Springfield City Council — March 10, 2025

0:05 I'm going to call the Springfield City Council work session to order with roll call Mayan Gordon present councelor Weber here councelor Mo here councelor Radley here councelor Blackwell here councelor Doyle sorry here and councelor stout here thank you we have two items this evening the first one is professional liability insurance for privately funded public improvements we need an acronym for that so here tonight are um is Jeff Pascal who is the um DPW Community Development Division director I also spoke with um Jamie aboa risk manager and Stam Pedro city engineer in preparing this packet

0:51 so the um information here is is from those you know sources all combined the purpose of this work session is to ask that for the council's input on potential changes to professional liability insurance requirements for design professionals such as Engineers on privately funded public Improvement projects or Pips um the acronym pip in this case includes both the large public Improvement permit project which is also called the PIP um and what are called type two encroachment permits which is sort of an intermediate step of smaller engineered infrastructure projects that don't require really sophisticate sophisticated construction coordination with the city um but our one step up from you know sub is doing a minor

1:38 amount of waterline work in the right of way this comes to the city council based on uh requests and input from design professionals who work on these projects in particular um a solar practitioner working in the city on smaller housing projects the input that the city has received is that the premiums for these insurance policies can uh be significant when compared to the fees that the engineers might earn on smaller projects and the city's generally interested in looking at how to streamline permitting processes make development affordable in the city um we also have an interest in mitigating risk we don't want the general tax base to be covering costs that you know should be shifted onto a

2:25 particular developer or design professional so we're trying to balance would say those two sort of sometimes competing interests the um memo in your packet covers a couple different topics first um has a summary of how the city approaches permitting for public improvements and it can range from everything from capital projects that the city actually solicits bids for and we pay for the construction we're not talking about that that's sort of the highest risk activity that we do because we're ultimately responsible for for the design and the construction um public Improvement permits are sort of the second next highest risk these are privately funded

3:10 projects for large subdivisions or other you know large development that requires new infrastructure that needs to be designed and built to City standards and then it you know encroachment print type two is next encroachment permit type one um the sort of original encroachment permit that's usually covers construction or utility work in the public rights of way that we don't need an engineering as built design for so that stuff that disturbs the ground is construction work but we don't need proof of final grades or elevation or conformance with City designs and then um we even allow some work to be done in the public righted Way by utilities without any permits at all so the memo kind of covers the risk level associated with

3:56 that and what we require currently for insurance and it also goes over a little bit of the history of the approach to professional liability insurance until 2021 2022 there was a practice of sort of on an ad hoc basis if somebody requested to not provide $2 million in coverage for professional liability uh the city engineer would sometimes approve a lower amount but there was no formalized risk process involved and there wasn't great recordkeeping and then also certain design professionals didn't know there was even an option to request a lower amount so it in practice it was one or two individuals that were allowed to provide a lower level of insurance um on certain projects it led to a lot of use of Staff time to go back

4:43 and forth to do an ad hoc informal risk assessment to make that decision um and so in 2020 and 2021 after a lot of I would say sort of disputes about what level of insurance should be required for specific projects um I consulted with our then risk manager who consulted Brown and Brown our risk Consultants who are still our risk consultants and I worked with Jeff who was then city engineer to update as part of updates to the edpm engineering design standards and procedures manual to adopt the $2 million insurance requirement as a consistent requirement um where we would not be approving lower limits but we did put in place the encroachment permit

5:28 type two process to lower other costs so trying to kind of balance um you know lowering certain other deposit requirements in favor of of stricter liability insurance in um and then in 2023 based on a requests from design professionals that the commercial general liability coverage we were requiring was pointless and because the contractor also carried that coverage uh we looked into that further and removed that requirement so that had been been in place for that requirement had been in place since at least 2017 but we were able to eliminate that requirement on design professionals so today they're currently required to carry um professional liability coverage

6:13 to work on a pip and that 2 million is set based on the Oregon torque claims act limit it um is at the higher end of what the Oregon Tor claims act States the city would be responsible for because in construction defect cases there are often lots of claimants and so the city would not potentially be the only party who's making a claim on that Engineers Insurance the contractor the developer a future property owner um could all be making claims against the same insurance policy so if the coverage limit is lower then that's not the coverage limit isn't the cap on what the city can recover it's a cap on the entire payout so that is why it's set to be that um higher amounted ensures that the city would receive everything we

6:59 could po be liable for um even if there are multiple claimants it more closely matches that level and then even more recently in 2024 and 2025 uh we've had a request from a local engineer who works on largely smaller projects to further reduce or lower those insurance requirements the council received a letter I followed up with that engineer U who submitted the public comment to um get some information and find out a little bit more about the for example in in his letter he had pulled some local firms to find out what insurance they carry and would they continue to carry that insurance um I also gave a summary of firms that have worked on public Improvement permits for the city in the last five years and I was able to to

7:44 find out that there's some overlap in the two sets of firms but um not every firm that has worked on Pips in the last five years was included on um the engineers sort of informal survey and also some parties were surveyed informally who hadn't actually worked on a pip for the city in The Last 5 Years they may have worked on something for um another public entity my list sorry my list only included those privately funded ones so if sub came in or LTD came in with a pip process I didn't count that as a privately funded project because even though they're using our public our process for privately funded projects it's really a public project it's just a different public entity

8:29 so um so there's some match there that there are definitely firms out there that would probably carry lower insurance requirements if if we lowered the insurance policy but it wasn't um I don't think we could say that we know that for every firm and then the memo also covers um some data on the number of permits and the total project value of work that's been done in the city in the last five years and I think what's particularly informative is that solo practitioners compared to large firms are doing the same amount amount of work in terms of the number of permits for projects that are below um $150,000 in value so those smaller side of the projects and then the total value of the work being done in terms of construction

9:14 value is uh higher for solo practitioners for $150,000 projects and below so they're doing the same amount of permit work but slightly more profitable work it seems like um other information is I think important for the council to know is that when we look at the distribution of you know what types of work are Solo practitioners and small and midsize firms doing in Springfield the smaller projects that are housing related are being done by solar practitioners small midsize firms and large firms but when we look at small permits for commercial projects those are really only being done by large firms so um commercial develop just

9:59 seems to be a different engineering Market in the city than residential so if the council is wanting to sort of Target the cost of housing then lowering you could do that either by lowering the costs for everything um or if you limited to lowering costs for smaller projects you would benefit housing projects slightly more than you would benefit commercial projects um and then we have seen um in 2025 much better use of the encroachment permit type two process that was I think a little bit slept on by the design development Community for the first couple years it was available sub and LTD have made great use of that process but now we're seeing it being used for residential projects an example of the

10:44 types of projects that um actually all three that we've seen so far in 2025 are you know projects where you're getting more housing units and they need a private sewer line and that sewer Line's going to come and connect to the public line and there needs to be for example a small small extension of the public sewer line and then a new manhole and access location put in and so that requires some engineered as built drawings of that manhole location and the small extension of the public line but it's not highly complex coordinated construction with a storm water facility and Sewer lines and water lines and um lots of different competing elements there are still risks associated with that type of project anytime there's new public infrastructure if that public infrastructure

11:29 then that is a risk to the city um and those claims can be uh expensive depending on the type of damage that's done so the the city's Council has uh quite a few options some of those were laid out in a privileged memo that I sent to the city council in January um happy to talk through those but at a high level they you know options could include lowering professional liability insurance for certain types of permits it could look like requiring that formal a formal risk assessment for each project to determine its insurance that would require more staff time and staff in this area are already I think working pretty hard and have a sort of a lack of

12:14 a lot of bench depth so that's going to be a resource ask on staff whether that's looks like slowing down the pace at which they can work or um needing to pull in other Staffing Resources Jeff can definitely talk about those impacts more if the council wants to go that direction um the recommendation is that I think one of the easiest things to do that balances a good level of risk mitigation for the City without a lot of Staff time um and would lower the costs for um small firms and solar practitioners who work on smaller projects is to drop down the type two encroachment permit Insurance requirement to $1 million the council if the council wants to see that happen that can be implemented by Community Development Division director Jeff without any formal council action otherwise if the council wants to take

12:59 action on pip standards or other requirements um we would need to make changes to the engineering design standards and procedures manual um which is a council resolution process and we would come back with something along those lines so that's the summary of the information that's in your packet I'm happy to answer questions and I'm really looking for feedback from the Council on how you want to approach this issue Blackwell hi thank you um so I understand you know risk mitigation and and that but my question I guess is what are we seeing in other jurisdictions what is the industry Norm if you will on the amount the 2 million versus 1

13:44 million that's a great question for entities that require insurance it's most commonly tied to organ Tor claims act limits so when insurance is required it's most commonly at the 2 million level for professional liability however not every jurisdiction requires insurance I would say there's no one standard approach to privately funded infrastructure other jurisdictions may not have any professional liability requirement but they have more engineering staff for the city who are doing more detailed and consistent inspections in the field for the PIP process we defer most of the in the inspections to the the developers design professional so their engineer is doing all the inspections it's not City staff doing that so that's one reason why

14:30 professional liability is more important for springf field than say Bend um City of Eugene doesn't require it but they're considering adding it in to help mitigate some risks that they that they've had previously um other entities don't allow for any privately designed infrastructure so for example Springfield Utility Board doesn't allow developers to do the design for their electrical infrastructure so they're mitigating that risk by having all of the infrastructure designed by sub Engineers that adds cost and time um to a project as I think we've seen so that's would definitely not be feasible for the city to do that Approach at this time without a lot more staff um and then other entities contract out for their city engineer just generally so

15:15 they're hiring someone through a contract and getting professional liability coverage through that outside city engineer that also acts as um another way of kind of Shifting some risk away from the general tax base do you have an indication of about how many of these claims happen in a year I mean on average for Oregon let's say I'm just trying to get ballpark I don't know how many of the claims happen in Oregon um and we don't we haven't we've had I think good luck that and that we haven't had a lot of these claims for pip related projects but we also have required insurance and

16:01 I think what there tends to be a positive feedback cycle where when you require Insurance then you get better practices out of people in order to comply with their insurance company requirements um so we don't before we had these requirements in place we had a very large claims process for the mountain gate slide area um and that was the basis for putting these requirements in place to begin with we do have many claims throughout the year um it can r on average I think it was around at one a month to you know more or less depending for claims to automobile damage from you know pavement or uneven pavement surfaces so if that was the result of say a manhole design project and then that claim went through then we would look to recover that from either

16:46 the contractor or from the engineer depending on the cause the other issue that we see is that um and I know this is totally answer your question but I think it's relevant the types of damage that um would be recoverable from a contractor is not necessarily what's covered by professional liability so we're not requiring coverage of the same thing so there may be a claim for some kind of infrastructure problem and you may not know until you're down the claims process whether it's going to be your contractor's general liability that's going to cover it or the engineer's professional liability and I'm sorry my phone is going off because I had told sorry about that I thought that it was on silent but it was on vibrate so it was a little out of my pocket counsel D

17:32 yeah I didn't even have my hand up so first off just to be clear as to something that you mentioned about the mountain gate slide which tends to be the one that we look at for a claim my understanding is there were multiple claimants in that and it still wasn't a million dollars so let's be clear on that that if I remember even in your memo so yes in that case the damages that the engine engineer was responsible for was $500,000 in Damages and a reason that it was that low is because there was no actual encroachment on the homes it stopped just short of that they think they got very lucky and then also they were able to settle it before attorney fees were involved had attorney fees been involved um which you know is a likely outcome if you don't settle early

18:19 then the amounts could have been a lot higher so I do think that the city was very um Lucky in the perspective that um we they were able to settle it early keep those total damages lower than they could have been in that case so we're having them carry them so that they can pay for the attorney fees not for the damages the a professional liability coverage that's what part of um what a claims limit in insurance covers is the cost of defense and the cost of defense is unfortunately very high of course and usually a large part of what um insurance is is providing is that coverage for the legal defense costs so I I understand that you're approaching this from the um from the Viewpoint of the attorney and your job is to keep us out of litigation I understand that um but I also think there's a point where we're over um insuring and we're looking

19:06 at the worst case scenario and what might happen and if we haven't seen that which I'm trying to figure out if we have and someone asked and we I asked before is there anything where you can show me where there were $2 million in Damages that we had to deal with we haven't seen that and um the person I want to qualify with with Council the person who wrote the letter to us was isn't just a private engineer this is someone who was the manager and worked on uh capital projects for the City of Eugene and then became the what would be their pip pepy was the manager for that department as well so he's not just looking at it from the external side he also has had experience on the internal side so that's that's important to mention um and you mentioned that Eugene doesn't um carry that or require that

19:54 but a lot of jurisdictions don't even they don't require proof of professional liability insurance um and so the big thing I have is that when we talk about Pips we're talking about doing design standards that the city has requirements for right I mean we have we have design standards that we give Engineers when they're going to design a street that's going to become the property of the city or the Wastewater has to be a certain type of material it has to be a certain depth it has to be a certain width all of those things am I not correct in that there's it's pretty rare that they go off and like design something cool that's in their mind that they want to design when you're doing public improvements do you want a response to

20:39 that part of the question yeah okay so the city does have standards for example minimum grades and um there's a lot of engineering design calculations that go in the city doesn't specify exactly how a design professional meets those standards or does their calculations or every aspect of the engineered design we have standards and then it's the engineer's job to figure out the best design to meet those standards so for example what slope does the pipe need to be installed at to to properly drain the level of Wastewater that's generated um the city doesn't have you know that detailed of calculations for every type of infrastructure project so what the city's usually checking the the standards that we do have um but it

21:24 won't necessarily look at are all the material specifications being used um in every context the minimum to achieve an outcome and our standard is the outcome and not the specific specification we also do have specifications that say this is the you know width you have to use in this context so I said I think there's a a mix of both there's certainly a lot of engineering judgment that goes into designing um public Improvement permits and do you want to add anything to that Jeff okay so what what made on in your list on your uh permits for privately um your table why did why are public improvements considered high risk what what qualified them put them in a high-risk category as opposed to a moderate risk

22:11 looking at this project if we're considering things that are above a 100,000 and our complex facilities or systems um I think it's high risk because there are a lot of different types of sorry let me back up so risk is usually a function of the severity of what can happen multiplied by the likelihood of that outcome so for public Improvement permits I characterize that as a high risk because the severity of what could happen in terms of Damages or types of claims or issues that could arise can be very very high so even if those are slightly less likely to occur or less likely to occur they balance out in my judgment to be a higher risk or high risk in terms of the types of Permitting projects that the city does

22:57 is this you know this is a subjective scale so is this high risk um as compared to a you know designing a skyscraper no but in the terms of you know ranging from Capital Improvements at one end um to work in the right of way that doesn't require permit at the other end Pips fall in that high you know higher end of that risk because there are lots of different types of issues and things that could go wrong and um could result in in high damage value claims or disrupted to the community claims even if the risks are lower for those yeah and I guess I would I would agree with that if it was when you're talking about geot tech and developing in you know higher elevations and in places like that but but the standard we tend to be 500 feet I mean

23:44 we're not we're not dealing with a ton of slopes like you know and when we do that stuff gets a lot of looks to it so um I'm just looking at the um the construction defect cases are often complex and I'm just trying to find out if you have other examples besides the one that we had and then my biggest thing is I'm not asking I'm not I don't I don't think that we need to remove insurance but I do think that the $2 million $3 million is excessive especially in comparison to what has what we've seen and not just in our area but in other areas and I would like to see us go back to the preco um limits and not basing it on the tort uh law rates I just think that it's

24:30 excessive I think that the encroachment permits um probably don't even need that I mean not that they shouldn't carry it but that we don't shouldn't have those liabilities those limits on it but that the um the Pips that we could set it up so that we go back to the 1 million 2 million um and then have an a caveat in there that says if this becomes a higher level project which is going to involve Geotech or storm water reports and different things like that then then the option is avail to require at that point because we are just we are talking about the design the design professional we're not talking about the person that's out there moving the ground and actually installing this stuff where people could be running around and could have those problems we're talking about the person that's doing the drawings and it's almost a disservice to say that our that

25:16 we're hiring or using or allowing professionals to do this work and that they're not professionals I mean they're Engineers with licensing just like you as an attorney and so I know there's different levels of that but we also I feel like have some responsibility in looking at who we're allowing to do this work within our jurisdiction and saying you know these are people that we trust to do decent work and we have Engineers that are supposed to be reviewing stuff and if you see something that kind of goes well wait a second this one could have like some issues with the grade or with that then those would be the areas that they would be checking you know not necessarily the average ones that come in so I would like to see us uh consider going back to the rates that we had

26:01 before and to um maybe do I mean I I don't want to cause a whole bunch of more work for the staff but I think that there are that a lot of these are in a in a pool of like what's high risk it's up in the 75th you know 71st Street and it's and it's got a lot of um trees and it's got a lot of that stuff versus something that's in downtown Eugene that's flat that they're just needing to put in you know a certain amount of um Wastewater pipe or they're they're putting in a private or I mean a public Street or something like that so I I'd like to see that happen I just want to clarify one thing the city has not ever had a $1 million coverage limit for professional liability insurance since 2017 it's the requirements been 2 million with some caseby case exceptions made um and then

26:46 before 2017 the limit was 500,000 so I just want to be I want to make sure that I understand what the request is yeah I would like it to go back to the pre-2017 rates because if that was where we weren't seeing those you know if we haven't seen this uptick in claims I'm not quite sure why we're requiring that and I think there's another thing to keep in mind too is the cost of this this isn't just like one step up on insurance so a lot of insurers don't do $2 million $3 million policies they do 2 million $4 million policies because that's how they carry them and this the cost to the design professional can be significant and then they're not having to just carry that while they design and turn in and the plans get approved they have to carry that insurance until the entire project is completed and then a full year after that while it's on

27:32 warranty so we're talking about upwards of you know a, to $3,000 per year and and we have some great large firms that work in our community Branch engineering kpff that can afford that that can absorb that because they do enough jobs that they can spread that throughout their jobs that they have but there are smaller folks you know that we may not even be calculating when you were talking about engineers that have done work in our community how many Engineers do we have that won't that won't even do work I've talked to several who are like I don't even hassle with Springfield because it's just it's a lot it's the the requirements on insurance and and other things they just don't they choose not to do work in our community and I don't want to limit our our pool of people that we could choose from so um I'm hoping that we can continue to have this conversation and maybe make some

28:18 make some changes and thank you could you uh talk to us more about the case-by casee basis in the sense of you know what is the how many people are using it is it commonly known about and maybe this is a jef question um how what what are we lowering the limits to it was um in my review it was one individual making um requests for lower insurance requirements that individual is a relative of the individual that's making the request to go to lower limits now and so I don't know of anyone outside of that um scope did you have requests from anyone other than one um and they were not typically based on risk it was based on I had lower Insurance the

29:03 correspondence I saw was I had lower Insurance last time I'd like lower insurance this time um and it was for projects that I would that include things like engineered storm water designs and higher higher risk things so it's definitely not just those projects that are less than $100,000 want a little more on that yeah Jeff community development director and I think I think the extension I'm trying to wrap my head around is do we is there more Running Room in in this category of hey look if councilor Doyle's got you know I was describing kind of an issue where you kind of have the price of the project doesn't really match the price of the liability insurance do we have more Running Room in this Lane of hey there needs to be kind of an opt out

29:49 process to gets people from you know places where the the system clear clearly doesn't work we do have more information our Jamie aboa our risk manager also reached out to Brown and Brown who are our um Consultants risk for there are insurance broker they're also our risk Consultants they gave a an estimate that the range for professional liability coverage at $2 million is most typically between about $500 to $2,000 per year um and that would be one policy so the $3,300 premium that was quoted in the letter is very high it's also a it's just a $2 million policy professional liability the 23 or 24 is for General commercial liability which is not what we're requiring um design professionals to

30:34 carry and that was um misunderstanding on my part of the way those coverage limits work in the earlier memo that I sent to you so it is just a $2 million versus a $1 million policy right so when councelor Doyle's talking about you know the brackets that they sell on the insurance Market were the current requirement is something that's commonly sold on the insurance Market which it is and it's also there's also an option to do a $1 million professional liability coverage with a $1 million umbrella policy um which can sometimes be a more affordable option but from your perspective if somebody came in with that as a more affordable option that would meet this requirement that meets all the requirements yeah we're very explicit that an umbrella policy can be combined with another policy to meet our

31:20 meet our limits okay and Jeff could you maybe answer the other question I have so on on maybe doing the risk assessment Case by case so um I can tell you the practice I used when we were getting those requests and and Christine is Right predominantly was one individual and then there was one other project I can remember I can't remember who it was but usually what I would require is the um staff Engineers who do the reviews of the Pips to kind of give me a one pager of the risk what was going into the project things like that so I could look at what that risk so that was kind of on a Case by case extra work for those staff um I think going forward in the future if this is was something that the council was interested in I think the easiest way to do that would be to having a you know Matrix that said so

32:07 that it was easier for staff you know councelor Doyle mentions Geotech well that's in our Hillside hits that it follows through the Matrix and we get to that high risk and it's just a staff you know it's just developing something a tool like that but that's if I were to recommend something like that or if the council wanted to do something like that I think in order to ease staff use of having to sit there and use the subjectivity subjectivity and figure out what the risk is and make that decision and having it continually fall to either the director or the um engineer that would be the best way to go and yeah and I'll let councilor Roby jump in here in a second I guess the one comment I want to make is I'd be really hesitant to go to a 2017 level right that is a whole pandemic ago and there's been a lot of inflationary pressure and I'm just

32:52 trying to wrap my head around you know about whether or not $500,000 of liability in $ 2017 translates to the same but I think there's there's a path here I think to descri to work through some of this go ahead Council rodley thank you um I have a statement then I have a question um in my opinion the the case by case I'm I'm just I'm always wary of anything that's like Case by case or one-offs because that's where we just it's just it's never fair right and you all have pointed out the fact that it takes more staff time to do that but yes I mean if you were going to have a matrix or a tool or something that makes it so that you have this this trail of how the decision was made as opposed to somebody's always asking for this and we say yes you know so I'm I'm always wary

33:40 of a case by case or a one off or a we do this for this or not so I just want to say that that I would not be a fan of that um but I wonder if you could talk a we're sort of looking at it from one lens but let's say hypothetically we went back to you know 2017 or we decrease it I'm curious to just sort of say out loud like what would that look like if something happened and we had to absorb the risk of that what would that be thank you yeah that would be um the city paying out damages from the general fund or depending on the type of claim it was there it might be possible to pay out damages from the street fund or but it would have to be you know very limited type of Damages if the damages were in the form of reconstruction for example

34:26 those might be able to be paid out of INF INF structure utility funds but otherwise they would be paid out of um the city's general fund uh CIS is not going to cover something that result that arises from professional liability by a designed professional that should be covered under a professional liability policy whether we've required one or not so it's not something that we're going to be able to recover from our insurance and that's what we've seen in the past um is that the claims that we have had have been denied by C CIS has denied covering those and they have been um paid out from the general fund can you follow up on that because you're saying that there were claims that you've had to pay out and are we going back to the memo that you sent

35:11 okay because those had nothing those weren't design flaws that that you gave us as examples of payouts I remember very specifically that there was that was different so I just I just don't want you to be using an example for something that that's not what it was the landslide issue was a design flaw um and it was paid out by the engineers professional liability insurance policy right but you were talk you just said the ones that you've had to that the cities had to pay out because there wasn't the insurance that you would have had to pay out or that you've paid out on because they didn't have professional liability those weren't design flaws you didn't none of those were design flaws the only one you had on there and all of those examples was the mountain gate and I just want to be clear about that so

35:58 the city paid out um paid out based on a design flaw we paid out claims against the city and then we were reimbursed for those claims by the engineers professional liability coverage so that was one example that I was referencing and then there was another claim related to a water pipe burst where we were in dispute about what the cause of the issue was and there was an allegation that there was a design flaw but because we settled it before there was any fact finding we don't know if the issue was a design flaw or a m lack of Maintenance or Earth movement unrelated to design work um it was pretty the claim was settled at a very preliminary stage are you talking about a storm water line no there was a water pipe issue I don't

36:44 want to get too much into we don't the city doesn't manage water the sub does the city is responsible for the PIP process for all public utilities including for subwater so the sub doesn't have their own pip process where they're reviewing um construction documentation um the city coordinates all of that so there can be an allegation that the city allowed a pip for infrastructure that we don't set the standards for or design but we are responsible for you know the development review process and then the PIP permitting process and so the nature of the claim there was that through our development review process um which didn't include a pip but through our devel vment review process previously um

37:30 before pip before the current pip process the city made an error that resulted in a water design or water uh issue with the water pipes that what the allegation was it was a design flaw um that then um resulted in the damage yeah so I just think that we have to keep in mind that we can we can try to ensure for every single situation and make sure that we're covering everything we could require that people do 300E storm plans when they send in storm water we don't do that right even though that could happen it's 10 year 100 Year whatever so that's that's all I'm saying is that we need to not be over insured just because we're scared of like what could happen which it just

38:16 seems well I don't know that I don't know that it's scared so much as trying to understand that we're about how we're good fiscal stewards with the public stallers right you know our risk tolerance is a product of a risk tolerance is a product of that now I think the question we have to is like okay well what do we want to do from here right like hey great information really interesting conversation but we could not do anything or you know we could ask for a little bit more you know information there is some places where it sounds like the staff would be comfortable lowering you know the the the the insurance level um and I'm kind of looking around to see go ahead you mentioned something something earlier about a an option of possibly lowering it for housing projects for can you

39:03 expand on that a little bit well if we do that the encroachment permits type two are um more used by housing so if we lower it for encroachment permits type two then we're going to capture proportionately a lot more housing projects it's just more common that housing projects would um use that it also um you know LTD and sub um it would lower it for them but they are going to have their own Capital require ments for their contractors and it would be a side effect um but also you could look at um you could certainly look at what's the underlying purpose of the development um and making some adjustments there based on if it's for housing then it's this and if it's for commercial then it's that that that may be serving a purpose of helping to kind of incentivize or or

39:48 take on more risk for housing production to try to stimulate that I I don't have any information on how many how much housing we haven't seen because of public Improvement permit requirements I don't know that there's there hasn't been any comments to the city that like we would have done this Housing Development but for your pip requirements um the one difference um in larger Pips between housing and Commercial is that every subdivision requires swarmm water treatment to be designed to City standards um through a pip process and that is not um required on the commercial side those are designed privately and be and are maintained by the commercial or industrial property and they don't go through a pip so for storm water at

40:34 least there's a higher risks associated with water damage or flooding um that we only see with residential projects for the most part coun rley thank you I appreciate you being able to answer all of our questions I think um to your point mayor um you know like where do we go from here I mean I'm interested in having more conversations but I also you know I I feel the um you know I feel like my responsibility or our responsibility is to be good stewards and to protect and to to watch out for risk in terms of the city um and taxpayer dollars that pay for that so you know it's if it's going to come against the general fund and all that so that's going to be that's definitely My Lens it doesn't if we had

41:21 75 people coming up here and just saying Springfield is horrible we can't build in Springfield which is not true it would that would influence me in some different ways but since we don't um and we this isn't this isn't 2017 this is now and things cost a lot more and all of that um I'm just you know I want to I want to mitigate risk as much as possible and also incentivize housing so it's hard for me to understand just how big of if it is a problem that we're trying to solve or if it's you know how big is this problem that we're trying to solve or is it a problem um and is it unreasonable it doesn't sound like it's unreasonable and I'm open to more conversation because we're not at a decision Point yet Council I just want to thank everyone for allowing us to have this

42:07 conversation I really appreciate it I just appreciate that the chance to have the talk and to get everybody's idea so I just wanted to say that out loud and I think you know where where maybe I'm hearing some potential consensus would be a to address that encroachment permit issue right there's some head nods around saying like if if everybody's looking at this and going okay we could potentially lower this then there'd be some interest in there and then you know maybe some work around um the a risk assessment tool to make it a little bit easier and more approachable from a staff perspective I think yeah and and if it was $500,000 and I was talking about a million I'm actually talking about meeting you kind

42:52 of in the middle when it comes to the pit projects too I'm just talking about that $2 million professional liability so I would just like to at least consider where we would be with that because that's still double what it would have been back before when we still didn't have that many claims so and I think the the other piece that might be and you touched on it for a minute and was that um you described it as like there's more than one way to get to the answer here right is that well known in the development Community we have tried we've I've relate that a lot of we when I review Insurance um attachments I often see umbrella coverages umbrella policies and the $10 million for firms and and they're

43:38 meeting their general liability or their professional liability with umbrella policies that are much higher so I think it is known that there that that's it's in our edpm standards explicitly and then um I think it is just known a good insurance broker should be able to direct someone to to their options okay I I'm I'm wondering if if a good look at that a risk assessment tool and again this is a pretty technical you know perspective so I'm kind of looking at the city manager to help us with this may get to the question that uh councelor Doyle is bringing up which is hey you know for something a little you know that fits in one bucket that is actually we've got lower risk do we have a path to kind of dve you know lower lower the cost I think that what I'm hearing is that

44:23 we'll go ahead and just lower that encroachment permit type two Insurance to one million that doesn't take any um formal counsil action and then I'll schedule another work session um when time allows to review a draft um risk I'll call a risk Matrix um and so then it's not a risk assessment which would be more specific to each project but um a matrix could just be like if the project includes X then these are the insurance levels um and we'll bring that back with some information for Council on which you know how many of different types of projects would where would projects in the past have fallen on this on The Matrix tool Nancy thank you mayor council and thank you also to the city attorney's office for their thorough work on this as well as our community development uh Department um you know I was thinking

45:08 about this because we are talking about risk and you know um risk is something that government agencies are very avoidant of right and for good reason because we are stewards of the public funds um and there's also I another thing that I think about is reputational risk so if you did have a project that went arai and something went wrong and then people would be you know why city did you not require this why did you not think of this so these are the types of things that you know I ruminate over as well but what what I'm hearing from you tonight is agreement that perhaps on the encroachment side going down to 1 million would be acceptable to you I was just kind of looking around for nods um also I was curious you know if in our

45:53 research going back before this body it might be uh a good extra step for us to maybe talk to some trade associations or people in this industry um to see you know what is their perception of of this type of issue with working with our city because I think that kind of Outreach never hurts such as the homeb Builders Association um as far as a risk ass assessment tool I want to also be sensitive to the fact that our staff is really um um we're entering into the busiest time of the year um Oregon does have a construction season um and so I was hoping in the circling back with this Bo board I wanted to manage expectations around that so if we could do something in the latter part of the year if that would be acceptable to this

46:39 Council yeah that would be fine and I think if if I ask Allison to find more time on the spring agenda right like I'd be in a lot of trouble that would be fine thank you I think we got everything look at this one Lively liability conversations thank you both all right Springfield housing update all right I feel a nice tie in because we were talking about housing um hi I am Katie Carroll housing analyst for the city joined by Chelsea Hartman one of our senior planners do slide oh yeah we're ready

47:25 for them cool thank you Allison I'm here tonight to talk to you about housing so tonight's work session is going to touch on multiple housing related topics that the city is and will be working on over the next few years um while it's not the focus of tonight's presentation there is a more in-depth update on the city's current housing strategies as part of your packet attachment three um as you all know cities across Oregon are challenged by a lack of housing affordability and availability and at the state level the governor and legislature have responded by prioritizing housing production and affordability Statewide through legislative changes rulemaking and funding among these actions are significant changes to Oregon's required land use housing planning which is goal

48:12 10 um and we're going to get into that some tonight also as part of the state's um efforts to focus on housing Oregon Housing and Community Services or ohcs um has produced the first state of the state housing report recently so we'd like to start this off by sharing some points from that report as well as some data specific to Springfield just to help contextualize um the challenges that we're facing meeting housing need both locally and across the state and um there's some additional data that we're not sharing for the sake of time that's in attachment for in your packet as well as citations to this information and then um some of the graphics that you see are coming from the updated housing strategy handout which is also in your

48:57 packet as attachment to so um cities across Oregon including Springfield are experiencing challenges due to a mismatch between the supply of Housing and the demand for it um Oregon's population grew faster than the national average over the last two decades and housing development in Oregon was um negatively impacted like many places across the country by the Great Recession and due to that Oregon basically got behind and supplying enough new housing to meet population needs as of 2019 there were three new Oregon residents for every one new housing unit permitted in the state and the state's now estimating that um we need around 500,000 new housing units over the next 20 years both to make up

49:43 for past underproduction as well as future need and we're seeing this trend followed in Springfield in the decade after the Great Recession so 2010 to 2019 less than half the number of housing were built than um any prior decade going back to 1940 that's what that large graph is showing it's just kind of comparison of all of our current housing stock by the decade it was built in and we know that this is a problem in Springfield because we're consistently seeing really low vacancy rates so as of the 2023 census the rental vacancy rate was 2.1% it should really be more like 5% in a healthy market and um the home ownership vacancy rate was around 4% and

50:28 really should be more like 2% so um when there's a higher demand for housing than Supply prices go up Statewide low interest rates during 2020 made home ownership more accessible but it also really drove up prices Statewide from May to September of 2020 the average price of a single unit home went up $68,000 which represented the same amount of growth as a prior 3.5e period of time but just in a f Monon span and housing prices tend to be sticky so they're kind of resistant to downward Market pressure um so even though interest rates have since gone up and sales have gone down prices haven't really

51:13 declined and Oregon also has um higher home prices than the US average so we're kind of seeing that additional impact and Springfield has seen steady growth in our average Sal price um over the last few years but definitely an increase in covid and postco times there was a 48% increase in the average sales price from 2019 before covid to 2024 uh prices did peak in 2022 and have gone down slightly so I guess we'll see where that goes in the next couple of years um the rental market is also challenging in Oregon it was pretty stable going into 2020 but rents Rose sharply during Co and have not come down because the price of rental housing also

51:59 tends to be pretty sticky the median monthly rent in Springfield is actually not particularly High compared to some other places it's around $1,200 a month but it has increased significantly in the last few years um from 2019 preco to 2023 when the last census um information is available it went up uh 29% the median rent and kind of the the other side of this of why it's a problem is that um across Oregon and in Springfield incomes have not kept pace with the rising housing costs um Oregon wages have typically lagged behind the US average and only reached it in 2022 and then if you look at the graphic on the left of

52:44 the slide um comparing Springfield's median income to the state's median income it's about $113,000 lower so if you're thinking about a state that has kind of lower than the national average uh Springfield is lower than that um there additionally is a disparity in income between renters and homeowners so renters are often more susceptible to price increases in Oregon about 37% of households are renters but 51% of household of those renters earn sorry renters are 37% of households but they are 51% of households that earn below 80% of the area median income which is generally considered to be low income and the median income of

53:29 Springfield renters is about $322,000 less than Springfield homeowners and Statewide uh data shows that about 75 to 85% of evictions in Oregon are due to non-payment of rent rather than other causes overall about a third of Springfield households are cost burdened which means that they pay over 30% of their income on housing costs um but this is higher amongst Springfield renters 44% of Springfield renters are considered to be cost burdened and almost a quarter of renters at 23% are considered severely cost burdened which means that they pay over 50% of their income on housing

54:16 costs and that's kind of intro data we have we'll have some more in a little bit we going to turn over to Chelsea awesome so now I'm going to get into how this is influencing some State legislation and new requirements that cities will have to do around housing planning so House Bill 2001 that was passed in 2023 is known as the Oregon housing needs analysis uh this focused on different ways to increase housing production affordability and choice and resulted in significant changes to Statewide planning goal 10 for housing and goal 14 for urbanization um the related rul making is split into three major topic areas that are shown here on this slide um some of these rules were adopted at the of 2025 or 2024 and then the rest will be done this year so cities must

55:02 regularly plan for and take action to address housing needs by adopting a housing Capacity Analysis which we've done before and then a new housing production strategy which is something we haven't done yet um so this is going to influence a lot of the housing planning work that I'll kind of talk about the new state responsibilities related to this and then get into the local responsibilities so for the state State they have the responsibility they developed a methodology for determining our 20-year housing need and 8-year production targets for all cities in Oregon um they also are publishing this information in publicly available dashboards that share the data in an interactive way and those dashboards also track progress of cities towards

55:48 meeting their housing production targets and monitoring Equitable housing outcomes by comparing us to peer cities with similar Market types and cities within the same region so this information will be published by the state annually in January and Katie's going to talk a little bit more about the Ona methodology and the numbers specifically for Springfield in a moment so Ona also established this housing acceleration program under the department of land conservation and development to ensure that compliance with State rules and compare cities progress essentially the lowest performing cities get referred into this program and it results in a state managed audit of our housing policies and programs and an agreement to actions

56:33 that can address any identified barriers to housing production or affordability and choice that are within a city's control or influence under this the state will also provide technical assistance and other resources to help local governments meet housing goals so for the local responsibilities um a new analysis called the contextual ized housing need requires cities to start with the 20-year housing need from the state and the 8-year production Target by income level then provide local context by identifying the specific housing types characteristics and locations that we'll plan for this also requires analyzing fair housing issues identifying measures to affirmatively further fair housing

57:19 which are meaningful actions that overcome patterns of segregation and Foster inclusive communities that are free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on different protected characteristics such as race familial status and disability just to name a few and finally it will include developing a plan for ongoing monitoring of fair housing issues another big chunk of the work under local responsibility is the housing Capacity Analysis and this is a plan to accommodate our 20-year housing need by the types characteristics locations and affordability for different income levels and this will Place Springfield's residential land and housing needs analysis that was adopted in 2011 the housing Capacity Analysis also

58:04 involves or so it involves conducting a buildable lands inventory to assess our capacity within the current Urban growth boundary and identifying ways to accommodate our housing need by more efficiently using that land or considering Urban growth boundary expansions and then the last piece under local responsibility is the housing production strategy this identifies actions to address the 8-year housing production Target and must demonstrate how we're working towards meeting the needs that are identified in the contextualized housing need component of the work so the owner ruem is continuing this year um the state rules will be related to capacity and urbanization and

58:49 impact how we do our buildable lands inventory and any Urban growth boundary expansion analysis uh due to this Springfield won't begin updating our residential buildable lands inventory until 2026 so that we know the rules we're working under and updated assumptions for our current housing capacity within the ugb are unknown at this time but given the new 20year housing need from the state and new limits on how we can account for efficiency measures it's anticipated that we'll likely have to consider an urban growth boundary expansion for residential land in the next cycle um as part of the ru making this year um something they're looking at cities must now also identify development ready lands in addition to just buildable lands um so development

59:34 ready lands are currently annexed and zoned to allow for housing they must be readily served through adjacent public facilities or identified for the near-term provision of public facilities through an adopted Capital Improvement plan and they must not be encumbered by any local state or federal protective regulations so under this if the housing production Target is greater than our capacity for development ready lands what we would have to identify actions and our housing production strategy that prepare lands for development or increase the capacity of our existing development ready lands uh the state is also working to develop adoption ready actions that can be included in our housing production strategy uh they're now talking about different levels of adoption Readiness

1:00:20 so I'm anticipating that some of those actions will still take a good amount of work before we can adopt an Implement them locally when we begin that uh part of the work and I'll turn it back to Katie to talk about some of Springfield's housing numbers cool thank you um so in the past cities calculated their 20-year housing need locally using a methodology that was largely based by on um population growth but as part of the owna this 20-year housing need is now going to be created well is being created by the state for each region and then cities are from there allocated a portion of the regional share for their own production targets and the Ona methodology accounts for housing

1:01:06 underproduction units that are assumed to be lost to Second and vacation homes and housing for people experiencing homelessness and then it also allocates that need by income level so Springfield's 20-year housing need as calculated by that owner methodology is 6,937 new housing units over the next 20 years with an annual production Target of 470 units every year for the next 8 years and that 470 units front loads our total housing production to account for under production and housing for the homeless in kind of the earlier part of the 20-year period And as you may imagine this target exceeds historic development

1:01:51 Trends in Springfield and then specifically want to point out that over the next eight years 68% of Springfield's um housing need within that Target is for households that earn below 80% of the area median income and the reason why that's important to pull out is housing um to serve people at these income levels typically requires direct subsidy in order to make it affordable so uh Katie is that something that's specific to us as a city or when they push down like our our goal is sort of a share of a regional goal so has everybody got that same mix or is that something that could be unique between spring kill in Eugene that's a good what

1:02:37 like the 68% for example I think generally I did look at Eugene's numbers and it's pretty similar I think across the state everyone's having or being required to have these new housing production targets at the lower income levels and I think that is because they're now accounting for how um housing for those experiencing homelessness and just trying to catch up so a shared challenge for us all yeah and I think just because you brought it up the other point about this that I think's really good to emphasize here is the regional allocation that's really new because it used to be everyone sort of did these insular calculations and now it's sort of being spread um okay so for comparison the adopted um Springfield residential land

1:03:23 and housing needs analysis that Chelsea mentioned that was done 2011 um noted that the 20-year housing need was 5,920 units with 51% of that housing um for households earning below 80% of the area meeting income so in this next round of housing planning we'll be planning for more more housing than when this last analysis was done and then specifically more housing that is Affordable to households with lower incomes and um as I noted on the previous slide this exceeds histor development Trends um this graphic here is just showing our building permit data for residential units Over The Last 5 Years um Springfield has issued building

1:04:08 permits for 1,756 housing units during that time um as part of your packet in attachment 4 we have that Trend going back 10 years if you want to see it further back um the highest annual total in the last decade was in 2023 when we had 521 permitted units and that was due for the most part to marola Meadows which as we all know was decades in planning and development before getting to that point um and if we took the average over these past 5 years that would come out to around 350 units per year which is still you know more than 100 less than this new annual Target that we've been given by the Ona um and digging in a little bit more on this housing at these lower income

1:04:55 levels um so as I mentioned 68% of our need over the next 8 years is for households with incomes below 80% of the area median income and housing at these income levels for the most part needs subsidy with pretty significant subsidy needed to serve people in the 0 to 30% Ami range um and Oregon ranks third in the nation per capita for people experiencing homelessness and first in the nation for unsheltered homelessness among families with children according to the county at some point in 2024 there were 1,28 people in Springfield that were experiencing homelessness 20% of those were minors um and accounting for housing for this population is likely a pretty big

1:05:41 driving Factor about behind why we're seeing so many units at these really low income levels in this new analysis and for some additional context um since 2018 there have been 108 units built in Springfield that are reserved for households out are below 80% Ami and obviously this occurred over several years and it only accounts for about a third of Springfield's annual production Target for these income levels in this new methodology and this just reinforces the challenges of building at these income levels especially when there's so much subsidy needed and limited subsidy available and I'm going to turn back over to Chelsea

1:06:28 okay so the last bit of this presentation is a followup to the February 10th Council work session where you all discussed uh where to implement Oregon's climate friendly and Equitable communities rules for climate friendly areas part of the CC rules require cities to identify existing and new tools or strategies that promote Housing Development and mitigate displacement if housing costs increase as cfas redevelop over time Springfield's housing strategy handout which is attachment to in your package provides a good overview of the city's existing efforts most of those do apply Citywide um the city's housing diversity tax exemption is one that is area specific and it overlaps really well with the climate friendly Area locations that Council selected in February and this includes the Glenwood Riverfront

1:07:14 downtown and Mohawk uh the project team identified a list of possible tools under these broad categories shown here on this slide that could increase housing production and help alleviate pressures of possible displacement in general the tools could be applied to any of the CFA locations and many of them could make sense Citywide um as part of the city's upcoming housing planning efforts that we'll talk about so as a refresher from a month ago the survey results from the fall 2024 CFA Outreach included um questions about possible housing tools we should consider and 41% of participants rank tenant support as the highest priority and this includes things like rener

1:07:59 protections 32% of participants ranked Financial tools as a high priority and this includes things like direct subsidy or tax incentives and overall there was a strong desire for new affordable housing and helping current residents have options to continue to live in the community and a general acknowledgement that reducing the cost of development could help result in more housing units at different price points there was also General support for other tools such as public private Partnerships and streamlining development so I'm going to get a little bit more specific with some of the tools um so they are included in attachment five in your packet and that that attachment provides descriptions and information for each of them but to have more time for Council discussion on any

1:08:45 specific questions or tools of interest I'm going to really do a high level overview of each of the tools and really just focus on the different levels of resources needed and any impact to City Revenue the first two categories include tools that impact design development and Regulatory changes and these would require varied levels of Staff resources to implement but overall would have a neutral impact on Revenue tools on this in the following slide that are marked with an asterisk um indicate tools that Springfield currently has that could be expanded uh such as having pre-approved plan sets and regulations for short-term rentals tools like the preapproved plans and accessible design incentives could help make it easier to develop different

1:09:30 housing types including housing that's accessible for those with physical disabilities the one tool on here about reexamining requirements for ground floor commercial is something that could be considered with the housing related code project that I think you all just heard about earlier this or last week um as so Cascadia Partners is the consultant team working with us on climate friendly areas they're also working on that code project for us um and that is something we could fold into that work that we're doing as they're looking at our existing mixed use districts so Financial tools um this ranked highly as a priority category in the survey in the fall and most of these would would require moderate to significant resources to implement tools

1:10:17 like demolition taxes or construction excise tax could generate new revenue for the city that could specifically be used to support income qualified housing in other tools would involve foregoing City Revenue some of these are existing that could be expanded like the fee waiver for income qualified housing the low-income rental housing property tax exemption or exploring an area for a new urban renewal district and then the last category before I have my final slide and open it up to you all for any thoughts um this one shows Partnerships and Redevelopment as well as tenant support um all of these would require significant resources to implement and some would have a neutral impact on Revenue depending on how the tool was

1:11:04 structured conversion of underperforming or distressed commercial assets into needed housing could help increase property values resulting in increases to City Revenue over time the tenet support tools uh really focused on Renner protections and ranked as a high priority in the survey in the fall runner protections can take many different forms so if there is Council Council interest in that one the city would explore specific ways to implement that and vet those ideas with the community and decision makers as part of our upcoming housing production strategy work previously Springfield was awarded one-time uh Corona virus relief funds to the Springfield Eugene tenant association to support their tenant hotline to assist educate and Empower renters on the housing rights issues

1:11:51 that funding support has since ended but that is just one example of something we could explore as tenant support So part of the CC rules require cities to include findings in our climate friendly Area adoption package that identify existing and new tools or strategies that promote housing production or mitigate displacement the CC rules also note that the tools would be incorporated in the city's future housing production strategy and that process will include further analysis and vetting with the community and decision makers once we start that work and tonight we're really seeking Council Direction on which housing tools from attachment 5 that we should include in findings for the CFA adoption package and consider further as part of the

1:12:36 upcoming Citywide housing production strategy as part of that work the city could choose to identify different tools to address our local housing needs if further analysis and vetting of the tools identified with this CFA project show that some actions are no longer feasible or preferred so at this point I'd like to turn it back to you all for any questions or thoughts thank you other questions coun rodley have questions and comments but I'll take a little bit of a turn um and let other folks talk thank you so much for this um it's exciting for me to see how far we've come just in terms of understanding the landscape I think when I before I even got on councel and I was like I care so much about housing um and just to just just our understanding as a

1:13:22 team is so much further than it is and I just appreciate all the work that you all are doing and I love being in this with you all um one of my questions is around where you were talking about development ready lands um and those being lands that were Annex zoned near facilities Etc could those also be like repurposing commercial land or does it have to be vacant land or can it just be land that's like where like it's an old like I'm thinking in Glenwood where we there was a um mobile home neighborhood that's vacant I mean is that a place where if we did some like resoning work it would make those development ready lands or am I thinking about that too loftily I think as it's defined now that

1:14:07 could be included as long as it's allowing housing with clear and objective standards it would meet that definition okay so we could we could have a project where we would like identified these lands and then figured out how to rezone them and get them ready for building basically and thinking about them as housing and not necessarily commercial okay that was one of my my questions and then just one of my thought processes around this is I I I I think I like this I was like I'm thinking about how I feel about this um I I think I'm liking the idea of thinking about this regionally and then breaking it into smaller chunks but I think it also provides us an opportunity to think about the solutions regionally right so we tend to always be thinking about what can we do as Springfield and

1:14:52 you went through those and we have these tools and and the time that I've been on Council we've dug into like how do we make it easier for people to build how do we incentivize how do we purchase land so that we can help to incentivize out all of those things so but and I don't know what this looks like I'm just thinking but if we're part of a region that is addressing this and we're often working with the same Builders or people that are thinking about this area that maybe there's potential for us to just brainstorm possible solutions in a regional way in a regional way whether it's it's like okay let's it might be cheaper maybe I don't know I'm making it up but it might be more affordable for a developer or somebody a public private partnership that is working in a couple of different areas I'm thinking you know

1:15:38 in terms of just um you know how sometimes we do health clinics or whatever we're working in a few areas at once so just thinking about it that way that maybe there's a way for us to so we're all of us going at it on our own to partner with our other municipalities and say can we do this together and try to put a few houses here and a few houses here maybe they're all and particularly we're looking at rental housing maybe it's a few different um you know rental housing facilities in a few different places um so just th I'm going to stop there because those are my first two comments but I just I really appreciate that we're working with real numbers and real goals and real data and a deeper understanding of what we're up against so thank you

1:16:24 black hi thank you for that I my question is is um couple of things 420 homes new units a year seems like a very large amount considering our past practice and what we've been able to to develop so that's interesting to me to see how all these pieces can fit together and we can meet that goal and does that start 2026 is that year one for that 20 well that's where it gets kind of is it 2027 is it 2028 I think it takes once we adopt our housing Capacity Analysis and housing production strategy I think so 2027 is our analysis is due and then by the end of 2028 our production strategy so I guess by the end of 2029 we would have had the first theoretically 470 actually not 420 so

1:17:10 it's even more 470 yeah right think get 120 more than what the average was the last five years I guess that's where I got that number um so the first boxed under design and development regulatory changes most of those I'm interested in and agree with um anytime you can have like a plug-and-play uh plan sets and get things through quicker and easier and faster for people less expensive that's great the um reexamine the requirements for the ground floor commercial I think that's definitely something to discuss as uh office space isn't maybe as in demand as it once was I have a question on the the short-term rentals um it looks like significant resources would be utilized to kind of track that and how many does Springfield have I

1:17:55 mean as much as I've shown property over the last well I've been in real estate for 20 years in Springfield I just never come across short-term rentals so is this even something to look at is it anything significant in our area to even be on this list I don't know if we know how significant it is um I guess my anecdotal would be that it's probably becoming more so because I assume we might be seeing some spillover from Eugene given they're having housing challenges too but yeah I I don't think we know that and that's part of the challenge I think at this stage is that it's sort of like let's get an initial list and then later look at it and maybe Chelsea can talk about why it's in that order yeah it is a little weird or

1:18:41 awkward to start identifying tools with cfas but all the details about like what's the level of impact of these like how would this actually be implemented what impact would it have in our community will come when we do our housing production strategy work so that's something we would have to answer as part of that and I don't know that we would be able to answer it very easily okay and one more on the renter protections can you expand on that a little bit because we're looking at house housing Supply right adding Supply and that's on here rental protections I understand finding ways to keep renters in their home that they're currently in but how does that play into this yeah so the other part so part of the tools need to focus on housing production or ways to mitigate

1:19:27 displacement and so rener protections is one of the few on the list that focuses on that anti-displacement aspect of keeping people in their homes instead of building new housing don't if I have a single family home and I add a mother-in-law to it that's part of the current structure does that count as one unit of housing in your production I believe so as long as it's counted as a like an accessory delling unit or yeah I guess I would look to someone about how it would be permitted but if it was an Adu I'm I mean we count adus as housing units in this so I think the Adu would count as a new units I think it would be

1:20:12 two units right but and so if you just had I'm just I want to make sure is the process easy to go from a single family house house to a you know single family with a mother-in-law type unit or is that a complicated permitting process I know we have the Adu plans for like outside ones those are great but as we're running out of ground space but maybe we have you know single person living in a 2500 foot house and they could per they could section off a part of their house for that Adu purpose and now they got another person living nearby them that to me is an extra unit of housing it seems and I'm not sure if they're always permitting that would those numbers uh reflect that that that's that's kind of what I'm concerned about is that easy to do and are we

1:20:58 counting those as housing units so I would Sandy you can come answer that I don't want to give you incorrect information so I think it gets down to that tricky thing of definition so a housing unit needs to have a separate address separate utilities its own kitchen Sanitation living space so it depends on how you divide that you we allow accessory dwelling units to be within an existing structure but if it's not meeting the full definition of a dwelling unit like maybe you're sharing a kitchen otherwise they're on their own or if it's not a full kitchen then it

1:21:44 wouldn't be a dwelling unit and we wouldn't capture it and to the ease of development correct me if I'm wrong but most of the time um So currently accessory dwelling units are a type one land use decision that we require prior to or in conjunction with your building permit um that is something that we have identified as potentially changing where you could go direct to building permit um so uh there is room to make it easier but I I don't think it's all that difficult in that we do have um a few different

1:22:29 Pathways clear and objective to meet way to to get to an accessory dwelling unit or if you can't meet those clear and objective standards there are alternatives as to how to meet that I think just what I what I want to clarify is first of all thank you that's great um if I have somebody living upstairs that can actually afford let's say they're making minimum wage and they can really only afford $625 a month if they're working full-time and maybe they're not and I would be very happy to lease out an upstairs mother-in-law with its own little kitchenet own separate entrance but I might not have I might not go to the realm of saying I'm going to have different sewer utilities all those different pieces put together yet I've created definitely created an additional dwelling unit I just want to make sure that that's counted as part of

1:23:15 and included in part of our strategy it well it wouldn't be a second dwelling unit so it would not count as another unit but you are providing H um housing for someone right so I mean in the broader scheme of things it will help um long term in the numbers of not as many people are out on the street or paying as much for their rent but it's not going to count as a housing unit because likewise if we don't have a lot of those options for ex like the Mother-in-law type option we're actually all this new construction you're right is going to be extremely expensive for all of our people especially in the initial in initial stages we're going to require a ton of subsidies and we don't know where they all of that is coming from so I think okay let's say we can't count it as such bummer but also what else can we

1:24:03 do to just incentivize the housing I think that has to be part of the conversation but we can't we can't just have that in isolation now if it's just to meet a state mandate fine let's kick that can down the road that's fine but I I really do want to look at kind of these these peripheral housing situations that might not count as clear units uh for what we're doing for when we're trying to talk about that I think I'm also have the economic concern of what Springfield is capable of on an economic level knowing that it's not quite as strong of an economy as Eugene or even a Corvalis because lack of University even though we're right next door but um there there's not quite the same strength there as we might have so those are all my comments thanks so can I just respond before you go on so um

1:24:48 there what we could add to this list that's not on there that I think captures your idea is home share um and there actually are tax incentives for home share there's an Oregon home share organization that helps to match people together so it's not just your mother-in-law perhaps you want um a neighbor or something like that so we could potentially add the home share to the list to um consider C are we now able to to develop building Lots into smaller building Lots multiple Lots on a big lot it's a big lot but be small Lots okay coun brodley okay it's my round two um the other thing I wanted to two

1:25:33 things one I very much have been support of render protections that's not really a conversation that we've had except for a little bit during covid around how to get some money into folks and I think I think all of the these expanded conversations about shared housing how do we um keep people in their homes I think that I was in a meeting and um they were sharing that the the fastest increasing population of unhoused people are older people who get priced out of their homes or someone dies and so if there are things we can do to protect folks and keep them in their homes um I would absolutely support that and then one of the things you mentioned also which we haven't even touched on is this in inevitable eventual conversation about expanding the ugb which sounds

1:26:19 like wo free land but um that is and and I'm I'm interested in all of it as you all know I've been just like what let's turn over every Rock and try to figure this out um but that is where the the sort of long-term um work on infrastructure really comes into play because that means we have to like you know it's it's a lot easier to do the infill and hook up to existing that it would be to do that so I just want to say that yes and I feel like that's a much bigger conversation thank you Weber I definitely don't think we're done talking about this I have a lot of questions and a lot of notes but

1:27:04 um one of my concerns among many is it's going to take a lot to even make a dent in the Target that they're putting on us so that means we have to find ways to attract developers you know I mean assessing taxes on them like in the form of demolition or constru excise generates money for the city but then do developers want to come and play in our space um so I feel like again I appreciate the intent but I'm frustrated by the restrictions that and the place that kind of puts us in to get this accomplished so that kind of leads to a question on uh housing acceleration

1:27:50 program where there's this conversation about referrals if we don't meet these goals and um the state providing technical assistance and other resources to refer cities to help us get there what does do we know what that means it remains to be seen I think I'm reading it as the worst performers in a region will get referred I think the state has very limited capacity to refer a lot of cities because they have to do the audit so I don't know how many I think every year they'll determine how many cities will actually even get referred into the program I think the technical assistance may come in the form of like consultant support to work on flushing out some of these program ideas um but that's something that's come up a lot of like it's going to take direct subsidy to provide the low income

1:28:36 housing that's where we need support and that's not really baked into this so we have to stay after school is what it comes down to all right I've this is great work I I I thought the presentation was fantastic and to see it broken down into digestible chunks for us to think about um is really is really helpful I also think that it's going to require that we completely think about differently about how we're how we're producing housing uh in this city you know that the I first thing I wrote down was the urban growth boundary conversation right but it it kind of cuts both ways

1:29:21 new land you've got to find a way to serve it with infrastructure but if we had a thousand acres sitting there with that had infrastructure in there that's a pretty effective way to build H place to build housing where we can get economies a scale so I think there's a balance between understanding how to pursue U ugbs and how to sort of um the way I thought when councelor rodley brought up the infi question was sort of efficiently consum you know use open land inside the city and finding that balance between the two of them the other thing um that I really uh that really stood out to me was just the mix of income and it's really easy to um look at the income requirements in the early analysis and say and automatically

1:30:07 jump to the idea that's like that those are all going to be subsidized rental rental homes or rental units I guess the question that I have is is there a way or how do we begin to layer in uh some home ownership opportunities that might hit that bracket and I don't know the answer to that question but one of the things um that I think is really important is that we continue to build paths to get people up the you know the income ladder right and Home Ownership is a way to do that um again you know as we're brainstorming policies and sort of thinking about this that that that really that really jumped out to me um the other thing that really jumped out to me is this question around how fast can we get from planning to you know

1:30:53 building permits every once in a while we drop this question that's like hey look we can just send that straight to building permits right the most effective thing we can figure out how to do about this housing conversation is figure out how to get more things off the pl you know I have to go to planning and then to building permits and get it get them permitted as fast as possible and I think that is finding that right balance between there's a lot of value in what planning does but also right the easier and more streamlined we can make this the better we're going to get our hit our housing targets and then lastly the the target seems almost insurmountable right especially with the amount of income and resources that it

1:31:40 would require any community and I'm sure our partners over in Eugene OR our partners in any other City feel that way and I just want to sort of call that out like more reporting isn't necessarily going to translate to more home homes and I think when we think about legislative advocacy we still have to consistently say you know we need more capacity to build homes and we need more resources for infrastructure which is going to be a lot bigger of an Ask than being able to get through just the brackets of reports oh and Lastly lastly one other thing that jumped out about the policy options we're a relatively small city right um it's easy to choose all of those things and say we're going to do all of them and I and I just read that

1:32:25 from a pure execution perspective and I was like okay you know we should choose policies that we can effectively execute as a city and not necessarily feel like we have to try to do everything because it's on the list but instead get really strategic about things we can we can Target with our resources and capacities so we go okay we can do that really well but we may not be able to do another policy and make sure that councilor Stout gets credit for any piece of house housing he finds Well you you described all the rental you know your ability to you know rent out of an Adu in your garage I'm just like make sure we get credit we need the credit for all of

1:33:14 them yeah and couns doy as well everybody's doing a lot to get this far all right really important conversation thanks for trying to streamline it a little bit and get us back on track I mean you've cut 15 minutes off of you know when we went over on the first conversation did anybody have other comments did you get what you guys needed I think so I mean we'll be back for many more conversations on the housing production strategy so I like the taking a light touch with climate friendly areas and then having that more comprehensive conversation of like what is the actual impact of some of these things and what makes sense for Springfield when we do the Citywide work great thank you so much thanks thank you oh that's by five minutes okay we are I'm going to adjourn

1:34:02 uh the work session and then it will be five probably seven and a half minutes because I believe executive session's next and we got to reset the room