Planning Commission

SUMMARY MINUTES Regular Meeting Eugene Planning Commission Sloat Room–The Atrium Building–99 West 10th Avenue October 10, 2005 11:30 a.m. PRESENT: John Lawless, President; Mitzi Colbath, Vice President; Jon Belcher, Rick Duncan, Randy Hledik, Phillip Hudspeth, members; Mike Sullivan, ex officio member; Susan Muir, Steve Nystrom, Kurt Yeiter, Planning and Development Department staff; Johnny Medlin, Carolyn Weiss, Gary McNeel, Public Works Department staff; Renee Grube, Li- brary, Recreation and Cultural Services staff; Graham Carey, Stefano Viggiano, Lane Transit District staff; Terry Connelly, Eugene Chamber of Commerce; Debbie Jeffries, Kevin Matthews, Linda Swisher, Roxie Cuellar, Charles Biggs, guests. ABSENT: Anne Marie Levis, member. PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS I. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF JULY 26 AND AUGUST 8, 2005 Ms. Colbath, seconded by Mr. Hledik, moved to approve the July 26, 2005, minutes as corrected and the August 8, 2005, minutes as submit- ted. The motion passed unanimously, 5:0. II. STUDY SESSION TO REVIEW AGENDA OF OCTOBER 22, 2005: Eugene Parks, Recreation & Open Space Comprehensive Plan (PROS) III. STATUS REPORT: LANE TRANSIT DISTRICT PROGRESSIVE CORRIDOR ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM IV. CONTINUED DISCUSSION: PREPARATION FOR JOINT CITY COUNCIL/PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING ON MIXED USE CENTERS V. ITEMS FROM COMMISSION AND STAFF MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 1 Regular Meeting  MINUTES Regular Meeting Eugene Planning Commission Sloat Room–The Atrium Building–99 West 10th Avenue October 10, 2005 11:30 a.m. PRESENT: John Lawless, President; Mitzi Colbath, Vice President; Jon Belcher, Rick Duncan, Randy Hledik, Phillip Hudspeth, members; Mike Sullivan, ex officio member; Susan Muir, Steve Nystrom, Kurt Yeiter, Planning and Development Department staff; Johnny Medlin, Carolyn Weiss, Gary McNeel, Public Works Department staff; Renee Grube, Li- brary, Recreation and Cultural Services staff; Graham Carey, Stefano Viggiano, Lane Transit District staff; Terry Connelly, Eugene Chamber of Commerce; Debbie Jeffries, Kevin Matthews, Linda Swisher, Roxie Cuellar, Charles Biggs, guests. ABSENT: Anne Marie Levis, member. Mr. Lawless convened the October 10, 2005, meeting of the Eugene Planning Commission. PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS Charles Biggs, 540 Antelope Way, Eugene, questioned why the City would continue to be interested in pursuing acquisition of Civic Stadium when deed restrictions precluded sale of the facility for anything other than educational purposes. He saw no need to expend City dollars when in all likelihood the facility would continue to exist. Planning and Development Executive Director Susan Muir asked Mr. Briggs to reserve his comments on sports parks and open space until the public hearing on the Parks, Recreation and Open Space Compre- hensive Plan, which was scheduled for 6 p.m. on October 11, 2005. Kevin Matthews, P. O. Box 1588, Eugene, Friends of Eugene, said he thought the commission’s public comment policy was unnecessarily restrictive and confusing with the amount of time that was allowed in public hearings being extremely restrictive. He said the policy was an impediment to constructive public involvement when applied across the board. He urged that the policy be changed to incorporate the more open standard that was permissible for legislative matters to allow better discourse between planning commissioners and the public. He criticized how the City was making more publications available online and said that publications were fragmented into dozens of PDF files with uncoordinated file names and no sequence, making it impossible to obtain an overview of the proposal or for those without a broadband connection to download the materials. Roxie Cuellar, 2053 Laura Street, Springfield, concurred with Mr. Matthews’ comments about the website and the difficulty of finding and accessing documents such as the commission’s agendas. I. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF JULY 26 AND AUGUST 8, 2005 MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 1 Regular Meeting Mr. Belcher noted that his comment on page 7 of the July 26, 2005, minutes referred to population growth over the next 50 years, not 15 years. He also said that his comment on page 9 of the July 26 minutes was that he was concerned about the implications to, not of, the residential lands study. Ms. Colbath asked that her statement on page 8 of the July 26, 2005, minutes be changed to “…said other areas of the City had expressed interest in would love to follow this example…” Ms. Colbath, seconded by Mr. Hledik, moved to approve the July 26, 2005, minutes as corrected and the August 8, 2005, minutes as submit- ted. The motion passed unanimously, 5:0. II. STUDY SESSION TO REVIEW AGENDA OF OCTOBER 11, 2005: EUGENE PARKS, RECREATION & OPEN SPACE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN (PROS) Parks Planning Manager Carolyn Weiss described the public outreach process and changes to the plan since the draft had been presented to the commission in January 2005. She said that an extensive public outreach process reached over 3,000 community members using various strategies including a statistically valid survey of Eugene households, a youth questionnaire, speaker’s bureau, communitywide forums and a Mayor’s advisory committee of 11 community members that guided the entire planning process. She said that there had been six additional public forums since January 2005 that collected comments on the draft plan and revised it based on that input. She said a meeting had also been held with the Lane County Board of Commissioners and clarified that individual notices were not sent to individual property owners, although subsequently staff had met with property owners who had expressed concerns. Ms. Weiss highlighted changes to the draft plan: • Projects and priorities were removed from the plan and placed in a separate document called the PROS Projects and Priorities Plan, which would go through a separate adoption process by the Eugene City Council following the adoption process of the PROS Comprehensive Plan. This was done because the project list needed to be a “living” document that retained flexibility and could be updated to reflect the desires and needs of the community and if it was incorporated in the PROS Comprehensive Plan it would be a refinement to the Metro Plan and more difficult to amend. • Language was added to strategies dealing with lands outside Eugene’s urban growth boundary (UGB) to clarify that the City did not have jurisdiction in those areas, but wanted to work with property owners and governing jurisdictions in order to explore the feasibility of those projects. Ms. Weiss said the PROS Comprehensive Plan was a refinement to the Metro Plan; however, many of the refinement plans had more regulatory influence than the PROS Comprehensive Plan, which was primarily aspirational and did not rely on Chapter 9 for implementation. She said staff was proposing a housekeep- ing ordinance that would repeal the provisions in Chapter 9 that referred back to the 1989 parks plan. She said the plan would be before the City Council in late November 2005 and she hoped it would be adopted by the end of the year. She said the PROS Projects and Priorities Plan would be presented to the City Council in January 2006 and would include a public hearing as part of the adoption process. Ms. Weiss advised the commission that testimony at the October 11 public hearing could address the issue of willing seller. She said that staff believed strongly in working with willing sellers on park MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 2 Regular Meeting projects and found that projects had the most success when working with the community and partners. She felt that was strongly reflected in the plan with a specific strategy. She indicated there had been criticism of the inventory analysis of parks because only City-owned properties were included. She explained that the plan acknowledged the many other recreational facilities in the community that provided an important recreation benefit but there was a conscious decision to only count lands over which the City had control and could guarantee would be used for recreation into the future. She said the figures used to compare the existing system were consistent with the methodology used by comparable communities determine service levels. She said the bottom line was that the community wanted a higher level of service. Ms. Colbath asked if the PROS Projects and Priorities Plan adoption process would be as extensive each time it was updated. Ms. Weiss said the plan would be adopted as a council resolution and as such a public hearing was not required, although staff had opted to hold a hearing as an extension of the public outreach process for the initial adoption. She was not certain what process would be used for updates. Ms. Colbath asked if the changes in Chapter 9 only removed references to the 1989 park plan or made other changes that could affect policy. Ms. Weiss said there were two sections: one only referred to the 1989 plan and would be replaced by a reference to the new plan and the second section addressed policies from the 1989 plan and those policies would be removed. She said that policies would not be changed nor would the regulatory nature of the plan be changed as the update did not rely on the policies in Chapter 9. Mr. Hledik declared a potential conflict of interest as he was associated with a business that owned land outside of the City limits but within the planning area. He complimented both the staff and the advisory committee for developing a comprehensive and well thought out program. He asked for staff to provide a response to the concept of increasing acreage per thousand of population from the 1989 target of 8.1 acres per thousand to 20 acres per thousand. He said that addressed the growth management strategy related to increasing the acreage and diversity of parks but raised concerns about densification by requiring over 4,000 acres based on population projections. He asked for an analysis of now that affected buildable, usable or vacant residential, commercial and industrial land with only 25 percent of UBG area vacant. Mr. Hledik asked for an explanation of removing the diagram or map of potential project sites from the plan. He noted that any neighborhood refinement plan, mixed use development plan or similar plan incorporated a diagram that provided a sense of the location of projects. Principal planner Steve Nystrom replied that there were different types of refinement plans and the term “functional plan,” while under the umbrella of refinement plan would apply to the PROS Comprehensive Plan. Mr. Hledik asked about the status of the parks and open space zone that the City’s zoning map indicated would be applied at some time in the future. Mr. Nystrom replied that adoption of the Land Use Code Update (LUCU) added a new zoning category, Park and Recreation Open Space zone, which was an additional tool to rezone land to accommodate a park but not yet applied to any site. He said parks were still allowed in other zoning districts and not every park site needed to convert to that zoning district to exist. Mr. Hledik observed that it would be necessary to have a plan diagram designation that allowed that zoning to occur in order to rezone land to that zone. Mr. Nystrom responded that parks were a use that crossed over various land use categories. Ms. Weiss added that in practice when designing and planning parks the Park and Recreation Open Space zone standards were used even those the land was not zoned that way in order to be consistent. MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 3 Regular Meeting Mr. Belcher asked if the UGB would need to be expanded in order to include any land the City might acquire outside of the UGB. Ms. Weiss said that would not necessarily happen as the City currently owned property outside the UGB associated with the Ridgeline Trail and a UGB expansion had not been initiated. Mr. Belcher asked if development of land as a community or neighborhood park might require UGB expansion. Ms. Muir said that the location of the acquisition and zoning would determine whether an expansion was necessary. Mr. Belcher pointed out that changing use of property from residential to park lands was a land use decision and questioned how subsequent updates of the PROS Projects and Priorities Plan could be accomplished by resolution and not ordinance. He was uncomfortable with what appeared to be a step toward a land use decision that did not include public involvement. Mr. Nystrom said the steps to implement the potential projects list could vary depending on the type of land to be used for a particular park. He said if the park site required a Metro Plan amendment or similar action that process would not be preempted; in other cases the land might already be owned by the City and have an appropriate zone that would permit park use outright and not require a public process. Mr. Duncan arrived at 12:10 p.m. Mr. Belcher said his underlying concern related to an earlier situation in which a proposal for a regional park had come before the commission as an advisory issue only and commissioners had raised the point that there was a land use issue; ultimately the park did not move forward because the land use issue was not dealt with at the beginning of the process. He was concerned that the proposed PROS Projects and Priorities Plan process would have the same result by removing as much of the plan as possible from the land use process. In response to a question from Mr. Hledik, Mr. Nystrom said the October 11, 2005, public hearing would only be on the PROS Comprehensive Plan and not the projects list. He said the projects list would not come back before the commission, whose purview was the comprehensive plan itself, and the testimony would be only on that plan. Ms. Weiss said there would be opportunities for public input during adoption of the PROS Projects and Priorities Plan in January 2006. Ms. Colbath asked if there was a way to include in the comprehensive plan a process for routing all future updates of the projects and priorities list through the Planning Commission or public process. She agreed with Mr. Belcher’s concerns that projects could be thwarted if the public process or land use process was avoided. She asked if the sports parks owned by the 4J School District were included in the inventory. Ms. Weiss said that the City had an agreement with the district for those parks and she would confirm whether they were included in the inventory. She said that other district properties were not included in the inventory. Ms. Colbath stated her concern that those facilities should be included in the equity discussion. Ms. Weiss agreed and said that the mapping of neighborhood service levels did include school district properties. Mr. Belcher observed that the UGB existed to provide for the extension of urban services and asked whether parks were considered urban services. Ms. Muir replied that parks could be urban services or provide different types of open space experiences for an urban area. She said there were many areas MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 4 Regular Meeting outside of the UGB that were used by City residents. Mr. Belcher inferred that the City would be acquiring park land outside the UGB for open space and not for other uses. Ms. Weiss said that primarily the areas in the plan that were outside the UGB were natural area acquisitions but there were a few areas where community parks were planned, such as Santa Clara. She said the City hoped to find property within the UGB to satisfy the need for a community park but there were not many options. Mr. Belcher said that the question had been raised previously about why Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands that were in the wetlands inventory were not included in the 20 acres per thousand calculation and asked if that had changed. Ms. Weiss replied that the land was recognized but not counted toward the 20 acres per thousand. Mr. Hledik asked for the analysis he had requested to include the non-City owned BLM, Corps of Engineers, Nature Conservancy, 4J School District, the Fairgrounds and private facilities, all of which was land unavailable for residential, commercial and industrial development and shrank the land supply that was available. Ms. Muir asked if property that the City was not certain would be committed in perpetuity to a recrea- tional use should be included in calculations. Mr. Hledik said that the analysis should explain the assumptions staff had used. Mr. Belcher stated that any land with a conservation easement in perpetuity or land dedicated to open space by agency designation should be included. Mr. Nystrom said that agency land where there could be some reliance on the land remaining in perpetuity could be included but it would be more difficult to include other lands such as school district property. Mr. Duncan pointed out that all land trusts, such as the McKenzie River Trust property, all had conserva- tion easements in perpetuity. He said it would be useful for the commission to have both sets of data. Mr. Lawless remarked asked if there had been consideration of reclamation or inclusion of publicly owned right-of-way facilities that in a higher density urban environment might provide developed pedestrian street front active areas. Ms. Weiss replied that the plan did not identify new parks categories of urban plazas and linear parks that addressed using rights-of-way that could become multi-functional, although she did not have specific acreage information. Mr. Lawless suggested looking at the downtown core pedestrian and bike accessible right-of-ways and how they were developed and intended to be used and the acreage they could contribute to the inventory. Mr. Belcher asked for more information on how other communities with standards of 20 acres per thousand had made assumptions about public/private land. He pointed out that much of the future park land was hoped to be acquired by public vote and the more open and public the process was the more likely it was to be successful. III. STATUS REPORT: LANE TRANSIT DISTRICT PROGRESSIVE CORRIDOR ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 5 Regular Meeting Mr. Nystrom stated that the report on progressive corridor enhancement was prompted by questions from the commission during its walking tour of the Rasor Park node about corridor enhancements along River Road. He said that Lane Transit District (LTD) had been invited to provide an update to the commission. Graham Carey, bus rapid transit (BRT) project engineer for LTD, presented a slide show on progressive corridor enhancement (PCE), a program of transit improvements. He explained that BRT was the preferred transit strategy for the region and since 1997 LTD had been working with partner agencies to develop the first EmX corridor and was now constructing that corridor and beginning the environmental process for the next corridor. He said the cost of the corridors limited construction of segments to funding cycles and in order to meet existing and unanswered service needs elements of BRT were being introduced into current service through PCE. He used a spreadsheet to show the elements of BRT by levels of complexity, controversy and cost. He said that levels 3 and 4 represented full EmX implementa- tion of service. He emphasized that it was still LTD’s goal to implement full EmX service and introduc- ing PCE along a particular corridor did not necessarily mean that would be the next EmX corridor; selection of the next EmX corridor would use the same process as the first corridor. Mr. Carey said that the new federal transportation bill included $3 million in funding for PCE and LTD hoped to complete enhancements on three corridors by 2009; EmX corridors would move forward independently of the PCE program. He said that seven criteria were used to select a PCE corridor, with the ability to form a single cross-city through route and the ability to coordinate routes into a single corridor being the key decision criteria. He said that the purpose of PCE was to simplify the system by connecting routes that went through the City into one route. He used a transit system map to illustrate how route segments were analyzed to determine the best combination for a PCE corridor and said that the first PCE corridor would be the River Road to Lane Community College (LCC) route, based on the following factors: • Complimentary schedules • Opportunities along the route to introduce signal priority • Stop spacing of 1,000 feet that was further apart than on other routes and would facilitate quicker travel along the route • Increasing service along the route to level 2 would be relatively easy Mr. Carey listed several unresolved issues on which LTD was still working: • Late evening and summer service • Avoid increasing the number of service hours system wide • Operator restrooms • Turnaround north of Beltline Mr. Duncan commented that there was currently development north of the Santa Clara area that would include homes and a market. He asked if LTD had talked to the developers about the possibility of acquiring property. Mr. Carey said LTD had talked to a number of developers and was still looking for a site. LTD Director of Development Services Stefano Viggiano added that the PCE program contemplated a separate bus for the corridor service that would travel from LCC to the northern terminus of the route, with other buses operating within the neighborhoods. He said the intent was to place the turnaround at the edge of a high level of development but not necessarily all the way to the fringe of the community. Mr. Carey said that other requirements for the northern terminus were that the turnaround should be on MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 6 Regular Meeting the corridor and near a traffic signal. He said the site should be fairly small and LTD would still maintain the River Road park and ride facility. Mr. Hledik asked how PCE would be connected to Mixed Use Centers (MUC) and transit-oriented development. Mr. Carey said that how PCE could support mixed use was one of the factors in corridor selection. Mr. Belcher asked if a PCE corridor would have a better change of becoming a BRT corridor. Mr. Carey said that PCE could act as a pathfinder by providing better information about the suitability of a corridor but there was no guarantee of becoming a BRT corridor. In response to a question from Ms. Colbath, Mr. Carey affirmed that the three PCE corridors would be in addition to two BRT corridors and while the first PCE corridor had been selected LTD was open to suggestions for the next two corridors. Mr. Lawless requested copies of the system map and PCE corridor criteria for commission members. In response to a question from Mr. Sullivan about the possibility of a corridor from downtown going west, Mr. Viggiano agreed there was significant commercial development out West 11th Avenue but one issue was that the criteria for selecting PCE and BRT corridors were very different. He said if the area was very congested signal priority would not necessarily provide as much benefit as on a somewhat congested corridor; in that case it made more sense to move to a full BRT corridor to solve the problem. Ms. Colbath asked if the River Road corridor would include pedestrian enhancements. Mr. Viggiano replied that pedestrian enhancements were typically City improvements and not part of the PCE improvements but LTD would work closely with the City’s program during its PCE projects to coordinate those efforts. Mr. Belcher noted that there was extensive public process involved in BRT corridor selection and design and asked what type of process was involved with PCE corridors. Mr. Carey said that the PCE program introduced measures that were basically internal LTD system improvements related to service. He said if other types of benefits were planned for a corridor than a more intensive public process would be initiated. Mr. Belcher said his concern was that LTD was implementing steps with limited public involvement that could result in negative public response at a later point. He mentioned that proposing the number of stops in order to speed up service had a cost and the public would not be happy to learn that a stop had been eliminated or moved. Mr. Carey acknowledged that changing the stops would be a concern to the public but noted that the River Road/LCC corridor project would only reduce one stop at the level of PCE service that was planned. Mr. Viggiano added that LTD service decisions went through an extensive public process with public hearings and notifications to riders. He said that the PCE corridor was treated as a service decision because it was within conventional service changes; it was unique only in the sense that it was a cross-city route but it would still go through the public process for service decisions. He said that BRT was different because the issues were community-wide and impacted non-riders. Ms. Colbath said that BRT and transit service in general could be viewed in two ways: either responding to the need for service or enhancing development by making an area more desirable. She hoped that LTD would continue to work with the City, particularly on MUCs, to create the desire to be on a corridor as well as respond to service needs. MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 7 Regular Meeting Mr. Lawless encouraged staff to work together at the agency level to integrate the concepts of MUCs and transit to foster healthy development and connectivity and bring big ideas back to the commission. IV. CONTINUED DISCUSSION: PREPARATION FOR JOINT CITY COUNCIL/PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING ON MIXED USE CENTERS Principal planner Kurt Yeiter distributed a summary of email comments from commissioners. He reminded that commission that it was allocated only 45 minutes during its joint meeting with the City Council on October 26, 2005. He drew their attention to the revised outline for the discussion of MUCs and noted that it included a reminder that MUCs were originally identified by a type of opportunity siting. He said that opportunity siting was used where there was an opportunity for site-specific planning in an MUC. He reviewed the discussion outline included in the agenda packet. Mr. Duncan said that he was still vague on the concept of opportunity siting and asked if staff had begun to define the term. Mr. Yeiter said that during previous discussions of MUCs there was mention of a mixed use allowance that might be spread throughout the area so that the same types of intensities or mixed uses would be allowed or required in all MUCs for all the properties. He said another approach was to identify a commercial and residential hub and then match a variety of densities to the neighbor- hood or proximity to the commercial center. He said those comments from the meeting and subsequent email comments gave the impression that opportunity siting needed to be done almost to the extent that was first used to identify the MUCs to find specific sites where very high densities would be placed and then allow better protection of the established neighborhoods. Mr. Duncan used the Chambers neighborhood as an example and noted that a review of the neighborhood had resulted in design standards that preserved the character but further west the older industrial area might present an opportunity to attract denser redevelopment to offset the lower density of the Chambers area. Mr. Yeiter agreed that Chambers was the first time that preservation was a consideration. He said that was a good example of the council’s direction to use opportunity siting in a MUC, but it was unclear whether that should be used outside the MUCs. Mr. Duncan hoped that opportunity siting would not be limited to MUCs and could be used if someone came in with a good proposal for higher density. Mr. Nystrom encouraged that discussion by the commission as there had not been any direction from the council about separating those two issues. He asked for the commission’s reaction to proposing both short- and long-term strategies to the council. Mr. Belcher agreed with proposing both types of strategies but said that the proposal should clarify opportunity siting and how it could be applied in both short- and long-term strategies as either a proactive or reactive approach. He said that missing from the proposal was the need to determine infill needs in order to determine infill strategies and that meant reviewing the Growth Management Study to see if those policies were still supported by the community as a whole. Mr. Duncan pointed out that the commission was trying to obtain direction from the council on growth management and how it should integrate various concepts like opportunity siting and MUCs as well as balance issues of open space, density and maintaining character. He said there was no clear picture of how those issues should be given priority. He also wanted a better understanding of how growth management policies were affected by the commission’s decisions. MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 8 Regular Meeting Mr. Hledik observed that there were policies but no targets. He used the example of densification and asked how much was too little or too much. He felt the outline provided a good discussion framework but timelines should be defined for short-term and long-term strategies. He said if the item under site- specific opportunity siting that provided planned areas for new development was intended to exclude redevelopment. Mr. Yeiter replied the intent was to address a concern raised by the development community about not knowing where they could build or what was expected. He indicated that opportunity siting in MUCs was intended to identify areas where development could occur and the benefit was probably greater for new development than for redevelopment. He cited Coburg Road as an example of an area identified for a MUC but currently unplanned; opportunity siting would define the locations of density and uses to provide greater clarity and assurance for developers. Mr. Hledik asked if streamlining the planned unit development (PUD) process would lead to an alternate path prototype and if so, could that term be used. Mr. Nystrom said it could be a component of what might be viewed as alternative path, but he considered alternative path as a much broader tool for implementation of the code. Mr. Hledik remarked that MUCs and alternate path appeared to be ways to give developers a tool to get projects done and it made sense to introduce the alternate path concept to the City Council. He was interested in the master plan idea and wondered how successful that might be in getting a number of owners to reach agreement. Mr. Yeiter said he had seen the strategy work well in other communities but it was not applicable to all situations. Mr. Hledik viewed the “opportunity PUD” as part of an expanded alternative path and asked that the proposal make the alternate path concept clear. Ms. Muir said that could be done but she noted that staff had gotten feedback from both the commission and the council that alternate path should be unrelated to the proscriptive code. She reminded the commission that some alternate paths had been developed since the issue was raised, such as the Chambers design concept. Mr. Hledik said the need was to speed up the process not to revise the code. He asked why “opportunity PUDs” were described as most useful for smaller infill projects and how was “smaller” defined. Mr. Yeiter said the limitation was suggested to avoid a conflict with the city-wide opportunity siting and provide the council with an array of tools to consider. Ms. Colbath remarked that the proposal was too complex and the commission was looking to the council to clarify its intent with respect to opportunity siting. She stressed the importance of having a methodol- ogy to assess and quantify needs. She thought that the commission should offer its services to the council to develop a process for implementing opportunity siting. She said the commission should: • Short-term – establish a methodology for obtaining the quantifiable information necessary for informed decisions • Ongoing – pursue the goal of densification for transportation through market-driven opportunities and incentives (monetary, non-monetary) • Long-term – growth management studies reaffirmed by the Region 2050 project, use as basis for She expressed the hope that the process would move forward expeditiously and there would be something quantifiable to work with by the end of the year. Mr. Lawless asserted that the lessons of the past were very important. He liked the concept of “pre- identifying” opportunities to whatever extent possible by a broad brush approach and felt that incentives MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 9 Regular Meeting were a critical element. He said that previous efforts to preserve and protect future opportunities drove away or postponed good development and that should be avoided. He wanted to find a way to discuss opportunities regardless of their source and have incentives that ratcheted how far a development could go to achieve future projections and push the “futures envelope.” He said that periodic redevelopment would be necessary to preserve the UGB and accommodate the growing population and that redevelop- ment should be encouraged to think farther out into the future. Mr. Belcher remarked that alternate path was not intended to be just “tweaking” the PUD process; it was meant to be an entirely different way of doing things. He said that alternate path had been discussed for many years and was still not clearly defined. He was concerned the same thing would happen with opportunity siting. He noted that commissioners had identified numerous changes to the briefing document and suggested a process for accomplishing those changes should be agreed upon. Ms. Muir pointed out that the changes needed to occur in time for a revised document to be placed in the City Council agenda packet on October 17, 2005. The commission agreed that Mr. Lawless, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Belcher and Ms. Colbath would work with staff to make the changes and the revised document would be circulated electronically to all commissioners. Mr. Lawless asked commissioners to email their suggestions for revisions to all members. V. ITEMS FROM COMMISSION AND STAFF Mr. Belcher agreed with remarks made during public comments that the City’s website was poorly designed and difficult to use. Mr. Lawless adjourned the Planning Commission meeting at 1:30 p.m. (Recorded by Lynn Taylor) m:\2005\planning and development department\planning division\planning commission\pc051010.doc) MINUTES – Eugene Planning Commission October 10, 2005 Page 10 Regular Meeting