happen. We feel we have accomplished that. We've rewritten the majority of the code pages that you see tonight. Almost 300 pages are basically all brand new. Where you'll see that difference between exhibit A and exhibit B is all brand new code where exhibit C is some sections of the code where we've just made track changes to, some more surgical edits. And those um are really to reflect the the broader changes we've made in the first two sections, but it's a lot

25:56 easier language to use and understand, a little more plain and simple. Definitely more streamlined a process. We spent a significant amount of time on our procedures ordinance part of the code in terms of the rules on how we process applications to really make that a lot more clear and understandable, not only for the public but for staff as well. One of the um requirements by state law is that for all housing we have clear and objective approval standards. That was a big lift to get to that point from our pre-existing code or our existing code that's in place today for this code is to really meet that test under state law for having clear and objective housing approval um a path for that. To just touch on those a little more

26:42 detail the easier to understand and use part of that is that we've clarified definitions, simplified terms. We've removed a lot of redundancy inconsistencies. Um, you know, in today's code you have to flip back and forth through a lot of sections. Um, we've tried to minimize that so that you go to a section and can um, find out what you need without having to go to a bunch of different other sections. And then we've grouped a lot of use categories rather than having very detailed lists of different specific uses that have become antiquated over time. So, these group categories will be a lot more flexible in the future as um, uses evolve over time. The streamlined process I mentioned, the

27:27 procedures ordinance of the code, much more simpler and clarified of terms. Um, the minimum development standards part I want to touch on. That was a process that was undertaken. Some of the city councilors will remember we had a um, development advisory committee years ago that tried to streamline this process as well. And um, get it to a true, clear and objective process. It still needed some work and so we've done additional work on this MDS, minimum development standards process to allow it to truly be a type one, clear and objective path that and it as well as expanding the amount of uses and things that can happen under that path. And that'll be a really good option for people to use

28:12 um, for some development. Clear and objective standards, again I mentioned this already for all housing in compliance with state law. There's a lot of housing that won't require site plan approval at all. Again, it'll be a type one process which um, is not a land use decision. It does not require notice to surrounding property owners. And essentially it's almost like a check checklist type of process where it's either they do or don't meet a standard. There's no discretion used through this standard. Um, so it'll make that process a lot more streamlined and easier to use. Just a few things about what the code update is not doing, and I think this has been really helpful for the community to understand that the develop what the development code is and what it

28:58 is not. Uh we aren't Well, and I'll just say too, there are some of these things on this list that are hap- happening as well outside of this formal process. So, for instance, every year we look at updating our application permit fees. We do that right about now starting um in spring and moving towards the end of June to adopt new fees, but that's not part of this actual code update process. Um systems development charges are not within the development code. The development code is separate from the building code, so how a structure is built under the building code is different than the development code in terms of what happens on the site. Fire code requirements are not part of this.

29:43 Infrastructure improvement standards, although we do have some of those standards within our code, there's a separate document that also contains engineering specifications and things like that that is not part of the development code. There is still a need to do some stormwater requirement upgrades to be compliant with a new stormwater permit that we'll be operating under. And so that'll be um forthcoming work that we'll have to address. And then wetland and flood plain standards, uh the city has recently updated our flood plain standards. And so that was something that was already in process. It's not being dealt with specifically as part of this process. Again, I mentioned it's two different phases. Phase one is the housing phase. I'm not going to go through all these

30:29 other than to say a big piece of the phase one housing work, um the scope expanded when the state adopted the new middle housing legislation. We built that in to fully implement as part of this process. There's been at least a half a dozen other new state laws that have passed that we've also had to figure out how to implement as part of this. Even more recent legislation than the middle housing stuff. And related to the middle housing is also the expedited land division process for middle housing. So all of those new state laws have have been incorporated into this code update. I mentioned middle housing that has taken on a a much bigger role as part of the process.

31:15 Um because the rules for middle housing House Bill 2001 were written prior to even the middle housing land division process as well as other state laws that have come on board. The some of the lines between the middle housing types have gotten blurred. Um I have a quick example of that. This is a diagram of of a type of building. These are showing as town homes because these dash lines represent individual lots. So where there's one unit on its own lot, that would be a town home under the state definitions. However, if this same exact building were built and all of it only on one lot, that would be a fourplex. So really the only difference is whether or not it's on its own lot or

32:01 not. And so now with the new state law allowance for middle housing land division, somebody could build a fourplex all on one lot and then divide it after they've built it so that they essentially become town homes, but they're still called different things. So um another model that we're proposing to allow flexibility in how a fourplex is developed. This would be more um individual units not connected like a traditional duplex, triplex, or fourplex. But this if all four of these small units were on one lot, this would still be considered a a fourplex, four units on one lot. Subsequently, somebody could come in and divide these units onto each of their

32:47 own lots. They'd still be technically one unit as part of a fourplex, but you'd it'd be on its own lot and be able to be sold separately. And then again, to touch on one other kind, the cottage cluster housing type is part of the middle housing concept. Again, these are individual cottages. They can be all on one lot or on their own separate lots. So again, the lines kind of get blurred depending on what a developer or property owner is trying to accomplish in terms of um the type of housing they want to develop. Some of the design elements that are allowed under state law, um we've tried to simplify so that we're not treating um townhomes drastically different than

33:32 say a fourplex. However, the way the model rules from the state were written, these these are design elements that were contemplated as being required for townhomes versus the previous slide where we would look at entry orientation and how much of the front facade would be covered with door and window. So we've really tried to minimize the amount of design review while um keeping some aesthetics provisions so that the housing that get ends up getting developed is um consistent with the community and there's some opportunity for um flexibility. That a lot of that work came out of the technical advisory committee to really try and balance what was um going to be required by the code.

34:18 Want to just talk about lot size for a minute. We are proposing to combine essentially what was two previously existing code sections. We have our existing low-density residential and then we had a small lot residential zone. There was not any actual land zoned small lot residential in the city, but that was a way from years past to accomplish more density that was never fully implemented. So, we proposed to combine those and then reduce the allowed lot size to a 3,000 sq ft lot. This is just a representation of you could imagine any parking lot. This happens to be Best Buy's parking lot up on North Gateway. But to give you some idea of what does a 3,000 sq ft lot look

35:03 like, I think I counted this as 18 parking spaces. So, you can imagine that is a pretty small lot, but um if people can fit smaller homes on these and then, you know, uh hopefully those homes then have some increased level of affordability based on the smaller lot size and potentially smaller unit size. So, again, just an idea to represent roughly what a 3,000 sq ft lot looks like. To see it on the ground in practice, here's a couple quick photos. This is out in the new development area of Marcola Meadows in North Springfield. So, these are existing platted lots with homes on them. This whole area is being built out. This lot here is a 3,200 roughly 3,200 sq ft lot. As you can see,

35:50 it has a home on it. Another quick example, there's the footprint of that one again. This is another small cluster subdivision that was approved on 19th Street in kind of central Springfield. This is actually 2,500 sq ft lot size with roughly 900 sq ft dwellings on them. I think the majority of this development's built out now. So, it is possible that 3,000 sq ft lot is small. It's not out of the realm of possibility. I think is really what's trying to be demonstrated here. Um also just wanted to touch briefly on what we're calling the massing. So, we are proposing to increase a little bit of height allowance as well as lot coverage and setbacks. Those are kind of the three big things of how we

36:35 regulate housing in terms of the building envelope and and how it can be proposed. As you heard in some of that public testimony that I read um increasing the rear lot line um or leaving it Let's see, I'm trying to make sure I'm saying this correctly. Our existing rear setback is 10 ft. Um The the testimony talked about there's an allowance in our code today for accessory structures to actually be at 3 ft rather than have to meet the primary structure setbacks. But this represents what's allowed under our code today. This 4,500 sq ft lot size lot coverage of 45% height of 30 ft and then these setbacks

37:21 of 10 and fives around. So this is what would be proposed as part of the new code. So a slightly increase in height to 35 ft. Increase lot coverage of 60% and down to a 3,000 sq ft lot size. So putting those side by side, you can see there definitely is an increase in massing. Um the hope is that it's not significant and over time there'll be some transitions between housing types. These represent um some indication of how many units could be in each one of these structures. So if really you're regulating the massing of the structure um what's the difference if that structure has two dwelling units in

38:06 it versus three dwelling units or only one dwelling unit, that kind of idea. So these are just representative of um what some of that may do on a property. Some of the difference applies around parking and we can talk more about that. but again these are just some massing diagrams to give some sense of what the spaces might look like. This would represent four units potentially on a larger lot at 7,000 square feet is the lot size that comes out of the state law. That's the minimum we have to allow a fourplex on now under middle housing. Again kind of a side-by-side comparison. And then here's a lineup of all the

38:51 different diagrams I showed you kind of give you a scale of what the different sizes look like. I've kind of already touched on some of this but just to reiterate the key code updates that are part of the phase one housing. We are addressing parking to the extent we have to incorporate middle housing. We're limited to how much parking we can require for middle housing to one space per unit. We already have existing on-street parking credits in our code today so those will continue to be allowed. I mentioned the procedures again trying to incorporate the expedited middle housing land division that's a new process but also looking at this type one clearing objective land use process for procedures.

39:36 Rostra did fair bit of work on our goal protected lands including the historic district flood plain overlay Willamette Greenway as well as our hillside overlay. Um the the ability to limit middle housing in those overlays is built in the state law so we had to be really careful how we implemented those. And then again phase two employment lands the high level accomplishments under phase two. The site plan review process and minimum development standards have really are been the process pieces that we've really tried to streamline. So I do want to mention in the briefing memo tonight there's a list of additional edits that have been made since the planning commission's

40:21 recommendation. Um That's there were 18 of them listed. So, we've been testing this code every day, every time we get a new question in the planning department, we look at it under today's code that's in place, but we're also testing every question we get under the new code. And so, it's continuing to highlight small things that we're trying to correct before it's actually adopted. We acknowledge that there's still likely going to be typos and things that need to be corrected in a cleanup ordinance sometime from now, maybe 6 months or a year down the road. But trying to identify anything we can at this point. Um so, I do have some additional ones for considering through the public hearing tonight that's even

41:06 in addition to those 18 listed in the packet for tonight. These have just been caught within the last week or week and a half. They're fairly minor. But so, just for consistency sake and um being making sure all the code references are correct, this is a correction primarily of this code citation here referencing the correct section. Um adding that same section here. I think there's just five of these. Um this is just more of a naming convention a change instead of seeing special use standards calling them applicable code standards. So, doing some correction there and also this citation for neighborhood commercial referencing a code section that's applicable.

41:55 Clarifying some language again in the um these tables here. A lot of this got missed because um a when you do word searches and things in a code document, it doesn't catch things that are in tables often times or in footers. So, you can notice a number of these are headings in tables and footers that didn't get caught previously. Last year this was a definition that got overlooked. We changed the term um zoning district throughout the code. We're no longer using the term for the most part zoning district. We've changed it to the term land use district. However, we forgot to make that change in the definitions chapter itself. So, we're proposing to just um delete the term the the definition zoning district and rename it to land use district. We proposed deleting one

42:40 word. It seemed redundant, but a specifically delineated area or district. We just deleted or district. Um describing a district as a district seemed kind of counterintuitive. So, we're pretty close here almost to the end. Uh one more here. This is has to do with site plan review and not requiring site plan review um for certain multi-unit housing developments. I mentioned this previously. There is a path now for a type one approval process for those. This is really just to make sure it's crystal clear. It would have been easy enough to make the connection, but it would require you to flip back and forth between code sections. So, we thought being more explicit here and have that

43:27 exception in there um made it easier to use. We are asking for city council input tonight specifically on an issue that also was identified in the code as being inconsistent. It has to do with the definition of accessory dwelling unit ADU. This is discussed in the briefing memo tonight. The inconsistency is that the definition uh specifies that ADUs are allowed as part of a detached single unit dwelling. However, in the standards of the code, we were proposing to allow ADUs as a part of a couple attached housing types. And those two attached housing types

44:14 would be for town homes and for cottage clusters. So, cottage cluster development could be there is an allowance to do them as attached rather than having to be detached. Um, one of the biggest implications for this is that ADUs don't require additional parking. So, parking plays into this discussion. I'm happy to elaborate. I think we'll likely hear some testimony on this tonight. Um, so we can talk about it now or later, whenever it feels right. But I do want to highlight that that is an area we do need specific direction on direction on on how to correct that. So, lastly, I'll just wrap up by saying um, the staff report in the packet, it's about 32 or 33 pages of findings um,

45:01 demonstrating how we are in compliance with the required approval standards. I'm not going to go through those in detail. If there's questions about it, I will say one um, Elizabeth Decker at Planning, she I mentioned she was involved at the early stages of the housing process to help us with the housing audit report. She was also through another grant from DLCD brought on through another DLCD grant to help us write some of the findings a narrow set of the findings specific to middle housing. Because this code update is not just specific to middle housing, um, the findings are much more broad than just justifying middle housing. And essentially, because we have to do middle housing, because the state passed

45:47 new laws requiring it, um, it was fairly straightforward, but pretty technical yet. And so, Elizabeth did a great job incorporating those middle housing findings into our larger findings package. So, just to summarize our recommendation tonight for the City Council and the Board of County Commissioners is to consider the testimony that'll be part of the public hearing tonight. We recommend that City Council close the public hearing if it um you know, is concluded. And then we ask um for feedback from the Council tonight on any questions or additional information you may want for your ultimate deliberations. With that, I'm happy to answer questions. Just to touch on the timeline really quick. We are under a deadline to

46:34 adopt specifically the middle housing provisions. So, we've um been trying to move along expediently as possible. This looming deadline of June 30th to get this adopted is um really what's pushing um continuing to move forward. So, I appreciate your patience with that um PowerPoint presentation and uh happy to touch on anything else. All right. Thank you so much, Mark. Um Leonard, we're going to hold on questions for right now. We're going to go through the the public testimony and then we'll get to a portion when we're good for uh questions, discussion, um etc. So, now is the time for the public public testimony. Please fill out fill out a request to speak card if you are attending in

47:19 person and would like to be speak uh speak regarding these code amendments. If you are attending online, you may use the raise hand feature and we will call on you to unmute yourself and speak. Please state your name and mailing address as you begin to speak. You're going to be allotted uh 3 minutes. And the public testimony order is going to be in the room first and then we will go go online. The first card I have is Jennifer Bley. Thank you. Um my name is Jenna Fribley. I'm uh business owner and property owner at 341 Main Street here in Springfield, 97477. Um, so, thank you, everyone.

48:06 Council, staff, mayor, um, commissioners, uh, and everybody that has really put so much time into this code amendment project. I know it's extremely arduous. But, um, one interesting thing that has come out of it, um, as you've been evaluating and kind of combing through to make sure everything is following a clear and objective standard path, um, is that the, um, kind of the conventional way that some of the downtown mixed-use zone properties have been evaluated in the past, um, it appears that they have not necessarily followed the letter of the

48:51 code in the past. And so, now that we are, you know, following very clear and objective standards and finding that, oh, actually, it should have been treated a different way, um, the the new way is harder and, uh, not better uh, in most cases. And so, um, I think basically, with this whole code development obj- update project, um, you stated at the beginning that the purpose is to support efficient, timely, and clear development review. Um, the the traditional way that the these properties, like a a downtown business or restaurant or whatever, if you had a remodel or, um, say you have a restaurant and you want to do just a small permanent

49:36 outdoor seating covered area, um, previously, you could treat that through an MDS review process, which is pretty straightforward. Um, it's $900 application fee or for a minor one or 1,200 for a major one, but you can submit all that land use information concurrently with your building permit application, and it's just a pretty straightforward process. You know, it looks at trash screening and stormwater, but it's it's simple and straightforward. Um, however, now that we are being more uh careful with how we're interpreting the code, um those types of projects now have to undergo a full type two site plan review. Um, so for that same, you know,

50:21 small outdoor covered area, it's now a $5,600 process that takes months uh and requires many, many drawings and submittals and a lot of professional expertise um that is really geared more towards a process for a full new housing subdivision. Um and so I would advocate uh that we just add three words to the code. I know I only have 10 seconds left. But in the section 5.15, um minimum development standards, uh basically in the allowable applicability section, um add the three words mixed-use commercial to the allowable areas that that can be

51:07 applied to. Thank you. Uh thank you so much. The next person is Chris McAllister. Mr. Mayor and members of the council, members of the uh Lane County Commissioner, um I thank you for your time. My name is Chris McAllister. I live at 1909 12th Street, Ward 3. I uh wanted to first and foremost say thank you, Mark Ross, um Brenda, and uh uh Christina for hard work making this stuff happen. Um as someone who served on one of the technical advisory committees, we were uh looking at something that hasn't been changed since I was two. And so knowing all this has changed, knowing

51:53 that we are working on different options, I really value the intent and clarity that came from this process. While we build out and make housing available, let's just let's not fool ourselves and think that building is going to just solve us from all of our problems. We need to make sure that we use these housing and these developments smartly. That if we do offer tax breaks and other things to support these developments, that we have quotas that actually helps serve the people who are not otherwise qualified. As a second generation since our family owned land in this county, I'd like to see opportunities afforded to our people. And by breaking up these lots and giving more options such as the fourplex, we're looking at options that can help some of our less fortunate, some of our people who have trauma, some of our people who have the ability to

52:38 get a little bit of money from a settlement when they finally get on their retirement, but they can maybe start to buy land. And having screen builders be on their own land again means your tax base goes up. Means that you have more opportunities and more people are engaged. So I really implore you to not just work on the code, but work on bringing things in to support the code to make sure that these buildings are being able to use by people who are having long-term goals in this town and aren't just going to sell it at the next thing or just choose not to do the LURB D and get full market rate that year. We need teeth in what we're trying to do. Just not just the opportunity. So the code is deep. Please listen to your constituents. Every region of our city is different. Everybody has different needs. Don't forget Glenwood. Don't forget the people out in Walterville. They're coming in.

53:24 They're our future and they need to see themselves in our hometown field. So thank you very much and appreciate you all. Thank you, Chris. Um that was the last card I had in the room. Um if you're interested in testifying online, please raise your hand and we will give you a second before we start calling folks up. Mary, we currently have three hands raised. Um, the first speaker will be Dylan Lamar, followed by Karen Knutson. And Dylan, you should be able to unmute your microphone. All right. Can you hear me? We can. Okay, great. Uh, thank you all uh, staff

54:11 for all your hard work on this. Uh, I've watched some of the um, planning commission meetings and deliberations and I know people have put a lot of hard work into these um, code proposals. Um, I've emailed just just a recently emailed in to um, some recommendations to support smaller, more affordable homes. Um, I'm uh, the owner and architect of Cultivate Ink here in town and uh, we developed the C Street um, co-op last year in partnership with Square One Villages. Um, housing home ownership uh, of one-bedroom units for $10,000 and an $800 a month uh, total monthly fees. So, pretty astounding accomplishments. We did that uh, through middle housing um, and uh,

54:57 I know I've submitted some recommendations to make this code uh, result in more outcomes like that. Um, right now I think um, there's a few areas for improvement. Um, it would specifically help small footprint homes, which are inherently more affordable than larger homes. And these smaller one and two-bedroom homes are really in critically short supply um, even as our household sizes shrink. Um, we really don't have many ownership units of this size and they support our most vulnerable um, the aspiring homeowners and people on a fixed income. Um, and I'll just hit a few of the high points. Reducing the minimum lot sizes uh is a is a starting place to allow a more smaller housing.

55:42 Um increasing the maximum lot coverage to 65%. I see it recently got uh dialed down to 45% in the in uh in the planning commission's latest um recommendations. Um parking between buildings and street. It It This is a little bit different between the different middle housing pathways. For triplexes and fourplexes, you're allowed up to a 50% street frontage uh to be occupied by parking between buildings and street. I would suggest to allow that also for cottage clusters and to go further and when you're working with small footprint housing of less than 900 square feet, allow parking to occupy the full street frontage as long as you have a 10-ft landscape buffer. Um parking requirements are are a big

56:29 barrier to pre- producing affordable housing. Um and finally uh allowing a townhome to be on its own lot uh sorry, allowing townhomes to be shared uh on a on a single lot multiple townhomes would allow a pathway for um housing cooperatives like C Street to use the townhome pathway, which will just allow us more flexibility in our site design. And then um reducing the maximum off-street parking requirement uh for up to by up to 50% would be a great step toward again encouraging more smaller housing. I thank you for your time and uh like I said, I'll email this testimony directly to um to all of you so you have it available. Thank you. Thank you, Dylan.

57:14 Mayor, your next speaker is Karen Knudsen followed by Stephanie Clark. And Karen, you should be able to unmute your microphone. Good evening, Mayor Vinis, Van Gordon, city councilors, and county commissioners. My name is Karen Knudsen, uh 2004 East 26th Avenue, 97403 in Eugene. But, I'm here this evening as the founding director of Better Housing Together, and I'm speaking specifically to Springfield's work to implement the middle housing code, and also preserve your capacity for higher-density housing, and support great mixed-use redevelopment in your downtown. Better Housing Together is a multi-sector community-led organization working to address the housing crisis in Lane County. We are an independent non-profit, and also the backbone of a

58:00 50-partner collective impact effort that is working collaboratively to increase housing affordability, diversity, and supply. Among other community work, uh, Better Housing Together has supported middle housing since 2017, and one of our first middle housing public events was that year, a sold-out workshop, um, at the Public House, uh, in Springfield, uh, working with AARP Oregon and several other local partners. So, it's really exciting to see Springfield nearing completion of this development code update after 3 and 1/2 years. We really appreciate the careful work that your staff has done during that time, from the initial code audit, to work to identify specific barriers to affordability, and the more recent detailed work to streamline permitting and development processes. And, we're

58:45 excited to see that work all continuing. Um, all of this work is important because, like all West Coast communities, Springfield needs to take steps to support the creation of more efficient and affordable housing. Looking ahead, there are additional steps, uh, that you all can take to improve opportunities for small-footprint homes, specifically. Smaller one- and two-bedroom housing is needed to meet our city's housing needs, uh, and they are in very short supply. This is housing that also helps to serve our most vulnerable households, and helps us to meet housing needs of older and younger neighbors who are both downsizing and climbing onto the housing ladder. Springfield has done some leading work with your ADU code and incentives, and we just encourage you to please do everything possible to facilitate those small and mixed housing outcomes. Uh

59:32 with regards to parking, please recognize that every additional parking space can add up to 12% to the cost of a unit and this is significant when our concern is affordability. So we have submitted a table of specific recommendations into the record with Cultivate Inc. that highlights some next steps. Um but just in closing, I would add that the work to create small housing and infill redevelopment is much more difficult than most people realize. Your staff realizes it and they've done some really great work to try and support good outcomes in Springfield. Springfield is fortunate to have some of the state's most innovative incremental developers working locally. You've heard testimony from a few of them tonight already. Um and we would like to see more of that in Springfield and helping to make it a great city um now and into the future.

1:00:18 So thank you for your work to steer Springfield and Lane County's development code and housing production towards our community's goals and needs. We appreciate and support uh these recommendations that have come forward and encourage you to adopt them. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, the next speaker is Stephanie Clark followed by Carmel Snyder. Stephanie, you should be able to unmute your microphone. Hi, yes. Thank you. Um I'm Stephanie Clark who lives at 408 10th Street in the Washburne District. And I've got a question and then a comment. And my question is that the new zoning for medium density seems to cut through the Washburne District. So the historic

1:01:03 district goes to Pioneer, I believe, in places. Um and the new zoning that uh takes the medium density up to 5th Street. And so I'm curious as to why that decision was made. Um one of the things I really appreciate about appreciate about the Washburne is that it's very mixed type of housing. So, you've got some really large, nice houses in the area and then small houses. And I think that one of the things that's contributed to the to that is the the ADU and especially I think it waving development fees. I've got right like adjacent to my property, I've got I think five um units that were developed under that and I think that's just a really great way to keep development local. Um and um

1:01:50 that leads to my my comment which is that I hope that people are thinking about um the possibility of outside developers and investors coming in and doing things to mitigate that. I'm originally from Dallas, Texas and my family is still there and when I go back home, I'm just really often shocked at um what developers or investors have done to some of the older neighborhoods in that region. Um and just dismantling them, taking them apart and this never causes um prices to go down. They always the property um prices are always going up and up and up, forcing people out. And so, I hope that there are protections against the sort of gentrification and that um we can keep

1:02:37 those developments local and encourage local property owners to like add ADUs and um local organizations to build for their um this middle range housing. Thank you. Mayor, our next speaker is Carmel Schneider and Carmel, you should be able to unmute your microphone. Great, thank you. Uh good evening, Mayor Vin Gordon and Council. My name's Carmel Schneider, uh 3655 West 13th Avenue in Eugene. I am here tonight though to speak on behalf of AARP Oregon and its members. We have 50,000 members in Lane County, uh 500,000 members statewide. AARP's roots

1:03:23 are deep in housing equity and affordability. Um we were founded by a woman who found a teacher living in a chicken coop, and she got organized, and uh so we always like to say that housing is in our DNA. Uh we thank you for the thoughtful consideration of how Springfield will be implementing the missing middle housing legislation passed a few years ago. As As I mentioned, housing is a priority for AARP. As the leading voice for people at 50 and older, we have a 60-plus-year history of advocacy on issues impacting older Americans. Our 2021 surveys, our vital voices survey, and our home and community preferences survey both show that 75%

1:04:11 of our members want to stay in their home as long as they can. When they can't do that because their house no longer fits them, they want to be able to stay in their community. Smaller homes, housing options give them that option to be able to stay in their community and not have to move to a different community across town where they don't know their neighbors, where they have to find different places to shop, all of those things that are important as we age. Uh Oregon is leading the nation in efforts to re-legalize traditional housing options and address uh exclusionary zoning, and that means that Springfield is like m- many cities in this area leading the

1:04:56 nation, and we're watching what you're doing, and we urge you to move forward. Uh plan for the future with more equitable and affordable housing opportunities for those in the workforce and older adults is important. So, I want to thank you again and urge you uh to consider uh, the importance of the smaller homes and um, multiplexes. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, that was our last hand in the queue. All right. Great, thank you. And thank you for everybody that's testified. All right. So, this is the time for the council and board to ask questions to staff or persons who have testified. If there is information that the council or board would like more information about our questions before we close our

1:05:42 hearing and set deliberations for our future meeting, this is the time to ask those questions. And then if you could raise your hand Council Pitts. Yeah. Uh, first of all, thanks all the information, but I mean, one thing I'm curious what the makeup is of everybody who contributed to this because it seems like these are mostly property owners who either partnered or uh, have been here a while and aren't thinking about transplants. I don't really think about diversity. Also, aren't really thinking about safety and retention. Um, do I understand that we have to limit the amount of parking spots, you know, uh, I've heard since I got here how expensive it is here and so two parking

1:06:27 spots will allow someone to share a space so they can save up potentially buy a home here. Uh, and as much as we wish that people can commute together, that's not always the case. And so it it it it's just really bothersome that we are so anti-parking lots. You know, driving down the street, everybody parks on the side and I mean, it's it's a catastrophe. It's almost an accident like every single time. Uh, but then also, I mean, just say, you know, going back to the retention and the pure comfort piece, you know, uh, as much as we like the city love the city of Springfield and the surrounding areas, you know, how many of you when you go out and it's more than one of you who looks like you, people feel the need to walk up to you and be like, "Oh, what

1:07:12 are you doing here?" Or feel the need to try to talk to you just because you're a minority. Uh it's annoying. Like really annoying. And and it's not, you know, I I And and going back to we always talk about equity and diversity. We got all these damn committees and all this stuff, but nobody wants to normalize having minorities in this space. And we realize that. And so, what do we need? We need parking spaces so we can have a reprieve away from being a token in a public space. Once again, I understand that it might cost more, but I will believe that some people will be willing to pay more just for that comfort of not having to be the token, uh being able to have somebody that they want to date or whatever come over, have people visit because that adds to

1:07:58 quality of life. Uh and there are a lot of things for a lot of us that just don't exist in this space. And so, I ask that we think about this from a accessibility, from an equity perspective. Uh and then and then going back to my initial question, I question how many people who have done anything regarding this live in an apartment or are single or are minority who gets tired of being in public and being tokenized. All right, I'm done. All right, Mark. I don't know if you can shed some insight to some of the the questions about the technical advisory committees. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have demographic information for the technical advisory committees themselves. I would I am just

1:08:44 looking at and it's in the pack it's a link from the briefing memo to the public outreach report that details the results of the community survey at least. And so, just quickly that the demographic information contained there, counselor Pitts, I could just say in terms of owner versus renter of the 80 people that responded, the residency was 80 Let me make sure I'm getting the right ones. In terms of people who own their resident, 81% of 80 people that responded to the survey says they own their resident and 19% responded saying they rent their resident. And then in terms of um the other piece of demographic

1:09:30 information we asked as part of the survey, it was voluntary, it was not required to address the demographic information. So, just for the people that did respond, um in terms of the 80 people that responded, it says white or Caucasian, it was 70% 76% of the respondents. Um Hispanic or Latino, 10%. Black or African American, 3%. And then there was 1% other and 16% that declined to answer. So, anyway, um I don't know. I'm sure that doesn't fully answer your question. I'm not sure there was a question specifically on parking that you had. It sounded like you were asking if there's opportunity to have more parking in terms of residences. Uh so, I mean, the piece about the the

1:10:15 the demographic was was semi-rhetorical and I was just kind of going off on a rant about how not having more parking spaces can lead to a lack of retention for certain demographics, not necessarily just racially. But then also thinking about how housing is going up and the ability to have a roommate or somebody live with you would increase your ability to save, would increase your comfort and your retention level, which may make people want to stay here longer and potentially purchase. I will just maybe take a second to comment on parking and that is so specific to middle housing, the state has very prescriptively um only allowed us to require one space per unit for middle housing types. We cannot

1:11:00 require more than that, although a developer could choose to develop more. The other thing I'll say is some of you are aware of the climate-friendly and equitable communities rules um, at the state level being discussed right now. We anticipate or I think it's likely that what may come out of that rule-making process at the state will further limit our ability to require parking. And then lastly, I'll just say anecdotally, I'm aware of at least one development up off I think Q Street. It's a multi-unit development. I forget exactly how many units, probably about 20 units. They have um, I think this touches on one of the points you made, Council Pitts, and that is they are

1:11:45 essentially renting the park it parking separate from the rental of the apartment units. So, for people that value having parking, um, they could rent, you know, the parking that they wanted and for people that don't want it or don't need it, they don't have to have the parking associated with their units. I don't know if that's a trend in the market, but I just thought I'd mention it. Councilor Steer. Um, Thank you, Sean. Um, so, um, I I also wanted to thank all of the people who came out to speak, um, as public speakers tonight. Um, their their comments were very useful and they they did fall on deaf ears. Um,

1:12:30 I I wanted to ask Mark, um, about the um, maximum occupancy that staff is recommending here. Um, I the way I understand it is that, um, if you've got, um, the two you you can't have any more than two people per bedroom and then one additional occupant. Is that correct? Um thanks, Counselor Stare. And I without being a Could maybe you could provide me a reference to that that code section you're reading. I don't have it at my fingertips, but off the top of my head, I think that's correct what you cited. And I will just say that our ability to

1:13:16 um we previously used to regulate um by family, that what the definition of family was, and I think it was five related or unrelated people. And uh Christina Kraz, assistant city attorney, may be able to chime in quick on this point. But um we're no longer able to legally regulate by that family status, so we've removed it from our code altogether. And so this was the attempt at something to supplant that. And um still have a reasonable way to Yeah. So we're we're going to toggle over to Christina. Okay, did you get get done? I'm I'm through. I can leave it there and happy to have her chime in. It looks like um Counselor Stare found an oversight in our staff report and our explanation of implementing middle

1:14:01 housing statutes. That was something that was proposed to the planning commission, and the planning commission opted not to include any occupancy limits in the um housing definitions. And so to the extent that building code or rental requirements would apply occupancy requirements, then those would be enforceable under other provisions. But the development code actually does not have any occupancy limits associated with it, and we will just need to clean up those findings that had discussed that as part of the state law Mark was referencing. So we're removing the definition of a family, and occupancy will just go based on public health. Okay. Well, that that comes as a relief to me, actually. I was I was concerned about the possibility of families

1:14:46 potentially having to separate as a result of maximum occupancy requirements. The The other question that I had here was what Let's say that with all the best intentions in the world no middle housing gets built. I I imagine the state probably subjects us to some sort of review and some sort of audit after a while and then we're given a warning, well, you better buy some you better start building some middle housing. What happens if we don't do it then? Thank you, Counselor Steer. That's a great question. I may prod Sandy Belson if potentially may have a response to this. I don't want to put her on the spot. I think she's an attendee could potentially be promoted, but there is a

1:15:33 a bunch of follow-on work that still needs to be done as part of a lot of new state legislation, Counselor Steer. As you may be aware the companion bill to House Bill 2001 is House Bill 2003 that requires us to do a housing production strategy and demonstrate how the city is going to meet our housing needs. And so I I may just see if Sandy wants to elaborate on that, but there is a bunch more work that needs to be done on that point. Commissioners and counselors, can you hear me? Yes, we can. All right. Sandy Belson, interim planning manager. So, Counselor Steer, the work session that we had a few weeks ago was specifically to address middle

1:16:19 housing and in compliance with House Bill 2001 in terms of what incentives the city would be looking at for middle housing. So, at this point there is no requirement that we meet a certain target level, but that you will have looked at those and we're going to follow up with based on the direction you gave with another work session in May. Um when it comes to the House Bill 2003, the housing production strategy, which we will be doing in 2000 and 26, um that's when we'll have to be um more specific and responsive to the state, but we have a few years to get there and so I think we'll be able to see how the

1:17:05 market responds to these new code amendments and then decide if there's something further that the city can or should do um in response to how the market is responding. If if it's in the way we expect or not. And if I could just add um briefly Counselor Stare, just again anecdotally that at the counter at our front public-facing planning counter that we staff, um I would say very routinely, weekly, um over the last handful of weeks we've been getting inquiries about people anticipating these rules coming and wanting to be able to use them. So, just based on the kind of reaction we've seen at least at

1:17:50 our counter for planning, is that people are excited about these new rules coming into play and will be trying to utilize them. Yeah. Yes, don't don't get me wrong. I'm speaking as somebody who very much wants middle housing. Um I just want to make sure that there are adequate um safeguards in place to ensure that it does. Thank you. All right. Mayor Pro Tem Gordon. Commissioner Far. Uh thank you. Just a reminder, this is a joint meeting, but I would ask you if we do have uh hand raises from the Board of Commissioners, please intersperse them into your queue. I would be happy to do that. Thank you. All right. Mark, I've got two quick questions. Um so there was one comment that we got

1:18:36 specific from Jenna about a suggested edit. Is there enough there for you to respond to? Yeah, and I have I've um Jenna and I have talked about that topic. She's let me know that, you know, she was interested in that change. I have talked about that potential change she suggested to the city attorney's office. And I know Christina is um has provided some really good feedback to me on that specifically and probably explain it better than I could, but Waving her hand right now. Yeah, why don't I defer to her and then um go from there. Thank you. So, we did examine um whether we could add MDS into um the downtown mixed-use um plan district and other similar

1:19:21 mixed-use plan districts. Um I I believe what Jenna was referencing about the change was that the code is very explicit that MDS is not allowed in the downtown mixed-use or in other mixed-use zones, but uh previously previous prior planning staff that are no longer working for the city um did not enforce that explicit provision in the code and allowed development under an MDS process when the code um prohibits it. And so, one one thing that staff are working on is um more ways to use the business licensing process to allow some temporary type seating areas and tents downtown as well as the cafe seating program, which will allow some outside of a land-use process some temporary um uses related to dining and that

1:20:06 vibrancy downtown that um Miss Verbly mentioned around seating areas. But then um in terms of other types of developments that are at a smaller scale, it is not a matter unfortunately, it's not a matter of just inserting mixed-use commercial into the allowed zones. And the reason for that is because our mixed-use areas are largely designated as nodal development areas subject to nodal development overlay requirements, which mandate certain features around pedestrian-friendly environments, walkable neighborhoods, and other design elements be incorporated into development that simply are not present in other zones of the city. And so, the MDS review standards and criteria are just not well adapted for the design standards or

1:20:51 pedestrian requirements currently. So, in phase three of the development code update, I think we envision taking a look at those mixed-use standards for downtown and elsewhere and figuring out a more streamlined process for smaller-scale developments, but that work is um would significantly hold back the MDS uh streamlining for other parts of the city. And so, we would um recommend going forward with the updates to MDS that would apply elsewhere and then looking at how to develop some type of MDS process for mixed-use in phase three. We are looking at ways to adjust um proposing changes in fees to make it a little bit more um financially feasible to go through site plan review for smaller-scale developments around the city. And what's the timing on phase three? I

1:21:38 Yeah, if if I could interject, I don't think there's a clear time frame for phase three at this point based on just recruiting staff to perform that work. Um it's probably envisioned to um have phase three be in smaller increments of work, you know, potentially doing have different staff address certain sections of the code and then other staff do different code amendments. Um I did want to just interject as well that what Christina said was all great and true, and I wanted to add that in addition, we she mentioned the fee structure that will be coming to the council here shortly. We have added some different layers of fees within site plan review based on the scope of what would happen. And then, just how we've

1:22:23 defined what's applicable and require site plan review um also what's considered a change of use. Those two terms being defined with some slight modifications in the code can help us get to a point where in the interim it's a little easier to process those types of requests. Commissioner Bernie. Thank you, Mayor. First I want to commend Springfield city staff. It's a pleasure to live here and I think you did a lot of really good hard work. I think that the people that provided public testimony all made some really really good points and and they were points that I found generally supportive

1:23:08 of moving forward but also points that were that talked about areas for further improvement. So my request is a process request. At our next hearing are we going to have each of their questions answered by staff so that we can have those answers prior to the meeting and are prepared to dig a little deeper. I'm happy to try to outline all the questions I wrote down and re-listen to the recording of this to make sure I do touch on that. I was actually prepared to discuss a couple of them tonight if you wanted to entertain a little bit of information I had about at least two of the questions. Um That may be the will of the group. I

1:23:53 know in addition I would like to see them in print and study them and get a bit more granular on our next meeting. But thank you very much. I would definitely commit to providing that for you for your next meeting. And Mark, could you give us the the high level here? I think what Commissioner Bernie is asking for makes sense but if you've got a a little bit of information I think that would be helpful. Sure enough. So and maybe working slightly in reverse order. Um, I think it was a member of the public, Stephanie Clark, that discussed the a Washburn District and the the zone district line change. And I just want to be clear that we're not proposing to change any zoning district lines. And if if I can, I'm just going to share my

1:24:38 screen here uh um again to just demonstrate show a map um if I can do all the right clicks here. Sorry for the slight delay. No, I didn't do it. Um Well, I can just speak to it, I suppose. And that is we're again, we're not proposing to change the zoning district boundaries. It's existing zoning that bisects the historic district. There's some of the historic district that um is medium-density residential as well as a larger portion that's low-density statement residential. The prohibition on detached

1:25:24 single-family dwellings in the R2 or MDR is one of the things that's related to that Measure 56 that went to a portion of the historic district property owners. And so the language of that Ballot Measure 56 required by the state does say that we're proposing to rezone your property, even though what's defined as a rezone under state law is different than actually rezoning the property. So again, it's just eliminating that ability to have a single detached unit in the R2 zone is what some of the historic district got notice of. We We discussed this in pretty good detail at the Planning Commission level. Um

1:26:09 existing single-family homes will con- continue to be allowed and maintained. They They could also add a second detached single family home as a duplex in that zone. Um and so again, if some of the the wording gets a little blurred, it it feels like a detached single family home when it's actually a duplex. So anyway, I'm not sure that totally clarifies that point. The other one I wanted to mention was um Dylan Lemar mentioned a number of points and I see he emailed me his testimony, but we did propose a a parking reduction allowance for affordable housing, and I

1:26:55 think that's something that that could be considered by the council and the Board of Commissioners. I'm happy to provide that in writing for follow-up at the next discussion point. Um let's see. Are there any more comments um before we before we sort of move forward here. I know that it sounds like Mark's going to respond to all the public testimony we've got. We'll get it in writing beforehand, but I before before we sort of move on here, I want to give anybody else a chance to ask additional questions that they might have or make additional comments. All right. If if I could, Mayor, um just on the point and we could this could be deferred till next time, too, but I just want to make sure we ultimately do receive some feedback on how to deal

1:27:40 with the ADU inconsistency, whether um there's direction feeling that we should allow them for attached middle housing types or prevent the ADUs as part of attached middle housing types and um consistent with the definition. So that'll be something I can lay out more specifically to hopefully get better clear direction on. Okay. That would that would be perfect. So Christina, I may need a little guidance here. I think I think we need to leave the hearing open, right? If you want more testimony from the public, then you would need to um then you could leave the hearing open, but you would need to continue it in a joint manner, which means you would meet again with the Lane County Board of

1:28:25 Commissioners. The record, in terms of providing more written information, stays open with a legislative matter through adoption. So, you would not need to take You could close the hearing if you don't need to take more oral testimony from the public, but you just want more follow-up information from staff. And you're free to discuss that follow up information with members of the public who have testified at your discretion. I do always recommend that you include a synopsis of information that you gain when you meet again in your deliberations, so that all counselors have the same information, but this is not um a strict process that's subject to ex parte contact rules. So, so for the group, I think we're going to have to that that's going to be a decision we want to make, right? Is so, we we have space for Mark to sort of respond and have us have that guide our our deliberations, but I think the

1:29:11 question for the group is for the council, at least, is do we want to take additional public uh public input on that? And I'm not seeing a reason why we we would want to, but I'm going to leave that open to the group here. All right. Then I I didn't hear any radical responses, so I think we're okay to do that. I Then for the uh for the City Council, we're going to go ahead and close the public hearing. And then I'm going to turn it over to the County Commission and Commissioner Farr. Thank you, Mayor. Then Lindsay, I'm going to look at you, and we have three options before us. Can you guide us a little bit in uh in uh why we would choose one or the other?

1:29:57 Yes, thank you, Chair Farr. Um so, um because of a difference in noticing requirements, um and when the public notice was published in the newspaper, the board needs to, as per recommended by County Council, um, it's recommended that we continue the public hearing until next Tuesday at 1:30 time certain. Um, and then, uh, if, uh, there's additional testimony, we can share that information, um, so that it's in the record for for the City Council as well. Um, but, uh, we need to to leave the actual hearing

1:30:43 open for one more week. Very good. So, a motion that I'll be looking for then will be to continue the public hearing instead of third reading uh, for May 3rd, 2022 at 1:30 p.m. Does that sound right? Very good. Mayor, back to you. Um, I I think we're we're looking for you guys to make a make a make a motion to do that. Then it's a So moved. So, moved by Commissioner Bernie, do I have a second? I'll second. Moved by Commissioner Bernie, seconded by Commissioner Buck. I'll read the motion. The motion is moved to continue the public hearing instead of third reading on May instead of third reading on May 3rd,

1:31:29 2022 at 1:30 p.m. It'll be held virtually virtually for ordinance number 22-03 as presented. Uh, moved and seconded to discussion to the motion. I see no discussion and I'll call for the vote. Commissioners, all those in favor, please say I. I. Passes 5-0 unanimously. Thank you. All right. So, then we have no further action tonight. We are going then since it's a first reading for the Springfield City Council. And then with that, I think that's all the business we that we have. So, I'm going to adjourn the City Council meeting and turn it over to Commissioner Farr. Do you guys want to hang around a while longer or should I go ahead and uh Okay, let's do

1:32:16 The Board of County Commissioners is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

0:04 i'm going to call the springfield city council work session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here counselor mo here counselor bradley here announcer here sponsor woodrow here that's pationary all right and counselor pictionary is excused for the evening we have two items this evening first item is waste water and storm water user fees fiscal year 2022 through 2023 and it is kathy bishop all right it's catherine matt and i this has worked well in the past to have two of us uh present so i think we'll continue with that that is okay

0:50 um and welcome mayor and council it's a pleasure to be here tonight um we're doing a little powerpoint we'll be brief otherwise we'd be in there in person and then we'll be there next week in person as well let me share my screen and we'll get started here we can excellent okay um so welcome again with me is katherine bishop environmental services program manager i know you don't know me the environmental services division director okay so you've seen this slide deck in the past we'll run through it a little bit quicker than we have in years past but if there's any questions you know let us know ultimately we're looking for uh

1:36 council's feedback tonight to take to next week to a public hearing to hold for user fees for wastewater and stormwater user rates for the city so the objectives tonight are going to talk a little bit with you about the revenues our systems some of the challenges that we're facing along with some of the regulatory requirements that we're dealing with and then ultimately real brief on the programs and then discuss some great options with council revenue goals or something that we're looking at here it's provide resources for operations and maintenance programs to also fund the capital improvement program maintain debt service requirements and increase capital reserves while maintaining fiscal health and a strong

2:21 credit rating so i think council's seen this slide the last several years but we'd like to show it every year just as a reminder that these systems that we're dealing with are large and they're complex they have an asset value of you know several hundred million dollars uh when you look at them collectively um and with respect to the wastewater system um there's two components there's the local conveyance component and there's the regional mwmc treatment component that occurs out of the treatment plant on river avenue we have over 240 miles of pipelines for our wastewater system the number of pump stations the city owns and then on the stormwater side we have a number of facilities over 6 000 catch basins over 200 miles

3:06 of pipeline and a number of ever-growing water quality facilities that are having to maintain and operate the user fees that we collect for these systems are the sole source of our operating and maintenance costs for these systems and they're a large component of the capital cost as well a number of challenges that are associated with you know quote-unquote paying for clean water those are listed here just briefly we have fixed operating costs we deal with regardless of whether or not people are how much people are using the system our infrastructure is starting to age we have some other portions of our systems that are 50 or 150 to 100 years old we have capital costs that are

3:51 ongoing and then regulatory requirements that we need to meet there's new new permits and then there's a there's a continued permitting requirements that carry over from previous permits talk a little bit about that in a second inflationary pressure as i think everybody's aware of right now basically that impact all aspects of our system whether it be personnel or operating costs or mns or capital and then although there's been an influx of federal funding recently overall there's been a significantly reduced amount of federal funding available for utilities in the last several years going back to the 1980s and then we do have that sort of service obligations that we need to meet for previous

4:37 bond sales just quickly on the storm water permit and wastewater permit so these do contain the discharge and reporting requirements that we have to adhere to and maintain with deq the city's stormwater permit was it's a new permit it was a quote-unquote issue permit that we accepted after some litigation and a lengthy process with deq in uh june 2021 and that lays the foundation for our regulatory requirements moving forward for the next three and a half years on the wastewater side we are currently in negotiation with the eq for a new permit this is a permit that's been needed for some time it's been since

5:23 2006 when we were last issued a permit and we've been operating under a wastewater permit that's been on extension since then we have just received the applicant review draft for that permit a few weeks ago and we expect public review comment to happen um in the next month the month and a half and then a final permit to be issued this summer that permit is going to contain a number of complex treatment requirements mostly impacting the mwmc although springfield and eugene are both named on that permit and this permit is really again lays the foundation for the requirements needed to be met for both the local and the regional programs i won't cover these programs in detail just to say that these are the programs

6:08 some of our programs that are funded by user fees i just want to put a plugin for the calendar on the right this is our 2020 canines for clean calendar we just got done uh soliciting for people to submit photos of this year's dogs for the 2023 calendar and we received approximately 150 submissions and that's we're currently in the process of judging those entries and getting ready to gear up for the calendar for next year so that's one of our one of our many tactics for uh education and outreach with respect to our star water program um transition real quick and talk about the local wastewater system this slide shows a couple of operation staff um maintaining that system in a manhole and then into a

6:53 clean out behind the sidewalk here at the edge of the right-of-way so before we get to options just a few great factors that impact the wastewater system obviously we've sold bonds in the past um which those sales have influenced our rates our wastewater rate factors number of capital investments that we have made and are going to make in the future with respect to our capital program the amount of water customers use actually impacts our rates so the more water efficient fixtures that get put in or the more a business is using more water or less water impacts those rates and how we've set those and then our local rates are flow based uh here in springfield so i just wanted to point

7:38 that out with that i think capital will take over a conversation on where the rates are and then where uh where they're headed so this chart that we're looking at here is looking back at currently adopted rates as of january 15th so these are the rates looking back and we this is for the wastewater fee comparison and what we look at is we look at 5000 gallons of water or 6.684 units and you can see where the average is in the middle right to the right of that is springfield just below the average and over to the far right is eugene

8:23 so you can kind of see where we fit in we usually try to be within the average or slightly below average because we like to have rates on an annual basis that are like moderate and incremental so this is where we where we fit in right here for the year looking behind us catherine if you can hang on for a second yeah did you have a question it's um actually relevant to the rates that she's talking about right now i'll i'll wait near a presentation thanks okay um and then aj could you maybe resize us so we can get the rest of the council in case thank you go ahead catherine okay next slide

9:08 and this is just moving into stormwater services you can recall the um upstream art and then we also have the cleaning of the ditches and the next slide so now we're looking at the stormwater fee comparison and as you know that these are pretty much a fixed fee which is very different than the wastewater which is flow based and you can see over on the the third to the left is springfield at 15.62 cents and eugene is just right to the right of there and again these are the rates that are already adopted um and and that's where eugene and springfield are in this process there's a number of permits that have gone out to to communities having to do with stormwater permits and we'll see over time how

9:54 those change for those communities but we do have a couple of proposals in our next slides i just add to this slide it may answer a question that might be out there but um some of these communities to the right in here like albany and others um have programs that are much less mature than springfield's and in fact albany didn't even have a stormwater permit uh until here just last year and that was due to the size of the community where they're located in the fact that they just slid under the threshold in the previous permit round when the census was done but these programs are now and they're going to be catching us in the coming years but due to the fact that we've had a permit for so long in the maturity of our program that's one of the reasons why you see the numbers here

10:42 and this is a looking back during the pandemic and the fees that were adopted you can see that in 1920 overall the the cost for local wastewater and storm water resulted in a two percent increase and then we did have a flat fee for 2021 during that adopted period of time so they remained level and then in the most recent year there was a overall 2.8 percent increase or a dollar a 9 cent increase we have a couple of options this is option one this is actually the higher rate change um it actually results in three point two percent or one dollar and thirty three cents when combined with the local

11:29 wastewater and stormwater services now that does take into consideration um that not every customer has the same amount of wastewater in terms of their flow and so this is looking at five thousand gallons but we do know that in springfield currently our average for single-family residential is 4300 and so it would be less than this but we we do compare with that 5000 and so this is the higher option and next slide what we're recommending is option two you can see that that results in a 2.8 percent um over the wastewater services and the stormwater services that are local and that demonstrates about a dollar and

12:15 twelve cents monthly increase now that assumes five thousand gallons so if it was forty three hundred gallons it would be less but then again there's also customers with larger homes maybe more people in the household that could have a higher bill as well next slide so we're looking at two choices option one which would be the 3.2 percent or the proposed option two that would be 2.8 percent and then this is um the regional wastewater mwmc these fees were adopted earlier again it was 3.5 resulting in 98 cents

13:03 monthly and it looks like there might be some questions leonard yep thanks sean and um thank you matt and kathy for the presentation i um did want to ask um you're recommending the lower percentage of um the um billing for the uh for wastewater so um the additional 0.4 what would that be used to fund if we were to vote for the higher rate well actually um you know we're in a pretty good position because we have right now what we have is we have the local wastewater that's going to be developing a master facilities plan

13:50 they're going to start embarking on this it'll take a number of years and we have adequate reserves for that we don't we don't foresee i know you think you're probably thinking about inflation but we do have adequate reserves in the local wastewater program and then with the storm water services those fees are pretty much fixed they're not flow based so the single family residential is the same price each month but if you're in a large industry that has a lot of impervious surface you also kind of have a fixed fee because it's based off of impervious surface on the side so we're in a pretty good position because we do um have annual increases that are moderate and consistent

14:36 um so yeah i can add to that as well you know we um it probably at this point in time it was going back into the reserves with pat our reserves a little bit we're in the process of recruiting for a position to um basically dig into this area a little deeper in the coming year there's a whole conversation that we want to have internally on how much money we're taking each year and transferring to capital how much money we're transferring to operational the operational part of the program as our systems age and we need to have we can we add more infrastructure to the city and we need to do more with respect to operations and maintenance so it would position us maybe a little better once we had those conversations but then again the direction we've gotten the council in the past and what we tried to adhere

15:22 to is to have small incremental rate increases over time um that are at or below inflation and we you know our customers are kind of coming to depend on that it's like a i was mentioning it to someone earlier today but it's kind of like it's not necessarily like a deferred comp plan but if you're putting money in um every year whether you're buying a lot for your money or not you're not buying as much people have come to really appreciate the small incremental adjustments over time and they know what they can expect in their bill as opposed to looking at you know doing a one year and then nothing for a year or two and then back to an eight percent we tend to get a lot of negative feedback in that when we take those types of actions with our our billing specialists here at the counter okay

16:09 i had never heard the phrase impervious services or if i had i forgot um could you explain what those are right so you know if you have a large industry or if you have a church for that matter that has a lot of asphalt in their parking lot has a large footprint of their building the drainage the storm water is it can the asphalt and the building is considered impervious surface because water can't drain through that through that area so the charges are applied to the hard surfaces that don't have drainage okay so there you don't anticipate any kind of service um interruption or failure or

16:54 any lesser services being provided as a result of lower percentage correct and and one thing i'd like to add is that we do have revenue bonds on the stormwater services and also on the local wastewater and the local wastewater is really trending downward we're coming out of a longer period of time that it was was more years and we have about five or six more years so we're trending down and then we um then then what will happen at the end of those four or five years is we'll have all of a sudden an additional money that that was used to pay off the the revenue bond so we're kind of trending downward there very good thank you i i'm comfortable with the uh recommended plan

17:41 thanks corey thank you um and my videos being a little glitchy which is why you see me and then you don't but i'm here um and you just answered one of my questions which is around the timing of the the bond so i appreciate that and i know you covered this i just want to just like hear it again um just that because we're in such a kind of unpredictable inflationary time um and it's you know we look at these things kind of in isolation we're like okay we're looking at waste and storm water and then you know but but that's not how people experience it right people are experiencing waste and storm water and then they're experiencing their utilities and then they're experiencing all these other things going up so um

18:27 and i know that we're kind of looking at the incremental so i have to i'm getting to a question really like i think that there's there's two things i'm thinking about one are we really like kind of thinking about that ecosystem and being like okay we need to adjust for inflation and just be wary of what people can afford to pay and the flip side of that is if we do reach some really high inflation not wanting to like have to play catch-up right so i know it's like forcing us to kind of be like i don't know like look into the crystal ball but i just and i know you guys touch on a little bit i just want to just just a little more so that i feel like yes we've done our due diligence and we're in a confident place yeah i think it's uh i tried to i didn't

19:12 explain it very well i don't think but um earlier people have have gotten used to the smaller incremental rate increases over time so there's times when we're doing a three percent rate increase and the inflation might only be two percent um and we have a pretty healthy reserve right now in both funds but there's also times like right now where inflation is higher we're still keeping with that same philosophy it's kind of like when you think of a whether whether you're managing your own your own deferred compensation or stocks or whatever but you you're buying you're buying it at the same rate over time and in the end when you look at it you know it averages out but if you you don't want to try to play it as the market's changing because what happens is our if we're we're at eight or nine percent and usually what happens is somebody you know we either people

19:57 complain really hard about doing that eight or nine percent or we end up doing something that's less than that and we don't make up what we need but then when times are then then when times aren't as good we go with a zero we end up being behind and so really this kind of you know small incremental philosophy over time tends to position us better in the long run and it also tends to give our customers something that they can count on and know that what to expect on a year-to-year basis when they're receiving their bills perfect thank you so man i guess going back to that same point that and i think ever it's on everybody's mind by adopting the the proposed option are we setting ourselves um

20:44 up where you know next year is going to float around and the the guidance is going to come back at six or nine percent like is there a headwind out there that we don't know that that we haven't uh sort of taken into account that we already know about oh what happened you can attempt to answer that i don't think i think the answers were no we're not not doing that okay so katherine well we do have pretty good reserves in both of these funds and we do have um you know bond payments that are trending down and that we're going to come away from within a few years and uh we feel really comfortable with with the proposed we do have you know increasing operational needs um and we have a

21:29 capital program that's going to be needing to be implemented but as catherine mentioned we have healthy reserves on the uh on the storm on the wastewater side the new permit most of those requirements are going to be on the regional side so on the local side we're not having a bunch of unanticipated work that we weren't planning that's going to result in an additional need that said we need to figure out internally what's the best practice for managing our capital and our operational needs but within the concept of the highest level where we're at with our dollars i think we're in pretty good shape on the storm water side there are going to be some additional things we need to consider but we're in a position with as catherine mentioned given that some that rates fixed based on based on you know the amount of runoff that comes off the site it's pretty much fixed it's not it's not a you can't control it with

22:15 um by turning the tap on and off we're also in a pretty good position there as well okay um so we would expect next year to see a guidance between probably two and four percent right like it's it's really the consistent the the part that's kept us in this place is the sort of fiscal stewardship we've we've taken up until this point of constantly just taking those gentle adjustments has created an environment where we can absorb this much inflation yes and we are this is the projections for the next couple of years on the current option okay looking at threes for three you know two and a half to three and a half um the previous auction is around three

23:00 to three and a half so those are our current projections you know three or three years from now there could be something that changes in a new permit that would put us in a little different place no um i think this philosophy uh has paid off for for uh for the council i mean that's what we're seeing in the rate in the rate increases right so i'm looking i'm comfortable with the with the recommended option and i'm looking around seeing some head nods um does anybody have any other questions before we um before we go to the next item all right thank you guys thank you thank you

23:51 we're going to pause for station identification while we're still uh getting the next presenters i up i'm next married all said yep sam we're going to turn it uh we're going to turn it over to you take us away good good evening mayor and council my name is sam kelly petrocki i'm back again this year following matt and catherine with the santa pack fees and updates there's a slight double header in this one uh aaron my partner from santa pac is going to go first and talk about the new uh food waste the yard debris cams following oh i'm sorry counselor yes no it's okay sam i i just wanted i wanted to

24:36 ask um the mayor if this would be a good time to recuse myself from these proceedings uh that would be a perfect time okay um i have represented members of santa pac um drivers and yard employees and as a result of my interest in the operation of that company i'm recusing myself from these proceedings thank you thank you counselor um so the first half of this will be a presentation on the food waste in the yard debris cans a bit of educational overview how the program will work and in the second half i'll hop back on and go over the rest all the fees and updates and the cpi so trying to get two into the weeds on costs just yet wait till i come back and

25:21 then we can dig in them and have some fun but i think with that aaron has a powerpoint slide and if you want to take over please feel free great thanks sam uh hello mayor uh council and city staff thanks for having me on my name's aaron donnelly i'm with santa pack um i'm gonna share my screen here just to share you guys with you guys real quickly um about yard debris and food potentially food waste in the yard degree so hopefully you'll see that um so just quickly the the current system uh was implemented in 2008 it's a curbside uh 65 gallon yard of can picked up every other week it's a subscription basis so you're not it's not mandatory and about 40 of springfield residents do subscribe to it

26:06 we use it as a qualifying element to meet the city of springfield's opportunity to recycle requirements which we submit for the city every year um so once you sign up there is a one-year commitment uh if there's a 20 uh there's 25 cancellation fee in the first year um just to cover the cost of the can and delivery and removal and all that kind of stuff i mean kind of see the growth over the years since we started and right now we're i think we're actually a little bit higher we're in the 6800 level right now so the material that can go in is basically yard debris so if it grows it goes it's kind of been our motto leaves grass garden waste in small tree limbs [Music] stuff like that basically anything you grow outside can go in and so um

26:54 yeah obviously the point of this discussion is whether the council would like to speak uh speak to adding food waste into the yard debris as an option so food waste itself um is has been a big target uh more recently to try and eliminate it from the landfills so uh food waste does break down in a landfill and and produces methane which is 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide uh is and with causing greenhouse gas um excuse me uh emission exchange it's causing uh climate change because it captures more um heat in the atmosphere methane dust so uh additionally when we send food and yard waste to the landfill we're wasting a valuable resource that can be put to better use potentially there's a study here that's in a link as well as far as

27:41 portland did on diverting food waste and the benefits of that on average an oregon household throws away 6.3 pounds of food waste per week um about four and four point nine pounds goes into the garbage uh more curbside compost if someone has it um food waste is the highest individually categorized waste type in lane county's waste stream so if you were to take a sample of the landfill just a big chunk of it 18 of that is food waste so it's the largest percentage of waste that we generate in lane county so um with a new program here's what would change right now you can put in plant trimmings

28:26 if it grows it goes but in the future you'll be able to put in all your plate scrapings uh from your kitchen meat bones dairy products baked goods and kitchen trimmings so basically all your plates uh scraps including meat and dairy and bones fish anything that is food waste can go in you do not have to put in food waste obviously you can just continue to put in your debris however there is a caveat that if we switch to adding food waste the costs essentially will go up overall because we have to assume that there is food waste overall in the mix so let's go to the next one uh just a brief word on compostable wares like your uh sometimes you see

29:12 combustible cups some plates and um silverware or wares uh oregon composters took a pretty hard stance against accepting any of those types of wares into their compost there's a letter that went out that was signed by basically all of the food waste composter commercial composters in oregon including the two local processors here the compostable wares themselves do not create a valuable they just sort of break down they're not really the valuable piece of of what makes compost it's really the food and then adding compostable wares adds a whole other element of potential contamination with plastic and it's hard to identify the difference between plastic and a compostable wear in a large pile of waste

29:58 so this would be food only outreach program timeline so we would essentially be implemented july 1st but starting in june we would do instructional posts and videos on the city of springfield and our websites and facebook pages email blast all city of springfield residential customers um anybody that uses the chatback app um which is a is just a high percentage of customers now uh we'll get a notification about it and a newsletter to all city of springfield residential customers and then we'll be continuation of outreach activities throughout starting july 1st and thereafter uh drivers have hopper cams um so they'll note um if there's and when they dump a car if there's contamination in it and

30:44 then note that on their tablet and then that will go to the customer service department who will reach out and talk to the customer and then we can also do site visits and just talk to people face to face as well this is kind of what the graphics look like in eugene so um this has been going on uh robbie jane since 2019 uh food waste and yard debris um we actually started in 2017 a two-year 1000 customer pilot so we did that for two years and it worked fine and so we uh so the city of gene implemented um regulation vr debris in 2019 and since then it's been a good success so um some of the concerns that we had previously um

31:29 were really sort of unfounded um regarding we thought well is it going to smell is it going to create vectors and and we really haven't seen a lot of those problems and it's really just been sort of a plus for residents so here's just more these are these are the newsletters that go out with the bills um like for example we could have uh ella adams who was a thurston graduate that won our scholarship for us being a sustainably minded student and we put these in the bills and we would promote uh the food waste in the yard debris through these as well as through commercials we uh we work with the m's and sponsored them so we already reached out and we've got slugo on board to help us develop some commercials which

32:14 will be targeted towards springfield residents um a couple other cities that also include food waste in the media debris or portland and these are what their flyers look like uh there's some basic tips um so it is recommended that you know if you have this type of food waste that you can if you want to keep it in your kitchen to have a little tub uh to you know you can bag it but then the bag itself can't go into the food waste uh clean it regularly sprinkle baking soda at the bottom of your yard every car to keep odors down um and the reason why it i think the main reason why we haven't seen many issues is this mix so it will go in with yard debris

32:59 during the summer months especially um and so it mixes in and so the liquids sort of soak in with the debris during the winter months it's just not that much of an issue just because of the cold so these are some recommendations that we'll recommend and just some common faqs that will develop as well um so cities of portland see how eugene benjamin any others been practicing for years this is the city of springfield website for recycling which is robust city springfield does a great job steering residents towards all the information that's available we also have our waste wizard which is on the santa pack site and on on the app where you can type in any material in the area in springfield you

33:45 can find out where it's recyclable and that will of course be included with the food waste sort of a a way the driver will tag a cart um we have these call these foods tags and so he'll tag a card if there's a problem and he'll write on here what the problem was so if there was like garbage bags in it or something like that he would write garbage bags on here and uh um and leave that also behind on the cart um and uh it's just the final one just other promotional things we do i apologize that's my dog sorry about that so um yeah so this is just other ways that we do community events and outreach and so we'll uh uh and we're open to anything else the city of springfield might have in mind for us to do as far as outreach

34:32 so that's kind of the uh food waste uh little presentation pitch that i came up with on that um i'm here to answer any questions on that um now the rate for this um which i just sent to sam because we just got some um updated information on yard debris disposal so i sent this in a uh updated this letter and we actually just got this updated information today so apologize for the change in this but uh basically it's gonna be a good change if you do end up opting for food waste uh the yard debris itself um disposal is actually going up uh from twenty four dollars a ton to twenty eight dollars a ton effective may first um we're gonna delay and pass through on that until july

35:17 but so what that means is that the yard debris rate is going to 28 a ton regardless if a food waste is included or not and that's the latest information that we have from the processor um when food waste is included there could there could be additional um contamination fees and so forth but so we kind of step back and look at what that does to the rates um so if you don't want to include food waste it would be uh we would request an increase of 47 cents per month to accommodate for the cpi that sam's going to talk about and the increased yard debris disposal rate but if you do want to increase do you want to add food waste there's some

36:02 additional costs that we like to accommodate for which are your debris service levels pick up during the winter months now with food waste included when people normally don't sell out their carts as much so it sort of balances that but now the food waste is included the set out rate goes up total weight is heavier with the addition of food additional outreach and potential contamination fees so um if you would like to add food waste we're requesting is an increase of 75 cents per month and if you would not like to add food waste we're requesting an increase of 47 cents per month the current rate is 612 a month so it would go from 659 without food 687 with food

36:47 and again this is a subscription base there's nothing mandatory about this so so aaron before we before we open up the questions could you read that the the 47 cents and 75 cents is strictly related to the yard waste right yes yeah it's 6 12 today it's gonna go to 659 no matter what and then if we want it if we wanted food waste what was that what was the second number that you listed 687 okay so it's a difference 28 cents and and lastly in eugene how much actual food waster or are fo are you getting in

37:34 it's not a substantial amount and it really depends on the customer so some people don't use it at all some people use it a lot it really does vary like i've walked through the neighborhoods and then can lifts and um i can't give you an exact percentage right now but it's not like it's not a super substantial amount but it is noticeable to those people that want to participate in it okay merrily um uh yep thanks for the information um i had a couple questions where does the where does the waste go when it's picked up where does it go uh we take it to lane forest products and it goes into what so they process it and turn it back into compost um

38:20 another processor in the area orexias uh does the same and they they've actually branded it called love food not waste so you can go and buy a package of local compost that says from eugene um lean force products is uh geographically a lot closer for us to drop off here in springfield so that's where we take it i'm not sure if they have plans for branding on that piece okay and i'm not sure if this question is for you or for um later and that is i read in the in the ais that um there were several inquiries um as to uh putting this program into springfield and i was curious as to what several meant how many several was so i'm not sure if that comes from you or

39:06 yeah i i sam might have something i i you know probably like for me personally i've heard from maybe three to five people call in and ask ask about it um but that doesn't mean that the people you know our customer service department there in glenwood that answers the phones they probably got a lot of calls i actually asked them and they're like yeah we do get called we do requests from people that especially if they move from eugene to springfield um they're like oh i can't put it in anymore so i don't have a quantum an actual number but they said yeah it does happen um somewhat frequently aaron and i didn't compare names by about the same amount five or so half dozen people have called in to talk about this definitely a couple repeats over the years we've talked about this i think for a year or so now um so maybe a

39:52 dozen call in for the two of us i would say but again we didn't compare names maybe it was the same people calm both sides okay i uh i i'm i'm probably okay with with what's being presented as long as it doesn't as long as it's optional and it's up to the individual as to whether they want to participate or not but if it ever gets to the point of where the cost for this extends out to the regular general person that doesn't have a yard debris container um then i would i would definitely be a no vote it's it's allowing the option is fine as long as it's a person has the option this one is paying for it so that's all i had corey

40:38 thank you um so i am completely and absolutely in favor of this um as someone who does use a yard waste box a yard waste bin and um also composts but not everything can go in our you know if you have a compost and you're in a city lot you can't compost phones like that so um i i also i love that it's opt in i think it's great i'm totally supportive of it my question is is there a version of this or an option for commercial folks because this is tied directly to the yard waste and i'm wondering what if there's any possibility of you know of doing something for like our restaurants and

41:23 our schools and places to let you get that compost and also just to like just add to all of my virtual signaling on this um i buy the compost too the rexy is compost that's made from the stuff so i just i'm for it completely and my question is is there any commercial version uh yeah thank you for that question um there is uh so we collect commercial food waste it's it's available for collection at restaurants and grocery stores um so yeah we have a special truck that goes around and can collect that material um it's about it's it's something that's somewhat cheaper than garbage so it's about 80 percent the rate of commercial garbage so customers can take advantage of that great thank you

42:08 damian all right how would something like this work in an apartment complex or duplexes or things like that where for example i mean i live in a complex and i have like a little yard that you know i have to maintain and stuff who would the feed go to would it be like the would it be something that the the complex owners need to decide i mean how would that work in an apartment complex uh yeah thank you for that question um so we actually started this in apartment complexion with gene um i went out and sort of met with them uh to sort of give instructions and that kind of thing um

42:53 that one in particular the complex itself pays for the garbage in separate sort of trash enclosures right and so it was just added to the bill but there is other complexes um potentially what you're describing that everybody pays for their own individual service is that how yours works or the one you're describing works no i was saying that i have to maintain the little back area that i have and you know i think majority of people they just throw it in the garbage can uh yeah yeah so you can have uh your uh the property manager the apartment complex or whatever you can get yard debris cans set up now um sometimes like we have one complex that i think

43:38 has like 20 to 25 of them they just tuck them behind a garage most complexes uh some not most but a lot of them hire like a garden a gardener that takes it with them but yeah any an apartment complex should be able to set this up and if you wanted like a centralized location uh to set it up in i can come out and visit locations as well to kind of talk through that as well okay um the this it's optional i mean all right so steve's in

44:24 all right um i did have one one question about the just yard way spins in general the one i guess critique our complaint i get is this time of year people really looking for it not to be every other week have you guys heard that feedback i personally haven't um it's something that yeah i get that because my can i can fill up when you start mowing your yard every week and so i definitely understand that but we you can get another can and we can get more than one can and there's no limit to the number of cans you can get to change to every week would be a pretty substantial operational um change and environmentally i'm i just have to believe there would be a point of

45:09 diminishing return on having the trucks come down the road twice as much for that material so i haven't personally heard of it um but we're always open to talking so yeah and and that's kind of where uh what i thought it was going to be right like is that you know this time of year you know grass is growing at an in an inch a week and everybody's got plenty of yard waste going around um as long as you guys are start you know i don't know what the solution is but starting to sort of think about it for the future then that that's good uh corey you have anything else um i was just saying you took it down this road and now we're talking about our personal trash usage um i was gonna say for us it's like the late summer and fall when we're doing a lot of garden

45:55 cleanup that we're just like we have like backup piles and we're like if it came every week we would have to like wait two weeks for a backup file to put in our pile and yeah but anyway i really appreciate it and appreciate the whole program and i know not everybody uses it but for those of us who do it's i it's a key part of our sort of waste advantage thank you uh thank you councillor riley and i would also that we do locally have some good um uh outlets to dr if you're able to haul material to a lane force or a rexius it's pretty it can be convenient to do that for some people not for everyone so thank you for that okay i think we're good on the food

46:40 waste program so i've seen it i think same we still need to go back and just talk about general fee increases that's correct yeah okay so why don't we move on to that you want to unsure your screen there i don't have a fancy slideshow this will be more of a discussion for everyone um just briefly looking ahead we'll just kind of looking for a thumbs up thumbs down right now i'll bring the rest of the fees to you all next week and then in three weeks we'll have the public hearing and the formal adoption so this is just seeking guidance so for the rest of the fees um santa pack has proposed this here a five percent increase um so on the most commonly used 35 gallon carts this is about 97 cents so from 19.40 to 20.37 this is again the most commonly

47:25 used cart this does include a 3.4 increase from the lane county uh tipping fee this is a fee they pass on through us um that's part of our franchise we take this on um at the time of this writing stand and pack kind of followed similar guidance i had a few months ago of looking at western region cpi that bc size cities that was sitting at closer to nine and a half i would be surprised if it's ten percent by now but in talking with staff and hearing previous guidance from council santa pack didn't want to do a burdensome rate on the city of springfield and was able to work through and talk to us about a five percent increase looking back last year um in the kind of the heart of kobe was about a 2.1 percent increase the year before that there was no cpi increase from santa pac

48:12 so similar to this rest of the city's master fees slow and steady increases rather than sharp increases one year at a time um aaron kind of alluded to the biggest change is that that food waste changed we were told about an hour and a half ago of this so again it'll be just about a 47 increase for yard debris cans now and if you want to include the food waste the 70 cent 75 cent increase uh on our total list of fees that only covers two of the cans that are affected by this late notice uh the rest of your information packets are up to date with the current fees um if you have any questions i'd be happy to talk about this staff with springfield met with santa patrick go over the numbers keeping in mind their biggest cost drivers are

48:57 wages and gas and both of those have seen sharp increases over the years we felt pretty comfortable that five percent and bringing that forth for you all to make sure we're all on the same page um so with that i'm happy to turn over to the group for questions or comments and we can talk through whatever we need to for the next 20 minutes i mean it seems pretty straightforward so people are looking look like they're good here and i think the the only thing i think is important to point out is that part of that is how how santa pack charges back the the tipping fee so the the increase that comes from the county right so

49:42 i think that's an important distinction when we talk about rate increases for uh when it comes to uh santa pac is that some of that money is just simply pass through from the county so the same perfect yeah thank you for that mayor yeah so there is that the each individual fee is broken out by santa pat's operational costs and the tipping fee from the county uh the tipping fee is proportionally smaller than santa packs needs so while it may show a three percent increase the overall impact isn't as big fell on the total fee so sam i think we're good here um so if this i think this is ready for for the public hearing when you get ready for it great that's wonderful news and i appreciate your feedback thank you everyone perfect thank you everyone as well thank you good seeing you aaron

50:32 so we have a joint meeting that is seven o'clock are we staying on this link okay so there is a separate link for the joint meeting and when we come back we will have our friends from the county commission with us i will i'm going to adjourn us but we will be back at seven o'clock or adjourned thank you