Springfield City Council — November 4, 2024

0:04 I'm going to call the city council Springfield City Council work session to order with the roll call Mayor Van Gordon here councelor Weber here councelor Mo here councel rodley here councelor Blackwell here councel Doyle here and councelor pisher here thank you we've got one item tonight uh planning application fees with Mark Rust good evening mayor and counselor for the record mark W with City of Springfield planning I'm here to present to you tonight on the status of the planning application fees uh I do have a PowerPoint presentation I just put together information that's already in the packet so there should be nothing new that's in the PowerPoint slides just

0:50 summaries of what you have hopefully already seen and looked through um just a really quick background we did present to you most recently on September 9th that was focused primarily just on the comprehensive planning annexation fees prior to that more generally on May 28th of this year and then originally our first presentation um when Portland State University first rolled out their results of their study was back in June of 2023 so just kind of to recap some of the dates um this is a lot of words on this slide but this all is directly from your packet in terms of the direction that staff has gone back and compiled that

1:35 we've received from Council thus far um the new one that's added there on the bottom from our last work session was on looking for alternative ways to fund comprehensive planning or presenting alternatives for you to consider to funding comprehensive planning so we'll get into more detail about that tonight um just a reminder we are focusing just on the planning application fees it does not include an analysis of a lot of these other fees I won't go through them but they're all listed there we've touched on that um multiple times before and then again just to highlight the idea that there's two different ways that we talk about being able to collect fees under state law one is the average

2:21 cost of providing service and the other is the actual cost of providing service we have only our fee structure currently is the average cost we are proposing at least in draft form to do both of these depending on the application type so splitting some that we would continue to collect average cost While others moving towards the actual cost and then in your packet tonight I have a series of questions that are laid out throughout the packet and then there's summarized at the end there's five questions total I plan to just kind of work through those tonight um providing you opportunity to discuss and um comment on our ultimate goal tonight

3:07 would be potentially to get direction from you to move forward with um going to a public hearing with the draft planning fee schedule we have not updated our planning fees for the last two years for the in in the spring of each year is when the our broader fees come to the council for um annual increase P es if they're warranted and so we have not included planning fees in those updates for the last two times so uh one of the goals has to been has been to create a much more simplified planning fee structure um I actually modeled this very closely off of the city of Eugene's planning fee

3:52 structure um this is only a snippet of it the entire thing is the attachment in your packet tonight and So within this just visually more simple um the technical structure of these fees are a lot more simple as well for instance um just one I'll point out as an example for our site plan fee currently we have a per thousand square foot of building structure size that is an add-on to the base site plan application fee we've gotten rid of that alog together it's just a flat site plan fee we are still proposing a two tiered site plan fee depending on the size so there's a simplified or a small site plan and then a second tier to kind of

4:39 your normal or large size site plan development it's really the 500 square feet and less type of small changes to an existing site or um development so that's just one example um of the simplified structure of that and so one of the questions and and we can either touch on this now or in a little bit I can get through this and we can kind of hit all the questions at once if that works better um is are you supportive of this simplified structure and in general moving this forward in a draft format to a public hearing for the public to weigh in and comment on that I will just note there is one change I would suggest and I've meant to change

5:25 on this and that is the fourth line down and it's actually within this snippet on the slide but it's the annexation fee itself um we would have intended that to also go to an actual cost of service pretty much how we determined in this schedule of which ones would go to an actual cost of service is anything that would go to a public hearing and so it's um anything that's a type three or type four application we would Envision going to an actual cost of service because as you know and have experienced some annexations can stream right through would not have any comment may be really quick and easy so would result in a small application fee where other annexations may be much more complex have a much more involved public hearing

6:11 so we don't feel that's one that is easily averaged between those to so charging an actual cost in those cases would also make sense in our mind so that would be one in this table that I would change if we move that forward to a public hearing so build off of where we left off last time with the comprehensive planning fee um as you're hopefully still aware or remember from last time we have had this annexation fee um to help fund comprehensive planning in the past that's been suspended for the last couple of years one of the questions I heard in the work session last time was having the council decide on what level would

6:56 you want to potentially fund comprehensive of planning with some kind of fee and so I tried to provide a history at least based on some averages of the last number of years how much has been supported by that historic annexation fee for comprehensive planning the rough number is about 5% or 5.1% and that varies Year bye that's a average so this is just a quick table of 1 through 15% showing you some general numbers about um how much based on the average comprehensive planning budget per year again which also varies so that would be one decision point tonight and then building off of

7:41 deciding about how much of a percentage um you might want to try and fund of comprehensive planning through collection of fees then a second number not to hopefully be too confusing is a percentage that then you could add on to current application fees to help collect that money and I'm kind of jumping between a couple of the items that are discussed in the memo but I'm trying to really point to a number I'm just going to use the 5% number as the example the around $113,000 so if Council wanted to try and fund that 5% um then it would result in about a 2% fee being added to current planning

8:27 applications to help generate that revenue for comprehensive planning and I can elaborate that on in more detail if needed we did explore a number of different types of options of ways for thinking about potentially collecting though rather than that just percentage um I go through these five different options really in my mind there's only well there's kind of three options because one of these five options is the existing or pre-existing fee of the annexation fee that um we're moving away from or haven't been collecting and then option five is a potential mix of a couple of these so the really the three options within this

9:13 um what we're presenting is is the one I just talked about which is actually option two it's establishing a fee as a percentage of the applications that come in for other current planning applications we did and jumping back now to option one um we did briefly talk at the work session last time about looking at a regional approach to maybe how we could collect for comprehensive planning work that's done within the city in different areas of the city so for instance the North Gateway area or maybe the Jasper nron area without having the time to really go into detail analyzing that option we feel it would be the most difficult option to try and figure out how to make it work and how to balance out the

9:58 comprehensive any work that's done and assign it to different regions of the city and then figure out how much that it would take to perform that work and then break it down by either acreages or number of applications within those regions to get it to be an equitable type of a solution but that is an option that we could explore further if the council felt like it was worth um moving forward with and then really the um the the last option is potentially instead of or in combination with um a percentage of current planning applications to create a fee is is creating a a flat fee for annexations instead of this tiered

10:46 approach that we've had in the past so we feel one we could establish a maximum fee so really large annexations didn't have some really large exorbitant fee and then it could be tiered so and pro-rated for the smaller ones that it was a much smaller fee like it is has been historically so those are kind of the options we looked at for the comprehensive planning just a couple more slides here and then we can get into some more discussion the other subject that is related to a little bit of the decision around how you might want to collect or help support comprehensive planning potentially with a percentage fee is the current Tech fee so we do currently

11:32 collect a 5% technology fee on every current planning applications that submitted um for comparison City of Eugene collects a 9% they just call it more generally an admin fee um if we were to say transition the tech fee to a broader fee and then include some other things such as a comprehensive planning percentage as well as looking at potentially adding a percentage to help fund what we consider kind of an unfunded mandate by the state in terms of having our um essentially one full FTE of our staff um dedicated to working the front counter at any given time and

12:18 answering General phone calls that come in not related to a specific development at that time so part of goal one in the Statewide planning program is Citizens involvement and part of that citizen involvement program is having that Planner on duty to provide the general public information and so potentially an admin fee could help cover a portion of that what we call the Planner on duty um position that isn't directly attributable to um a development application so with that I'm happy to go back to the um the list of the five questions if we want or and we can rely on the uh the memo for that too yeah

13:05 let's go back to the perfect there so who wants to jump in first this feels like this the uh the auctioneer approach we'll just say yes to everything and wrap it up right now perfect I'm done all right go ah Joe so for me I I think question number one I support that I like a more simplified structure um and I think it meets our expectations as we spoke about um revised fees are acceptable for proceeding to a public hearing on I believe they are I like I can't believe I'm really saying this but I like how you're somewhat mirroring what Eugene

13:52 does but that's okay I'll get over that but I think that I think there's actually instead of just that and that's kind of foolish personal stuff but I think though it would be beneficial for the development community so they're not trying to have to guess and it's more standardized so they can operate knowing what's expected as opposed to switching back and forth to two different systems so I think that would be beneficial to the development Community um do we want to set a target for funding the comprehensive work program for fee collection I don't know if I'm ready to set a Target yet I'm willing to listen uh fee option to support help fund the comprehensive planning uh

14:38 program yes but that kind of It kind of meshes with number five and I'm I'm looking at that and that the tech fee when we put that in place it was spec it was very specific what that Tech fee was going to go towards very specific it was to directly help the Developers uh technologically speaking you know like larger printers I I remember for example things that would directly help them and we're now talking about a admin fee which now convolutes the intent of the original Tech fee and fund a position and which is completely

15:24 different than what the main first the concept of the tech fee um I don't know of any developer that liked the tech fee so I guess it would probably best answer that is should we get should we should we eliminate the tech fee and now create an admin fee and that's to me would be the how it should be discussed and so if you're support to eliminate the tech tech fee so we don't have to worry about whether or not Jeff's got to tell us where the tech fee money went which has been a ongoing for years um I think that would clean it up and I don't know if the tech ever really did help developers directly a lot um

16:11 but I'm willing to entertain an admin fee but' You' have to um articulate to me the level of that fee such as 9% I don't know if 9% is too much or not enough but that's where I'm at Victoria so I want to start off by saying that um I really appreciate the work that you've put into this and um when I first heard I've been on vacation for a week so I didn't really get a chance to get into this until last night or today um I kind of had a knot in my stomach and I thought oh gosh here we go um and when I opened this up I was really really pleased with what you came up with I think you did a fantastic job

16:56 I think that you did exactly what I had asked for um especially in the simplification of it I opened it up side by side with Eugene today just to kind of look at the fees and look at the thing the structures and I think it's spoton so great job I'm I really appreciate that um I know this comp fee has been kind of a thing I um I liked either number three or number five on that um number five seems like one that might be an option and I'd be willing to talk more about that I don't want to make a decision on that right now but I think those are two that we could talk about um and when I agree with counselor pisher about um eliminating the tech fee and going to an admin fee I think that people don't even question that 9% with Eugene so I think if we were at like seven and a half depending on where you

17:42 know you decide that needs to be I think um I think that that's a fair and reasonable thing I think people are used to that I don't think that that's going to be too much of a um too much to handle and I think that it it makes sense you know you're paying that person that's at that counter and that's there for that so um I'm open to that as well um I think five's probably too low and I'm believe me I'm not a fee person but I understand the work that goes into processing applications and getting those um to the right people and handling that that paperwork so um all I can say is I'm I'm really pleased and um and I'm I'm open to what other people have to say about it so thank you right anybody else goad Beth um I just want to say I uh I agree with uh both with uh

18:28 counc Doyle and pisher said um those were all items that were in my notes here when I looked through this um uh option three and option five were also standouts to me for sure on the list um and also I would definitely agree with putting a cap on the mentioned a cap on the the annexation all right go ahead Steve several years ago I questioned the tech fee I didn't know where the hell it was going and we were accumulating at that out there and buying equipment and stuff like that back then which we needed but again I think it was misdirected what we were calling it but going to an admin be I support

19:14 committee all right anybody else all right um so I had a couple of comments this looks fantastic um so it's a really nice job I like the simplified fee schedule but when you go to cost to serve can you talk when for those options can you talk a little bit about that is us actually tracking our hours and then billing billing the customer correct that is right um so we would establish a deposit and so we do this now with um pip projects a couple other different types of um more engineering related applications where and developers are used to this where they'll submit a deposit and then basically it's like if you were to go hire a private attorney and you pay them

19:59 a retainer up front and they charge against it and then if we go in theory we wouldn't go over um we would try and stay under and then refund them whatever's left at the end but we already have also instituted a Time tracking okay we have um created project numbers for every single planning application that gets submitted which is about 200 applications a year um so we're we're now for every every day or week we keep track of how many hours we've spent on every one of those planning applications by all the different staff that work on it so even our engineering staff our transportation our survey staff all have access to

20:44 those same project numbers so we've already been doing this now as kind of a test for a couple of months so then at the end or at whatever point we issue a decision let's say we say okay here's here's how much time we spend on it here's the amount we'll take from your deposit and here's what you get back so we have the financial sort of instruments and internal processes and infrastructure in place to be able to successfully do this today we do because we already do it like I said for other types of projects the the other question that I had is when you think when you think of the big complicated sort of planning projects that we have that involve you know the public I can think we've had a couple this last year how is the expectation going to be that the

21:30 developer carry 100% of the co our costs to deliver those or are we you know is there going to be kind of we're going to look at it and say hey this is kind of turned into a little bit of a science project and then there's going to be some adjustments made on the on the city Side so we've worked with our city attorney's office on that question and so for instance it can be we don't really have a problem with this here in Springfield but I'm aware of it in other jurisdictions and that is people people that want to oppose a project know that dragging on a project can time can kill a project you know it costs it so much money so taking into account what is truly kind of the developer's responsibility within time if a public hearing goes sideways and gets continued

22:15 for weeks or something like that um that additional time that then staff has to spend on taking it back to another continued hearing or something like that isn't necessarily then attributed to the developer at that point it's not on their dime really staff the city at that point is kind of eating that cost and so the the city attorney's office is concerned about that and there's legalities around that doesn't all fall on the developer okay good as long as we have yeah as long as we have a control that kind of naturally gives us a ceiling so that people are walking in there um wanting to develop in the city and not and having some sort of certainty for how how long this could go Okay so I that answered that question um

23:01 the the other when I looked at the comprehensive uh fee collection honestly I ended up with number five too um I just didn't feel like adding an additional fee was really recovering that much in the way of in the way of cost and taking a look at that Tech fee and then you know retooling it so that people you know that we got something a little bit clearer about how to how to fund planning would make a lot of sense to me um I do like the discussion that folks are having which is hey propose you know we want to hear more about what that actual level is you know it may not be 9% it could be 7% we're still curious for more information the part that I want to make sure that we're we account for is if we switch to an admin fee we

23:47 still have technology infrastructure that we need to maintain and I don't know if we need an explicit carve out to make sure that we're still investing in our sort of planning infrastructure to make sure we're competitive or or not but I think that is a question I would love to hear a little bit more information about to make sure that if we introduce an admin fee that doesn't turn into all people that we've got that right balance of people and uh technology yeah and Jeff and I briefly talked about this um over the last week and and thought about that and I mean really it would be up to Jeff at that point on how much gets spent here and there unless council did provide a specific carve out but I think having the flexibility to have it not all be for FTE let's say but there' be flexibility to use part of that for

24:32 technology when it was appropriate go show and then we'll come back to Victoria yeah I concur with what the mayor said in regards to the use of the fee the the total figure and there needs to strike a balance but also we need to have some trust with our staff in regards to okay we're looking for a balance it needs to it needs to benefit the the developers but we also have that should be covered so there going to there's you're just going to have to find a sweet spot but let Council know where where you're Landing so that way when we have questions which we get questions as to why this how come getting charge this Etc that we have we can give them a a logical answer or an

25:17 answer that's more clear and um back a little bit with the discussion here with you mark in regards to the um fees we shifted you probably we shifted to an attempt to go with a 100% cost recovery Clare back with councelor Anne Baloo 200 five probably is when she was talking about that and really pushed that forward and we started instituting 100% cost recovery well that understandably uh backfired in regards to all of a sudden we have no projects and so now we're kind of hedging our way back towards that and I think there's a couple things we need to keep in mind number one is that yes we have a cost

26:02 but anything that's developed in our city unless it's a nonprofit helps with our tax taxation evaluation of the city if we if we put a stop to all of our building because we're scaring them off then we're not going to increase our Taxation and all of a sudden we're we're going the other direction so there's there's got to be a spot there that we got to find and not try to go 100% cost recovery secondly and it's uh I just wanted to bring this out in regards to I think everybody has an understanding that staff not all staff are created equal and not all staff have got uh equal efficiencies and that some staff are

26:47 probably going to get things done quicker than other staff and I'm not calling out anybody negatively but that's just human nature and so that's something that uh needs to be watched while we're tracking time well is this person's efficiency level costing five hours and this person can do the same thing in two and then the developer gets charged five so I I I know it's really foggy but but that has to be there has to be some sort of oversight in regards to what's what people are getting charged and if a developer comes back and says hey how come it's so many hours it never used to be this way way that should trigger some sort of of looky and saying okay well

27:32 let's take a look to see if there was something in particular that cost more time and and do that so we can you can go back to the developer and say we looked at it this is why and if I can just respond quickly to that and one is I I appreciate those comments for sure and one of the things we've done since the new code adoption and the code has facilitated us being much more efficient but we have being that starting with basically all new code we've had standardized templates and things like that the code is now much more clear and objective so there's not a lot of room to need to create all these discretionary findings about things um but the other thing now with this time tracking even if it's average cost or actual cost we're still tracking

28:18 all that time and this will give us the data every year to go back and and re recalibrate potentially the fees and also compare you know do some analysis within all those similar types of projects to say okay if these were two similar projects but yet cost drastically different amounts why was that and then potentially you know make adjustments within those our internal process where that review is what I'm talking about we need to keep an eye on that which I think now we can tell the developers we we're being really fair about it so great thank you Mark um so I may have misunderstood but I think there were two things that we were talking about when I said three and five and I wasn't talking about the list that you have up right now I was talking about the comprehensive planning fee so

29:03 if you you know backed up a few slides that was the three and five I was speaking of I just want to make sure I was clear on that um yeah you were there there you go those are the three and five that I was talking about okay so you knew that um the other thing is uh the um a lot of these fees that you came up with are were based on these numbers that you've used correct and what I have noticed and I looked at several other um municipalities is that they're very reasonable that they're not out of line and so if if that's your actual cost I think that's a fair that's a fair cost to charge um so um it's good that we have kind of the ability to look at that

29:48 next year let's say or whatever but there's a couple that were I think it was like the historic that um I'm wondering how many of those we get and like what's entailed in that cuz that one seemed pretty significant in change and wondering like I'm just I'm just curious about that one kind of an odd one that's sort of an off thing we can talk about that when I meet with you too okay I can just say briefly those were kept artificially low when the historic district was first created to incentivize people actually coming in to do historic applications so it's it's right sizing those if if it was felt by the council to still keep those artificially low they they could be but it wouldn't be 100% cost I just think that an and when we go back to the the

30:33 admin fee Tech fee I think the admin fee is going to be a lot easier to explain to people than the tech fee just by name alone so thanks again all right anybody else so can I gather that are we good to come back at a public hearing December 2nd with this and then um we'll bring back kind of the more specifics on the admin fee part of it as part of that public hearing package yep perfect great thank you Mark we are adjourned from the work session I'm going to call the regular session of the Springfield City Council to order with roll call Mayor Van Gordon here councelor Weber here councelor Mo here councelor rodley here councelor Blackwell here councelor Doyle here and councelor pisher here thank you please

31:18 join me for the Pledge of Allegiance there are two designated times for public testimony this evening under public hearings and business from the audience if you're attending in person please complete the request to speak card located at the front of the council chambers and turn them into the city recorder if you're joining us on online with the tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak at either of those times please use the raise hand feature

32:03 in Zoom the order of public testimony is as follows anyone in the council chambers and then anyone who has raised their hand virtually first item please mayor the first item is the consent calendar i' like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar second all right Neil could you call the vot please yes councelor Weber yes councelor Mo yes yes councel rodley yes councel Blackwell yes councel Doyle I and councilor pisher yes thank you motion passes six yeses Zer knows next item please next item is public hearings you have two public hearings this evening public hearing number one is Comcast franchise extension Nathan Bell is here for this item this is a first

32:51 reading uh good evening mayor and Council uh the item in front of you uh tonight is a request to conduct a public hearing and a first reading for an ordinance that extends an ordinance that grants a franchise to Comcast for uh telecommunication system cable telecommunication system uh this is um one of many extensions that have happened over the last few years this one being due to some turnover at Comcast of personnel that have been working on this franchise renewal hopefully this is the last extension and we can get these uh negotiations wrapped up so I'm going to turn it over to you are are there any questions about this all right I'm going to open the public hearing I don't have any cards for this item do we have anybody raising their hand appears no hands for this item all

33:37 right I close the public hearing and this is no action requested first reading only thank you very much next item please the next item is the 2024 Justice assistance grant item and uh Chief sheer is here for this one good evening mayor and Council for the record uh my name is Andrew Sher I'm the chief of police of the Springfield Police Department and the item before you tonight is a um public hearing on the proposed use of the 2024 Justice assistant Grant we were rewarded the Department of Justice local assistance grant for the amount of $118,100 sub this year uh those J grants are an

34:22 annual non-competitive Grant award designated to support Public Safety goals for the city so this year we've decided to propose that the use of this grant funds are going to be um for a handheld narcotics analyzer device um these devices allow us to sit test anything without opening the package they'll go through plastic they'll go through glass uh they can test liquid um they've got a library of 1500 different um substances both precursor chemicals and the of drugs so this will greatly increase the safety for our officers and community members by not having to actually open these packages and risk contaminate the people that are in the immediate vicinity are there any questions Michelle not a question more of a comment I went out and did some research

35:07 on these today and they look like really cool and very impressive machines and I think it's a great idea to spend money on on the safety of our officers sure awesome thank you all right then I'm going to go and open the public hearing um I don't have cards for this no hands for this item all right I'm going to close the public hearing and that's all that the chief needed next item please mayor the next item is business from the audience I have no cards for business from the audience if you want to speak to the council and your online please raise your hand appears we have no hands for this item next item please next item is uh

35:52 Springfield development code amendments annexations Haley Campbell is here for this item good evening Council and mayor um so this is a second reading and hopefully adoption of the annexation code amendments uh the last time I came to you we had a work session on September 16th and a public hearing on October 21st we had one public comment during that public hearing um but we did not receive any additional comments um since that public hearing we updated the staff report in your packet tonight to remove the yellow highlighting that was shown the changes between the Planning

36:37 Commission and city council um hearings so if adopted uh of course these amendments will reduce the cost to provide notice of public hearings and streamline the approval process for certain owner consent annexations so just to reminder the two big biggest changes that were made um from the work session and public hearing was that we changed the notice area from 300t down to 100 ft and then we um changed three options which would um not require a hearing for owner consent annexations those are if you are in the R1 district and designated ldr under 10,000 sare F feet if you have a failing septic and as long as the property does not contain a goal five or goal seven resource natural Hazard um things like that um so in the

37:25 packet that ordinance is ready to go unless you have have any questions for me are there any Joe heavy sigh but did I thought I could be wrong here but I thought we discussed during that work session put crafting this that the 300t rule and the and the 100 foot rule was that wasn't okay just checking you it happen back to that other part that you need to do so oh i' like to make a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the Springfield development code related to annexation adopting a savings clause and a severability clause and providing an

38:12 effective date second could you call the vote please yes councelor Weber yes councelor Mo yes councelor rodley yes councelor Blackwell yes councel Doyle I and Council pisher yes thank you motion classes six yeses zero no next item please any business from the city council Cory you thought I was lying no I won't um I just want to say on the public record I'm sure everyone knows but tomorrow is election day so please vote um your vote is your voice and um I will be um downstairs tomorrow night as a Observer um for The Ballot Box in the last hour and I know that there's going to be observers at different ballot boxes

38:57 um which is a great way to volunteer and deal with like election night anxiety um to be able to do something so I just want to encourage everybody to get out and vote you still have time you cannot mail them but you can get them into The Ballot Box by 800m thank you I would just like to um piggyback on that today I spent three hours at Lane County elections um observing um how the process works and was a little confused and they uh actually took me through and I was able to see how they have people from each party and they team them up together so there's never a single party dealing with each step of the process and how it walks through I can tell you

39:42 that I felt very confident in Lane County and how they handle it and the um I I just I felt like it was it was a really because I mean you know we see a lot in in the media and and a lot of fears that come and I can say that Lane County does a really good job of um making sure that these elections are done well so thank you right any else all right next item please any business from the city manager yes just really quickly I appreciate council's comments uh regarding Lane County elections and I Echo those comments U my prior history was working in uh counties in Oregon and California and the elections process is something that we take very ser

40:27 seriously and uh we monitor very carefully so I appreciate those comments um and I appreciate everybody getting out and exercising their right to vote um I'm always I'm always disappointed with low voter turnout um in our country there it's kind of an excusable not to cter ballot um finally I wanted to uh recognize Chief sheer um you know he did a quick presentation tonight regarding uh this new uh technology for the police department to be able to analyze narcotics and I just really appreciate Chief se's diligence to officer safety um just he's always thinking of new and innovative ways to protect our officers and other people that might be coming in contact with these hazardous substances it's not

41:13 just officers it could also be maybe an evidence technician or somebody even just in the department so um just wanted to highlight that it's something that he's made the Cornerstone of his leadership and I really appreciate that um as a city manager it makes me feel good knowing that he's got the safety of our employees in mind that's all I have thank you any business from the city attorney uh no business thank you all right then that is a wrap for the evening we are adjourned thank you very much have a great night