Planning Commission

AGENDA Meeting Location: Sloat Room—Atrium Building Phone: 541‐682‐5481 99 W. 10th Avenue www.eugene‐or.gov/pc Eugene, Oregon 97401 The Eugene Planning Commission welcomes your interest in these agenda items. Feel free to come and go as you please at any of the meetings. This meeting location is wheelchair‐accessible. For the hearing impaired, FM assistive‐listening devices are available or an interpreter can be provided with 48 hour notice prior to the meeting. Spanish‐language interpretation will also be provided with 48 hour notice. To arrange for these services, contact the Planning Division at 541‐682‐5675. MONDAY, MAY 8, 2017 – REGULAR MEETING (11:30 a.m.) I. PUBLIC COMMENT 11:30 AM The Planning Commission reserves 10 minutes at the beginning of this meeting for public comment. The public may comment on any matter, except for items scheduled for public hearing or public hearing items for which the record has already closed. Generally, the time limit for public comment is three minutes; however, the Planning Commission reserves the option to reduce the time allowed each speaker based on the number of people requesting to speak. II. ITEMS FROM COMMISSION AND STAFF 11:40 AM A. Other Items from Commission B. Other Items from Staff C. Learning: How are we doing? III. WORK SESSION: TOOLS FOR FINANCING PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE 12:00 PM Lead Staff: Mark Schoening, Public Works, 541‐682‐5243 mark.a.schoening@ci.eugene.or.us IV. WORK SESSION: PUBLIC PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES 12:45 PM Lead Staff: Eric Brown, 541‐682‐5208 eric.g.brown@ci.eugene.or.us Lead Staff: Lorna Flormoe, 541‐682‐5670 lorna.r.flormoe@ci.eugene.or.us Commissioners: Steven Baker; John Barofsky (Vice Chair); John Jaworski; Jeffrey Mills; Brianna Nicolello; William Randall; Kristen Taylor (Chair)  AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY May 8, 2017 To: Eugene Planning Commission From: Mark Schoening, P.E, City Engineer, Public Works Engineering Subject: Tools for Financing Public Infrastructure ISSUE STATEMENT At a Council work session on September 28, 2016, the City Council received information on the scope of two proposed amendments to Chapter 7- Public Improvements related to privately engineered public improvements. At this work session, the Planning Commission will have an opportunity to discuss and provide feedback on the proposed amendments to Chapter 7. The first amendment would create a new section of code allowing for the establishment of a reimbursement district for privately engineered public improvements that provide capacity in excess of that needed for the development funding the improvement. The second amendment would change existing code to limit the amount of an equivalent assessment for street improvements to the estimated cost of the street improvements for the street frontage of a proposed development. BACKGROUND Reimbursement District New development is required to fund the public improvements necessary to serve the development through the privately engineered public improvement (PEPI) process. Occasionally, the public improvements provide capacity to serve other future developments. For a qualified public improvement, a developer may receive a system development charge (SDC) credit for the capacity in excess of what is needed to serve the new development. However, at times the credit exceeds the value of the SDCs paid by the development and the value of a portion of the credit is never recovered. Some public improvements needed to serve new development meet the minimum public improvement standards, but benefit other nearby properties. One example is a development project that extends an eight-inch diameter wastewater line past several unsewered properties to serve its development. Because the minimum wastewater line is eight inches in diameter, an SDC credit is not available to this development. A reimbursement district would provide the developer that funds a public improvement the opportunity to recover some of the cost from other benefitting properties at such time that Page 1 those properties take access to the public improvement. This may allow smaller development projects with high infrastructure costs to go forward. Numerous other communities within Oregon have code provisions for the establishment of reimbursement districts. Equivalent Assessments for Street Improvements New development is typically required to improve to City standards the street frontage of the development site. Often times it is not practical to improve one half of a street for a short section of frontage in a long stretch of unimproved street. In these cases on unimproved arterial and collector streets the City collects an equivalent assessment in lieu of requiring the construction of a privately engineered public improvement. The Eugene Code prescribes the method of calculating equivalent assessments and considers the scope of a future street improvement project and the number of existing and future parcels that would benefit from the improvement project. The assumptions made for these two variables in determining an equivalent assessment can greatly affect the amount of the equivalent assessment. One result may be that the sum of the equivalent assessments for a particular development may be substantially more than the estimated cost of the street improvements fronting the development. Limiting the amount of an equivalent assessment to the estimated cost of the street improvements fronting the development would assure equity in the assessment process and significantly reduce the staff resources necessary to calculate and track equivalent assessments. NEXT STEPS Community Outreach Prior to the development of draft ordinances to amend Eugene Code Chapter 7 – Public Improvements a community outreach plan will be development and implemented. Key stakeholders will include the Neighborhood Leadership Council, Homebuilders Association, Chamber of Commerce, Planning Commission and other interest groups. Future Council Work Session and Public Hearing Upon completion of community outreach and the development of draft ordinances, a work session will be scheduled with the City Council to review the input received during the community outreach and to review the draft ordinances. Subsequent to the work session, a public hearing will be scheduled followed by Council action. FOR MORE INFORMATION Mark Schoening, 541-682-5243, mark.a.schoening@ci.eugene.or.us Page 2  AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY May 8, 2017 To: Eugene Planning Commission From: Eric Brown & Heather O’Donnell, City of Eugene Planning Division Subject: Principles and Values of Public Participation for Community Planning and Legislative Planning Projects ISSUE STATEMENT The Planning Commission’s Public Involvement Sub-Committee (PC PIC) has identified the need for additional guidance regarding public involvement in planning activities as a supplement to the City’s currently adopted policies related to citizen involvement. At this work session, the Planning Commission will have the opportunity to learn about an existing set of values and principles contained within the City’s Public Participation Guidelines. Commissioners will also have the opportunity to discuss the practical application of these values and principles to planning projects and processes. The Planning Commission may also consider passing a motion to endorse these values and principles for use in developing and reviewing project-specific public involvement plans. BACKGROUND Following the 2015 Planning Commission retreat, the PC PIC was formed to explore issues that were raised related to involving community members in planning processes and decisions, and report back to the Planning Commission. Over the past year the PC PIC has been meeting to refine its role, operating procedures, and work plan. During this process, the Planning Commission identified the need for a set of principles to inform public participation activities – a resource for designing and evaluating public involvement in planning processes. POLICY CONTEXT Goal 1 of the Oregon Land Use Planning Program addresses Citizen Involvement. This goal outlines the mandate to “develop a citizen involvement program that ensures the opportunity for citizens to be involved in all phases of the planning process.”1 Section 2.350 of the Eugene Code establishes the Eugene Planning Commission as the committee for citizen involvement as described in Statewide Planning Goal 1, “responsible for assisting the city council with the development of a program that promotes and enhances citizen involvement in land-use planning, assisting in the implementation of the citizen involvement program, and evaluating the process being used for citizen involvement.” Element K in Chapter 1 of our comprehensive plan, The Metro Plan, addresses how we implement the citizen involvement state mandate as a region and the Eugene Code addresses how we implement the state mandate locally. The land use code includes the public participation requirements that apply to all land use decisions made by the City. Project specific public involvement plans for community planning and legislative planning projects adhere to, and typically exceed what is required by adopted 1 OAR 660-015-0000(1), accessed online April 27, 2017 at https://www.oregon.gov {00242744;1 } Page 3 policy. The values and principles discussed in this work session are available as a resource to support development of public involvement plans and implementation of public involvement activities in accordance with these policies for community planning and legislative planning projects. The City of Eugene and Lane County are scheduled to consider adoption of a new, Eugene-Specific UGB and Comprehensive Plan this summer. The proposed Comprehensive Plan under consideration does not include all the content that it, eventually, will include. At first, it will include only those chapters necessary for the adoption of Eugene’s UGB2. Future revisions to the Eugene-Specific comprehensive plan will add chapters to cover other important policy topics, including public involvement. Until these future revisions are developed and adopted, however, our local policy framework for citizen involvement will remain within the existing Metro Plan, section 2.350 and chapter 9 of the City Code, and the adopted bylaws of the Eugene Planning Commission. Figure 1: Hierarchy of Citizen Involvement Documents for Community Planning and Legislative Planning Projects ORIGINS The values and principles (see Attachment A) are an excerpt from the City’s Public Participation Guidelines. The guidelines were developed by Central Services staff, in collaboration with the University of Oregon through the Community Planning Workshop, as part of developing and 2 Policies enabling and guiding the City’s proposed growth monitoring program are also proposed for adoption as part of the current UGB adoption package {00242744;1 } Page 4 implementing the Diversity and Equity Strategic Plan (The DESP). Researchers spent nine months collecting information from the public on how they would like to be consulted by the City and how they would like to receive information from the City. The principles draw on established best practice in public participation, grounded in frameworks offered by the International Association of Public Participation and the National Coalition for Dialogue. They are based on the concepts of cultural competency (asking people how they would like to engage) and universal access (creating environments where everyone feels comfortable). APPLICABILITY Published in 2011, these values and principles are already being used in work groups across the organization to varying degrees. Planning Commissioners may wish to discuss the appropriateness and procedural workings of applying these values and principles to upcoming planning projects such as:  River Road/Santa Clara Public Involvement Plan  Urban Reserve Planning  Other PC PIC work plan items (e.g. neighborhood guide to participating in planning decisions) These values and principles are intended as an additional resource in developing public involvement activities for community planning and legislative planning projects and do not impact the established policy framework for citizen involvement outlined in Goal 1 of the Statewide Land Use Planning Program, Element K of the Metro Plan, and the Eugene City Code. Moreover, the values and principles are not intended to modify any current procedures required under state law and the Eugene Code for public notice related to quasi-judicial land use decisions. NEXT STEPS The Planning Commission will have the opportunity to discuss these values and principles at their May 8, 2017 meeting. If there is agreement on their usefulness and applicability, the Planning Commission may wish to pass a motion to endorse these values and principles for use in developing and reviewing project specific public involvement plans. With the Planning Commission’s support, the values and principles will be used as a resource for designing public involvement activities related to future planning projects, including the upcoming River Road/Santa Clara Neighborhood Plan Public Involvement Plan. ATTACHMENTS A. Values and Principles of Public Participation (excerpt from Public Participation Guidelines) FOR MORE INFORMATION Contact Eric Brown at 541-682-5208, eric.g.brown@ci.eugene.or.us Or Heather O’Donnell at 541-682-5488, heather.m.odonnell@ci.eugene.or.us {00242744;1 } Page 5 Attachment A: Values and Principles {00242744;1 } Page 6 {00242744;1 } Page 7 {00242744;1 } Page 8