Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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and welcome to the February 24th, 2025 Eugene Planning Commission meeting. Like to call this meeting to order. My name is Jason Leer and I'm chair of the Eugene Planning Commission. Uh to begin this evening, I'd like to call on Commissioner Matey for the city's land acknowledgement statement.

Thank you, Chair Lar. Since time immemorial, the Caluya people have been the indigenous stewards of our region, building dynamic communities, maintaining balance with wildlife, and enacting sustainable land practices. This land acknowledgement is a way of resisting the erasure of indigenous histories and to honor native communities by inviting truth and reconciliation. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Palapoa people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the coast reservation in western Oregon. As we consider the impacts of colonization, we also acknowledge the strength and resiliency of displaced indigenous people. The city of Eugene is built within the traditional homelands known as the Calip Calapoia Ilhi. Calapoia descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ron community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Select Indians of Oregon. They continue to make contributions in our communities here and across the lands. We express our respect for the inherent political sovereignty of all federally recognized tribal nations and indigenous people who live in the state of Oregon and across the nation. Therefore, the planning commission recognizes that what we do today will affect the many generations who come after us. Thank you, Commissioner Remy. And thank you to everyone joining us in this hybrid meeting format. Tonight, our meeting will begin with public comment followed by anformational work session on urban growth strategies, comprehensive plan updates. Anyone wishing to join the meeting online can do so by following the instructions listed on the agenda for this meeting. Planning Commission meetings can also be viewed by watching the live stream available on our website or the broadcast on Comcast channel 21. For those who join the meeting via computer device or phone, your

microphone, webcam, and phone are automatically muted when you enter the meeting as an attendee. If you wish to participate during public comment portion of the meeting and haven't already done so, please raise your virtual hand now. Join the speaker queue in one of two ways. For those viewing the meeting on a computer, laptop, or other device, click once on the hand icon. For those listening to the meeting on phone, press star 9. Public comment is an opportunity for individuals to speak to the planning commission on any topics except for items scheduled for public hearing or public hearing items for which the record is already closed. As a reminder, your hand must be raised uh in order to join the queue for public comment. Crystal, do we have anyone for public comment?

Um I just saw someone joined into the attendee list. I see they're on a phone. So if you would like to join public comment, please press star 9 to raise your hand. Then it looks like we just have Commissioner Bailing joining us virtually. Commissioner Wixson is here because I have his camera off. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Um and the the caller attendee has not raised anything. Okay. We have no one requesting to speak for public comment. Okay.

Well, as always, feel free to contact staff if there are comments you are not able to provide or wish to get to us in a different manner. I'll now close public comment. Um and we can begin with our main agenda item. I'd like to turn it over to uh Rebecca Gersho to begin the staff presentation. And following the staff presentation, the commission will have the opportunity to ask questions. Then we're going to go around chapter by chapter and then everyone will have a round opportunity to kind of speak on that. Then we can share additional comments at the end if we've got time. But it looks like since we've only got five tonight, we should have plenty of time for anything people want to share.

Thank you. Thank planning commissioners. I'm Rebecca Gerselle. As of yesterday, I'm a principal planner with the community planning and design. I'm here with our associate Stuart Warren and I believe Thea Evans. Is therea online as well? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Unfortunately, our planning director is this evening. Um, so it's just us and Thea. The

Anda. So PA is our GIS our senior GIS specialist and she is um here to answer questions when we get to that point. So I'm going to kick us off um like chair leer said tonight's meeting is focused on sharing the refined drafts of the Envision Eugene comprehensive plan phase 2 work. No decision is requested this evening, but we welcome your feedback. I'll start by briefly talking about why we're doing this work, the project timelines, the adoption process, and community engagement. Then I'll hand it off to Stuart who will talk about key changes for each chapter since you've seen them last. And we'll pause for a round of discussion before moving on to the next chapter. So we do a lot of coordinating in long range planning and it's important to acknowledge that the land use policies of the Envision Eugene comprehensive plan also advance many of our other citywide priorities including in plans such as the housing implementation pipeline, the climate action plan and the recreation system plan as well as the city's internal strategic plan. The Envision Eugene comprehensive plan is relatively new. Historically, Eugene, Springfield, and Lane County have shared a regional comprehensive plan for the metro area known as the Metro Plan. Due to legislative direction, in 2007, Eugene and Springfield began developing their own local comprehensive plans to provide land use policy direction within their individual urban growth boundaries. We will continue to have the metro plan for regional policies, but the land use policies for within Eugene's urban growth boundaries will be

in the envision Eugene comprehensive. And because of the work involved in developing this local comprehensive plan, it's being developed in three phases. So the first phase was adopted with Eugene's new urban growth boundary in 2017. The second phase is underway now. That's the work we're doing here. And the final two chapters on resilience and natural resources will be completed in the future when our funding allows. And the comprehensive plan, we describe it colloquially as our local roadmap. It guides the city in its planning for the land within our urban growth boundary. It's informed by years of community engagement from the Envision Eugene work which produced our community vision to our more recent urban growth strategies community engagement. Each chapter in the comp plan has a series of goals that articulate the community's overarching aspirations on that topic. Each chapter also contains policies which inform how Eugene grows in the future. And then once adopted, the comprehensive plan guides the work of city staff in our land use planning, including work like updating development regulations, long range planning projects, developing community engagement plans, and prioritizing projects for funding. So this is you've seen this timeline a lot. This is our urban growth strategies project timeline. It's attachment A in your AIS. Tonight we're focusing only on the policy and mapping work included in the Envision Eugene comprehensive plan shown on those first two lines. So focusing in on that piece, this slide shows what will be included in the 2026,

so this year and next year's adoption packages for the compreh comprehensive plan specific items. By mid 2026, we'll ask the planning commission to recommend our first urban growth strategies package to council, which will include these five comprehensive plan chapters that are in your packet and the land use designation map. Um, they provide policy support for our housing and jobs actions, which you will also be considering for recommendation. The adoption package will also include accompanying land use code amendments and metro plan amendments to support this work. Then next year by mid 2027 we'll ask the planning commission to recommend a second urban growth strategies package of comprehensive plan policies which will focus on the public facilities and services chapter and a Eugene specific public facilities plan plus our housing and jobs land supply studies which we're already working on and they'll be ready for adoption including our BLI um next year. So, these chapters were heavily informed by community engagement, which you've heard about probably at every meeting that we come and talk to you about. Um, specifically, in 2025, we received input from the community on our draft goals and policies using both broadreaching and focus strategies. So, we convened a community advisory panel. I believe you heard from a few of those folks. at uh your last meeting or recent meeting. It was composed of members from underserved communities to center their voices in the outcomes of our project. Staff attended a series of meetings with the youth advisory council to better

understand the needs and priorities of young people in Ukraine when it came to what they were looking for in their community. We facilitated two meetings with a working group of housing providers, developers, architects, and advocates. We broadly shared recorded presentations and an online survey on the comprehensive plan. And we've participated in events like the annual neighborhood conference tableabling at we are Bethl Junth Pride and other events. We've also met with um commissions and committees like the sustainability commission and the active transportation committee and of course we received input from the planning commission bassen. So through this engagement uh we received over 400 specific comments on the comprehensive plan. You can't see that at all on the comprehensive plan draft goals and policies. This past um fall and winter, we incorporated that input with the help of our staff project management team, including our attorney, Lauren Summers, and we developed the chapters in your packet, um which are included as attachments B through F. This screenshot that you can't actually see is um a small piece of our internal tracking spreadsheet which helped us organize and consider all of the input received. It just shows um the date and the group or uh type of input received like whether it was a survey or a meeting, what the input was and what the staff response was to that. and it's an internal document, but of course it's public to see it. Um, attachment G, however, is a cleaned up

simplified version of the actual changes that we ended up making to the chapters. So, we considered all the input, but we obviously didn't make all of those changes. Um, but the changes that we made are summarized in attachment G. There were many more changes that we did make. Um, we probably touched every policy, but um, a lot was clean up, clarification, those types of things. And Stuart's going to talk more about that. So, after tonight's meeting, we will be finalizing the chapters, laying them out, and preparing them for the public hearing process that will begin with the joint Eugene Lane County Planning Commission public hearing later this year. Tonight, we're not asking you to make any decisions, but we are asking for your input at a pretty high level. Um, is there anything missing from these chapters? Is there anything you would change? Do you have any specific policy questions or input? Um, if you have word smithing input or small details like that, we welcome you to send that to us or to request a meeting with us and we would happy be happy to talk to you about that. Um, but we want to be able to um hear from everyone tonight on higher level policy pieces. And now I'm going to hand it over.

Good evening, commissioners. Thank you, Rebecca. I get the pleasure of giving you a quick overview of each one of these chapters in front of you tonight as well as I'll I'm going to dive a bit deeper into some of the notable changes um that you find in your attachment G. So, as a reminder and as Rebecca mentioned, uh the chapters are all attachments B through F. There's quite a few of them there. So, if you want to follow along with chapters, you're more than welcome to. And attachment G is that longer table that has all of our notable changes. Um there's a lot more detail in attachment G than I'm going to provide to you tonight, but we're going to just highlight some of the the changes that we think are significant and we wanted to bring your attention to. Um like Rebecca mentioned, as soon as um we get your feedback tonight, we'll start incorporating what we can and then we'll start laying out these chapters for the final um adoption process. Right now um since you've seen them last, we did some of these small changes and we wrote the chapter introductions for everything. And so you notice that the chapters just look a little different. They're starting to kind of get some of that final formatting look, but they're not finalized yet. So next time we bring this to you, they'll also look a little bit different. Once again,

so jump in to the community engagement chapter, which is chapter one. Uh this is also attachment B in your AIS and starts at H29. The community engagement chapter has three goals and 14 policies and six sub policies. This chapter sets the goals and policies that guide the city of Eugene's community engagement efforts for our legislatively adoptive land use decisions. That term is very specific and it really is referring to larger projects like the middle housing code amendments, the urban reserves project and urban growth strategies project. And these are projects that have the potential to create significant impacts on members of underserved communities or significant impacts citywide. So we're really just talking about these policies kind of guiding the work of city staff through these large uh planning projects. most notable changes to chapter 1 that we want to highlight for you all as we wrote the chapter introduction which you'll see that for every single one of the chapters. Um other noticeable changes are we've added policy 1.9 public notice. our team felt like it was important to continually review and update how public notice materials and so these are the materials that we are legally required to provide um to the the greater community um for things like zone changes, comprehensive plan amendments um and other like uh I'm thinking about um conditioning permits for example um to make sure that they're clear and accessible for the community so they can understand what's changing and that can be in the note. We also removed three policies titled community voice, multiple opportunities and formats and outreach. All three policies were determined to be

unnecessary or redundant with other policies in the chapter. And we feel like removing unnecessary or redundant policies is helpful because it provides more clear policy direction and it removes unnecessary process for both staff and for applicants. We also clarified and added spec specificity to two policies. Based on feedback from the community advisory panel, staff reviewed this chapter to identify areas where we felt that cultural considerations should be expressly called out as being an important part of city policy. For example, staff added to policy 1.6 six community-led to clarify that when we work with community organizations, we should be asking for their support to make sure our engagement activities are culturally responsive to the people we are trying to reach. So, we just kind of took a a big look at this chapter and try to identify areas where we felt like it was really important for us to call out directly in policy that cultural considerations are important here, should be considering those things. We also broaden the policy on community member support which was policy 1.13 to include other forms of support beyond just compensation. The original policy was really focused on providing uh financial compensation to members of underserved community groups to help remove barriers for their enga their um participation in some of our engagement opportunities. And we heard that it would be wise for us to just broaden that to other forms of compensation as well, like uh child support, um transportation costs, uh translation as well. And with that, we're going to pause for any questions you might have. Um things like specific policy questions. Did you feel like there's anything missing or is there anything you would like to change about this chapter?

I had one little question. I was just kind of wondering. I mean, I think you addressed it already to some extent. Um, and it was specifically on that community voice section about those engagement opportunities with planning commission, mayor, and city council. Is that represented those opportunities somewhere else or just a little more curious about what the rationale was on that one? Why it was? Yeah. Yeah,

I think we decided that at the end of the day we didn't need to have a policy around that that we could just continue those operations as they are. We already do that work and so having a policy in place wasn't necessary to make sure that we continued it. You got anything to add to that? Yeah, it sort of um it encompassed what community engagement we were doing was to bring the results of the community input to decision makers. And so we also don't have necessarily the control like to be able to say what council is going to do in terms of considering input from folks. And so we were keeping it focused on staff and what we could control rather than um externalities. Okay. Mr. Bailey,

thank you. Um, uh, I I have a comment and an easy question. And the easy question is whether or not the materials in your outreach are multilingual or if materials in the future will be so that we can reach the largest possible um public.

Thanks for the comm the question, Commissioner Bailing. Um we did provide materials in multiple languages for some of our materials. we decided that it wasn't um appropriate for us to do it for everything we produced because we found in the past that just because we were provided in Spanish for example doesn't mean that that would actually reach those populations. The best way that

have found to reach those populations is to work directly with them and make sure that they have the support they need to engage in our projects. So you will see if you look back in some of our materials like along the early beginnings of urban grow strategies a couple years ago we provided like background materials on the project or on a comprehensive plan that were all translated in Spanish.

Great. Thank you. And um my comment is really regarding a concern that despite all of the outreach and engagement um activities that you do, I I have a concern that there's a disconnect between all of the work of the city and this planning and ordinary everyday working people trying to pay their bills. and handle their kids in school and all of that. And um one of the things that I point to is, you know, you you talked about having 400 comments. If each one of those was from a different member of the public, it only represents two ten of 1% of our population. So we're I I feel like we're missing something. And I don't know what it takes to have a broader spread a broader net to reach our almost 200,000 people in Eugene.

It's a really good point, Commissioner. And just to clarify, those 400 comments were just on the comprehensive plan specifically. We received we received over,200 comments on the urban growth strategies project as a whole. And a lot of those comments were not necessarily specific to the comprehensive plan. Like those 400 comments that Rebecca referred to were specifically on uh policies or goals. So we had real feedback on the way that they were written. The other comments were more broad in nature and that we could take what we heard from the community and then form them into our goals and policies. Um, but you're right, it's a a struggle we always continue to experience and we continue to to look to you all to help advise us on ways that we can can do a better job.

And go ahead.

No, go ahead, Rebecca. As Stuart said, it is always a struggle to get people to care even if you uh are able to talk to folks which is um there's like two levels of struggle. Talking to folks about these planning issues which are not yet problems. So it's hard to get people to care sometimes because it's long range and it's pretty esoteric when you get to this policy level. It's not even the actions that are coming from the policies. Um so it's a challenge to find the right venue and opportunity and way to share information with folks and then you know and then folks sometimes folks uh because you don't hear from them you because they don't have specific input it doesn't mean that they don't care. So, it's hard to parse out um what exactly is going on, but I think that this is a good conversation for this chapter because this chapter is supposed to help us come up with opportunities to broaden the perspective from the community in our planning world. So if there are specific policies that you feel like are missing in this chapter that would help us get broader engagement on planning work. That would be great to hear because this is the perfect opportunity for that.

Thank you. Any other questions for sure? Well, I just wanted to make a point or make sure I understand somewhere near Oh, there it is. Right there. The planning commission guides and approves community engagement plans. The planning commission guides and approves community engagement plans. So now, and maybe we have had before. This is the first time I'm aware that there's a set of sort of policies by which we base our review upon. So we can say, oh, here's policy seven. it didn't where's how did you address policy 7

whereas in the past it's always felt like that looks like a pretty good plan let's just go ahead with it so am I right about that we just was I just unaware of policies before or is this an enhanced approach this is definitely an enhanced approach I think it's good we think so too we think it's nice to have something on paper that we can utilize as staff too to as we are developing these community engagement plans to bring them to you all for your recommendations, approval, um clarifications, um to have some set of a of policies that we can look at to say, okay, this is what a community engagement plan should look like.

This is what it should have in it. Uh here are the people that it should be reaching. Here's the levels of participation that people can um engage with us on so that everyone has a clear understanding of what the project is and also what it's not. Right? I think drawing those lines in with community engagement about what the community actually has the ability to influence um is really important because it makes it seem like a lot of times when we're talking to folks that oh they've talked to us so now we can just change whatever they want us to when that's not always the the reality of the situation. Um, couple of things. I don't know that I really have questions. I may have some detailed maybe one level of our words, but detailed feedback. Just send you a couple of comments. Um, I I I like this material a lot. We've seen iterations of it over the last year and a half or however long it's been. And I I I and this applies I think to all the chapters here, but I I like the way that it's coming together. I like the way that it's kind of for me coming into more and more into focus kind of and I I particularly like some of the introductory material you've done. It seems to present kind of a vision, got the policies, you've got the goals. Um I for me I found myself some of the questions that have been asked for some of the discussion I'm I um I found I found myself thinking about public health standards some reason or another while I was reading all of this we did a public engagement plan for that and there was a public engagement process

um and then there was a public engagement I summary, I think is kind of what it what it was called. And and all of that material, I went back and looked at it and um I I found it really helpful. And I found then as I went through all of this stuff, it felt to me like as as I'm understanding all of this um you know, we've we've u I guess we're kind of doing a good job in my mind as we get out of the blocks here implementing this. So, I think it's I think it's uh it's good. Um I'm um I don't know I don't know that I really have anything I I found the only one quick comment I'd make there in the under the area of uh countable transparent engagement processes and then there's a whole series of policies as I went through that kind of in the first part of it I found myself thinking gosh we need to have we need to call out the fact that at the end of this process, we need to have a summary or we need to have a really clear report on how it all turned out. And then I I think I kind of found that in the next section. Uh you've got post engagement evaluation, you have documentation and feedback, which I guess is kind of where you're where you're getting to that. Um I I I just I guess want to emphasize for the record I think along with everything else that we're doing here that after you go through that process that summary report and information for the record

and for people to go back and refer to I think is really important. So anyway I think this is um August Commission

I just have a very uh quick comment. I really like uh the new policy 1.9 about the public notice. I felt like it was just couple meetings ago that we specifically talked about it and I found this uh adding this um uh very timely. Um that being said, it says to the extent practiceable. I didn't know what that mean. Uh you know uh if you can uh tell me a bit more that'd be great. But I like that policy. I think what the to the extent practical means is that there are certain legal requirements that we have to have in our noticing.

And so sometimes those legal requirements actually I think get in the way of that noticing being accessible. Um for example, I think oftentimes they're required to have a map of where uh the project may be occurring, but we know that maps may not be very accessible to folks who use a screen reader, for example.

And we added this one. Stewart pointed out that um the focus of this chapter is on legislative land use provisions and this is the one policy that's broader than that that's on our quasi judicial. So applications the this could be notices from individual land use applications that require a notice. We felt like that should be represented in here too. Any further questions? We'll move in to chapter two. Okay. Chapter two, compact development and urban design. Uh this is attachment C in your AIS which starts at page 13. This chapter has three goals and 18 policies. And this chapter guides the city's future efforts for using land inside the urban grow growth boundary in an efficient manner that increases opportunities for people to live in complete neighborhoods with access to goods and services. It also introduces policies on planning for specific centers and corridors with commercial and residential uses that are intended to increase access to daily goods and services while reducing the need to rely on an automobile. Like the other chapters, we wrote the introduction to this one since you saw it last. We also added three new policies, including 2.12 transportation requirements in climate friendly areas, which was added simply to comply with specific climate friendly and equitable communities rules that direct the city to comply with transportation planning requirements. when we are updating the comprehensive plan, we're designating new climate friendly areas. So, this policy really

is just in response to state requirements and uh kind of leaving a breadcrumb for future planners to say don't forget that you have to do this when you're updating your comprehensive plan or designating new climate friendly areas. We also added policy 2.13 which is active transportation network and it was added based on feedback from the an active transportation committee and our transportation planning team who identified that we needed to have policy for creating areas where people can live, work, shop and play around a network of active transportation corridors. And this policy supports creating walkable and bikable neighborhoods mostly away from busy streets. So if you think about our framework that we're building in this chapter for centers and key corridors, this is kind of like a third uh third building block to that um kind of policy framework and that we're creating a space where people do not have to rely on automobile to get there. You know, our key transportation quarters really are kind of a all modes of transportation um whereas this would really really be centered around just those active transportation modes. We also added policy 2.16, new neighborhoods. And this policy uh was added to reflect recent changes in state rule that allows for cities to plan for complete neighborhoods in urban growth boundary expansion areas. We thought it was a really good change and we would like to incorporate into our planning. So we added this new policy. We also made a change to policy 2.6 motor vehicle parking areas. Based on feedback from the development community, staff clarified that the intent of the policy um so that it's focused on encouraging redevelopment of existing and under underutilized surface parking areas, not creating new regulation for service parking areas or increasing the cost of developing those areas. And with that, we'll pause for discussion questions.

Um, I have kind of some of the same general comments I just made, so I won't repeat them. I I just I I kind of like the way this is put together and and particularly these areas around compact development uh and housing. It begins to really kind of focus in on a vision for the community and how we might develop our land use planning everything to sort of support that kind of coming into being over the next 20 years. Um, I have a couple of specific questions I'm going to ask and they can be short answer. I'm just I um on page 19 there's a there's a reference to under there's a whole kind of a little section on underutilized sites which I stared at for a while and found kind of interesting. And my I guess I kind of two questions. I I'm I guess I'm I'm curious. Do we know where these are? And can they be mapped or are we just kind of foreseeing them in potential for them in the future?

Do we know where they are? It's a great question. We do know where they are. In fact, they are mapped in here. This is our residential land supply. Okay. Okay. And we will be updating this. So, we'll have new updated maps of where these vacant, partially vacant, and underutilized sites are. Um, is there quite a bit of it relatively speaking? Like, yeah, I would say yes and no. Um, I think it's we're using more of it than we had last time we did the inventory. Um, so we'll have a fresh look that way.

Well, let me I'll I'll review that when it when it comes through. Um the other one and this is bit of a detail but I you're on uh page 18 there's section 2.9C there's a reference to um I probably should know what this is vertical separation what is it

it's like if you have steps up to a house so you can have horizontal separation is the that back. So, so it's like the width of your sidewalk is your horizontal separation. And vertical separation could be you're still on that first floor next to the sidewalk, but you could have some rise to get there, like step up and a porch and or like windows that are just higher up. So you can have a it's a different way of providing a buffer from okay public space. Okay.

So it's not a change in use as like commercial to residential or it certainly could be. Yeah. I think the picture here is a good example of that where you have residential search. Uh you have residential up here and then you have non-commercial uses on the the ground floor. Okay. So it's just a separation. Okay. But it's not necessarily right. It doesn't it doesn't indicate the type of use. Okay. Just thanks.

Yeah. On policy 2.5 um there's a the policy calls for addressing regulatory and other barriers to infill. Um, and I think that's a really impactful policy. So, I'm kind of curious what uh if you have a view on it that staff sees as the top regulatory barriers to infill development at this point and are there at this point any policies kind of in the in the pipeline specific code amendments to address them? And if that's too granular, we can talk about it have the meeting too.

I'll take a step. It's a really good question, Commissioner, and maybe one that you could help us understand a little bit more of your experience. Um, but I would say a lot of the actions we're bringing to you through the urban growth strategies um that you all talked about your last meeting with us, um, I think a lot of those are getting to some of those regulatory barriers. Um the discussion you all had a while back about E1 and E2 and some of the specific changes that were considering for those zones would be an example of removing those regulatory barriers to infill development. I think um I could probably put up just keep going on the list, but I don't think that there's a single one that just stands out to me um as being like the most impactful change we could make. Okay.

We did a lot of um right side trying to rightsize policies. We would start with like ideas for actions and then be like, "Oh, no, that's a code action. What's the policy that goes before that?" Right? So, this is the higher level piece. And we do have a whole variety. I'm I'm like blanking on some of the specifics, but like Stuart said, there is a whole variety of the actions that we are bringing forth for housing and jobs that are focused on those in the site. um because that's what we have left, right? And that's what we have to look at as efficiency measures to making those sites more efficient for development before we expand our urban growth boundary. So, um I don't a long shopping list that we can resend to you and you will be discussing again. Yeah, I'm zooming in on that one too because I think um I think that you know if the code isn't enabling it more you know that those policies are going to remain more aspirational and it

this is just sort of you know bird's eye view I don't have all the data support it but it seems like it's been a little more of a sluggish start than would have been expected with some of that inflow housing that's why I'm just curious whether or not you know at the point of thinking through you what what those barriers are specifically. Um,

there are some mandated changes and Lauren, you may have the exact wording better than I do, but there are some mandated changes that we're putting into our code that are providing density bonuses for if you apply for different types of infoing. So, um, taller limits, more density, an additional unit, that type of thing that, um, the state now allows and we are going to be, um, recommending putting that into our code. It might actually even be required. I think it's required. would would infill almost exclusively be the residential zones or there's there's no virtual infill really.

Commissioner, I think the the difference in this policy is infill versus green field development. So what you're talking about are um you know not a a big kind of on the edge of town green field whether it's new

uh yeah a residential subdivision or a new industrial park or a new commercial development um most of those properties in the city have already been developed. So what is left are kind of onesie twoosies around the city that either are they may be vacant. They may already be developed but just not to their kind of highest capacity. They may be um so that's what we're talking about. Um vacant partially vacant. So you know some of the property is developed the whole thing could be developed or underutilized. It's developed but it's it could be more densely developed. um and adaptive reuse of building. So there is a building existing on the property, but maybe it could be renovated and either turned from another use into housing or another use, you know, renovated into another commercial use, something like that. Um, and so what the policy is intended to kind of encourage and to create a lens for future code amendments is will this proposed code amendment do things to encourage infill development by removing regulatory barriers. Um so if a code amendment comes to planning commission that overall increases regulatory barriers to infill development that would probably not be consultant with this policy and that would be a basis for planning commission to say we don't feel like we want to recommend this because it's inconsistent with this comprehensive plan policy. So what the policies are really doing are sort of providing you with lenses for review of future proposed code amendments. The the actual proposals the specific regulatory barriers to be removed those are separate.

Sure. Um but as it sounds like it's more broad than I was it's it's not just the residential. This is going to be anything that's not kind of building to the edge of the town on a new Okay. Gotcha. Yep. Thank you, Commissioner Yang.

I have a question about uh 2.13. Uh so you talked about the uh network of active transportation corridors. Uh and you know, we want to encourage that and that sounds very good. Do you know if uh the current draft include mandates for safety features, you know, signage for right away that would encourage that happen? Um, we have not gotten to that point yet. I would say it's a really good question. This this policy is is basically the the impetus for this next set of planning work to happen. So, we're saying we would like to have a network of active transportation corridors in which we will start to focus future growth and development kind of around. We need to figure out where those are first. And so, our our transportation planning team staff are still working on developing what a map of that could look like, trying to pick those areas. And I think once we get to that point, then we can start looking at some of those regulatory regulations around how does the street look or feel and we'll probably play into some of the the complete street guidelines that um transportation plans that we're working on. Also,

I see and be more involved in the transportation the next transportation system plan update.

I see. The the backstory on this policy is that a lot of our key corridors and centers focus um is the alternative transportation on key corridors is our bus lines which is great and it's that hub and spoke system where the buses um all connect downtown and go out on the key corridors but they're very busy streets and they're not necessarily where people want to live right on a busy street. And so we heard from a variety of folks, well, why aren't you emphasizing housing also away from students uh near parks in places where I can more safely feel more safe riding my bike. Um and that is a big focus on our transportation planning team is getting folks out of cars and using other modes. And so that was some of how this policy came to fruition,

Mr. B.

Thank you. Um, as Stuart knows, neighborhood centers are near and dear to my heart and I'm uh anxious to see some kind of time frame for these as we go forward. In the last topic in your list of changes, neighborhood serving commercial, it starts with the word consider, which I believe is a very passive word. And I thought I read somewhere in this huge document that consider was being replaced with more active wording. And I wonder in this case also if it couldn't be uh include, create, initiate, consider to you know it's like meh. It's me.

Thank you for that feedback, Commissioner. Certainly something we can consider. No doubt. So, uh, yeah, go for it. Hey, I'm with you.

That is a good point, Commissioner Bailing. We, um, did get a lot of input that our language wasn't strong enough and we did review all of our policies and we strengthened, if that's the right word, we we, you know, changed the wording on some of them and not on others. And sometimes um because it's a highle policy and it's a 20-year plan and considering it it's that's a lot of what we do. We don't have the answer right now. So we're going to um take into consideration these things. And so I understand the tension between wanting it to sound stronger but also like needing it to be general enough so that it can meet the needs and changes as um over the years. So okay bit it's a bit of a tension and I acknowledge that.

Yeah. So we can explore then we could explore. They could. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. That was gonna be a comment on the flip side of the coin. If we use something that's more powerful or action verb, then shouldn't we have expectation how to measure success and have some metric and so I think that it's very hard. So I I understand that you want to be more generalized. Yeah.

Ramy, thank you. Um this this chapter was very interesting to me and it brought to mind a whole bunch of questions um sort of the biggest scale and I'm going to apologize if I haven't been paying enough attention until now to notice some of these things. But

I began the what particularly caught my attention was the idea. If you try to explain what land use and urban planning is to lay person often it's about well we don't want to put incompatible things next to each other, right? So we don't want the the uh train station next to the apartment buildings because trains make noise. So at a sort of the Houston, you know, that's kind of what you're trying to do when you're painting different colors. But there's obviously a lot more to it than that. There's how you transition between these two areas. There's how you use the land because you just don't want to keep sprawling forever. And so when you begin to try to describe it to someone, you want them to understand how they can own this plan as we talked about at the chapter one. So they can pick it up and they can go, "Okay, I get it. This is how we're going to make decisions and then this is where we're trying to go. these are sort of our goals and and our policies that allow us to get there. So in that context of trying to explain it to someone, I've run across terms like efficient use of land. Now I think I know what that is, but I've spent a decade or more thinking about what that is. If I ask someone about it, they may say, "Well, that's you don't want two churches next to each other because that wouldn't be efficient. Churches should really be spread out in the community where you don't want all your tire stores right together because again then everyone has to drive to them. So you want to scatter them out. That's not what I think of efficiency. What I think of efficiency is have we used the land literally the land to its capacity because we cannot make more land. There's only so much land and so if we're not using it efficiently, we're not really maximizing its value. And if we're a community, the penalty we pay for not using it efficiently is sprawl

and all the things with extra traffic, eating up agricultural land, not as many parks, etc., etc. So that's why we keep coming back to this compact urban form and this efficient use of land. Aren't those really the same thing? And would would that be an easier way to to describe it or to talk about it as a community if we want we want to create this built environment that maximizes the capacity of the land

and we have a series of ways we're going to manage that as we go and in the end it results on this compact urban. So again, I apologize for but the tier is just kind of scattered around a little bit and I think if we could be more clear about that, I think that would help make the policies sort of more supportive of what and sort of more um organized in the way they're presented. So we go from the bill to the are we safe, you know, sort of sort of working down these these different issues. So there's a connection between urban form and efficient use of land. And I was just trying to figure out is it is it discouraging underutilized sites while encouraging a full buildout and does it make you were talking about the buildable land inventory. You mentioned residential, but doesn't that cover all land uses?

So does it make any sense to refer to that as a concept in here? Can people understand a buildable land inventory and is that be like no I don't think so. Uh but again trying to trying to think about if you try to explain this to somebody around the dinner table it's like oh no no no we have all these properties they have one story commercial on them and that really could be five stories or it could be two stories of commercial and five stories of residential

and they can and why would we do that? Well because then we don't have to grow out by the airport where all that great agricultural land is. Oh, that makes sense. So, until you get to that level, they're not it's hard. Change is hard and they don't really understand why we can't just keep growing out. So, any way we could help with this document to try to explain that, I think it'd be great. My second grand apology is about the concept of human scale. I think that's a there there there's more work to be done. I think I read a sentence that said buildings should be based on the proportion of the human body or something the definition

and I don't even know what that means and I don't think that's what we mean and how many times do you get to repeat the human body and whose human body is it and oh maybe it's only the hand or the foot which part are we talking about so we need to I I would uh I I have used that phrase a lot human form but I put it in the context of a walkable community. What what can what can you as a human relate to? And the examples usually are it's not a blank wall that you're walking by. That wall has some kind of articulation that you as a human can understand. It's the same size as your hand. It has a line at the size of your shoulder. Maybe it has a cover over the top. So you're, you know, that all of those things are related to walking by structures. So maybe we get back to walkable communities and thinking about what does it mean as and I'm not sure this is what what we want to do because frankly most of the city you're experienced from a car

and that's not going to go away. So, don't we also want to have aspirations about what it's like to drive around and what do you see when you drive around? Because if everything was based on the human form, it wouldn't it wouldn't look very good from a car. But, and I don't know, now I'm just babbling, but maybe that's our idea. Um, so I I just thought human scale probably doesn't get there. It doesn't There are no human scale Well, maybe there are human scale trees, but I don't think that's really what we want. We want trees scale trees to know that's how our urban form is derived from the scale of trees and the sunlight and size of open spaces. And if you're walking through them, that's a certain criteria. How can I relate to that? You do not want to be the government building that makes you feel like you're this big

when you're maybe you do with the government building, but when you're in your neighborhood or on your way to the dentist or whatever it is you're doing, you want to feel welcome. And I kept circling back to that idea of how do we make these things feel welcome and assuming that's our

because I think that's a much better way to describe it. It's accepting. It's welcome. It's something you want to walk by. You don't want to walk by the busy street with the bus corridor. You want to walk the next block over because that has all of these elements that are human scale but not literally human scale. So, thank you for listening to that. I think that's I only have one more picky question about chapter 2, but I'd like to give anybody else a chance.

Yeah, Mr. Ba. Um, I want to say something about human scale since you brought it up. I that when I I read I caught on that a couple of times, too. And the note that I wrote myself, I just I want to I think I kind of got the concept and I I don't disagree with anything that's been said. I the note I wrote is um I just want to be sure that if it lands in the policies and we go forward that we don't use it in particularly in C2 or in any areas where we might allow taller buildings that we don't use it to rationalize why we should have shorter buildings in those in those kind of commercial areas where we might benefit with more floors and housing. I just would want to be really careful about how my opinion with how it's how it's used. Um, the other thing I have, this is a a kind of a I I think we I think I've said this before, maybe I think we need more centers and I'm not sure how we make centers. It's like you've we've uh we've identified on the map here are these centers and they tend to be places where there's already some kind of centering going on. There's some mixeduse development and so on as near as I can tell. And I I have for quite a while back in middle housing, I think too, I I I sit and look at that map of the city and I see areas where I Well, let me say too when I hear when I when I read throughout here and Stuart, in your introduction, you were talking about um we want we want to uh increase uh access, you know, as we develop these more

compact areas, particularly in urban transit areas, increase access and reduce the need for autos. So, I'm I'm I um I look at there's certain areas of Eugene, and I happen to live in one. I know I probably mentioned it is a long ways to a center and uh like more than a mile and a half. Um and and I can see a few of those around. So, I'm just going to throw that out. I don't know. And it applies a little bit for me to corridors also. I look at the corridors we have and I can see some areas of town where I I sort of find myself thinking, gosh, I wish that we could have more of a corridor there. And u So, I'm going to I'm going to leave it at that. I'll put I just kind of want to put those two out there as we go as we go through this. The idea of us trying to have more mixed use in some of these compact development areas and give people more of an opportunity or an ability to go about their lives and maybe use their automobiles less. And part of that's folded into centers and corridors. And there's some areas of our city that you'll come to blank to that. So,

okay. Thanks, Can I respond that real quick? Yeah. So, I I'll respond because I know Commissioner Bailey is very interested in this as well. Um, so this first round of of identifying centers really went off of existing zoning right now because of the way the state law is set up and the process in which we have to go through to identify our land needs. So, that back to that buildable land inventory again. Okay. As we go through that process and we start to identify what our future land needs are, that will be our opportunity to start thinking about new or potential for new areas that could be identified as centers. Good. Um, so we hear you loud and clear and it's on our minds horizon

and we will have that opportunity I think in the future as well. I had a comment on 2.16. Um, obviously that sounds like a really interesting idea and I'm just I guess curious to know a little bit more because kind of on that same subject of sprawl. I mean, as you get toward, you know, the urban growth boundary tends to just kind of sprawl out into fingers of residential development and it seems like there's almost no way to stop that. So I'm curious because it's it seems like a big proposition to try to get more conceptual planning for even expanding into those areas, you know, like how how does that happen or what does that look like,

right? Um good question. So on a broad scale when we expand our urban growth boundary we have to do it based on the need that shows up in our residential land supply study that um the need for the number of let's let's say we're talking about housing. could also be commercial, but the a number of units. And so you take the number of units that you need that you can't fulfill inside the urban growth boundary and then you look in those areas in our urban reserve areas. And based on our density assumptions, you figure out how much land you need for those units and what you can um what your need is with single family residential or multifamily, that type of thing. So it used to just be that there was a residential need, you had to designate land for residential. Now the state is telling us well when you have a residential need you can actually look at affordable housing. So you can designate some land for affordable housing that used to never be part of the equation before if you do that sort of pre-planning that conceptual planning. Um, and you can also look at parks and open space. And you can also look at a small amount of neighborhood commercial. They'll I can't I think it's like 5%. You can look at some neighborhood supporting commercial uses. So basically, you can plan uh more complete.

You have like an affordable housing zone. Is that what you're saying? You can, it'll still be designated just housing, but you can do some planning, some conceptual planning, and some working with developers on um on fulfilling those needs in that area. I don't know the details yet. I don't know how we're actually going to do it, but I know the state's telling us that we can consider affordable housing when we are looking at land in our UGB. So that's what this policy is getting at. It's letting us it's um sort of enabling us to go forward with some conceptual planning before we bring that land into the urban. So it's good

and um and the details we will be working on probably between 2027 and 2030. I know you had your hang up, Commissioner Yang. We have We probably do need to move along a little bit, too. We've got about 55 minutes left or three chapters. So, do you want to grow now or you I just want to quickly say I initially also have a little difficulty with the human scale concept. But when I flipped to uh page 18 and read what it meant, what helped me the most was actually the last statement. You talk about how it's often in contrast to autooriented spaces and that helped me

understand that and so perhaps it's not you know maybe just scale is not the right word to put into what you're trying to serve. I mean I'm just guessing but anyway but that's what helped me the most in you know wrap around what that mean.

Thank you. Yeah thank you for that input. Thank you everyone for your input on human scale. I would just like to say super quickly, human scale was in response and correcting walkable and pedestrian scale because we got input that pedestrian scale was ableist language and people don't everybody doesn't walk. And so when we talk about walkable communities, some people felt that that was limiting language and so we were trying to broaden it. I'm not sure if we actually got there given you're going the right way. So I would be interested in continuing to talk to you about that.

Very. You're on the right track. You are you are um 2.14 government facilities. I started reading that I thought oh schools and schools is not listed there. So is I wouldn't call these government facilities. I call them like open spaces and parks.

This policy is also in response to the climate fairly equitable communities rules. Uh there are like two or three sets of the rules that require us to have policies in our comprehensive plan. This is one of them. And so this takes word uh language directly from the rule and puts it in our conference plan because we're required to do it. Basically what this says is that um we are supposed to prioritize locating new government facilities which are public serving. So that could be things like city halls or courtrooms, those things, those spaces that are are literally serving the community. Um, try to try try to prioritize those in climate areas, but that's not what this says. 2.14 doesn't list government facilities.

We could look at the list and we could also look at the title. I'm sorry to drag us down. Sorry. No, that's goodation. to chapter four. Okay. Yeah. On to everyone's favorite subject, housing.

So, this chapter is attachment D, which begins on page 21 for you all. It has four goals and 34 policies, making it our longest chapter. and it guides the city's future efforts for encouraging housing production, affordability, choice and diversity, and fairness and equity. Notable changes to the chapter include writing the chapter introduction, and we added five new policies, including 4.4 4 incentivize annexation which was added to support the city's ongoing efforts to encourage annexation with hopes of increasing the city's capacity for housing within its urban growth boundary. We added policy 4.16 mixed income housing which was added to create uh neighborhoods that are accessible to all income levels so that we start planning on this kind of income level scale for neighborhoods too. So, it's not just like, oh, here are some of the wealthier, higherend houses, they go over here. It's how do we plan for those areas to have a mixture of different housing types so that everyone can afford to live there. Policy 4.17 was added, which is deeply affordable housing to support housing that is affordable to those with the lowest incomes. Also, based on feedback from the community that energy efficient housing was a strong desire, we added policy 4.24, which is energy efficient housing. And the final policy added to this chapter is 4.30 short-term rental regulations. We add this uh policy based on concern from the community and staff that short-term rentals are or could become an issue for maintaining an adequate supply of housing in the community. So, we added this policy. I will note here that and for your all's consideration that the new Oregon housing needs analysis framework requires the city to plan for enough housing that accommodates uh our

need for short-term rentals as well. So, we're we're doing that that work um under state law already. This just says if there are other regulations that um we think we should add, we should consider doing so. staff also removed one policy on housing programs. Um, and it's shown on page five of attachment G if you want to look at it a little closer. Um, this policy was really a coordination poly policy to support programs like land acquisition, housing, rehabilitation, and financial assistance. And we decided that uh this policy didn't really have a good strong land use nexus. So, we removed it. And also worth noting here is that we expanded uh policies on home ownership from just one policy to two. Um and those policies are homeownership assistance and uh choice as well. On to discussion questions. Um uh two things. I I'm gonna I've got a several detailed things I'm just going to send to you. We've already had some discussion about that. I'm kind of recognizing the the need to find some balance between this kind of one side clarity and precision and all that and and then being a bit more general and these are going to have to stand 15 or 20 years. They're going to be in a comprehensive plan. So I don't want to give direction to my colleagues or anything but I think to the extent I'm I'm going to I think to the extent we can give you those kinds of word edits that you can consider we can kind of get this at the end of the day as kind of as clear as we collectively can. Um my question is um on page

Page 24, section 4.8. I think I know. I just want to Can you talk briefly about height and density bonuses? I I'm curious what those are in summary and then I think I'll have a comment. So, you're asking just just generally what? Yeah. Sure. So, um we'll start with hype bonus particularly hype. I'm curious about

um a good example of hype bonus would be um for example if you were to build a vertical mixeduse building. So the city says hey we want to see more of that kind of development. We're going to develop an incentive for people to do that. So we'll add an additional 10 feet for example if you build three stories of residential over commercial uses. Um, so it's kind of like a we'll give you extra height if you agree to do a certain thing, which in this case would be doing that in mixed use development. So why don't we just put that in the basic code? Why don't we just say in the C2 area? It's my favorite area. Why don't we just allow that? But I just let me put the question out there. In my opinion, Commissioner, I don't think it would be necessary in C2 because the height limit in most C2 zoned areas is already 120.

Okay. Okay. I don't think that it would really add a whole lot of value to that. I think that there are other zones we could consider doing that certainly. Um I will say that there's recent changes in state law that also require us to do that through um an adjustment. So, we looked heavily at doing height bonuses this round, but because of that recent state law, they can already do that. We didn't want to give them like two great bonuses because we do know that neighbors have serious concerns and real concerns about their neighbor living next to like a C1 property for example and that building too high and blocking solar access or just creating a space that doesn't feel very welcoming like we were discussing earlier. Okay. Well, that's good for me. Thanks.

Density bonus would be similar that you you do something and you can build more units than we would normally allow.

Yeah. I'm going to think about it some more and we can talk some more. I it it just sort of strikes me in general, but if if we were doing that and and in the appropriate zones where it would matter or could be utilized uh most effectively, I just find myself wondering why don't we just write the code that way? But I'll think about it more. Thanks. One one little comment that I had and and this may be something that's more contained in the state rules related to the um ONA but you know there's this clear and pretty ambitious production target the 1600 units per year which you know will get revised. Um, but there isn't really a policy in any chapter that establishes, you know, performance metrics or monitoring triggers or consequences for underperformance.

And, you know, having like a little bit more kind of tooth in there is something that could potentially be valuable for something that seems, you know, like such a crucial issue in our community in particular. you know our more code changes and revisions and simplifications in order if we're consistently for three or four years far under perceiving under hitting our goal there. So just just a little observation on that. Mhm. So just to make sure I understand, so there are state um requirements and state processes for um tracking and monitoring how much housing we're producing. But you're saying maybe acknowledge that or include that in policy. Well, I'm just saying how does that how does our performance over the next years then feed back into what you know staff and the city are doing in order to change that trajectory.

Okay. Okay.

So, I would say a couple of things commissioner. So um it's not a chapter that is in front of you for this set of amendments, but there is a growth monitoring program that the city already has that's included in the Envision Eye Gene document that um the city voluntarily took on that now mirrors a lot of the state law requirements that came along with the other things. but um that Heather O'Donnell has been working on for a long time and has come to talk to you about I think on a couple of occasions um where we do track a a lot of different metrics including production of housing. So we have been and will continue to do that internal tracking. There are also as Rebecca said um state requirements to track and workforce production and there are state consequences for under production. There's the the hapo the housing accountability and production office.

Accountability and production office. Um that is exists in order to both help cities and other local governments that are experiencing issues with under production but also to keep an eye on them. And there are there are real consequences for local governments who persist in not taking actions to address production. So, um it's it's not addressed in the housing chapter per se, but I think the um it is addressed both in state law and in in the comprehensive plan in terms of at least the monitoring of things

and I'm just bringing it up too because I think you know obviously the monitoring is a really important part of it but you know monitoring without results it's just what is our you know if this is our vision kind of for our then how do we see that relationship and what you know what our goals and and obligations are in terms of action items when we're falling short. Sure. And I guess I should say part of the monitoring is also reporting back to the planning commission and city council. So

internally we we have taken on that obligation to do that regardless of state requirements and then there's a state monitoring and reporting requirement as well. Any other questions? Yeah. In chapter one, we talk about um we wanted to um uh culture considerations. Then chapter two, we talk about human scale, you know, um focus there.

How can we do that? do both and still make housing affordable? How can we do both of that but not increase the cost, material, labor to you know um proceed with a certain development? Um, and then this chapter talk about we want to encourage diversity of housing uh options near uh centers and I like the idea you know has more amenities and it's great but won't that be out of the reach for underserved communities or residents who probably would benefit from that but can't afford it? It's a really good point, Commissioner, and one that we've talked with the community a lot about and we've heard a lot of concern about, especially from the community advisory panel. They queued straight in on that. They all said, "We would love to live near, not all, most of them said they would love to live near a center, but they were concerned about the cost of of that because it's going to be a place where people a lot of people do want to live. I mean, when we asked the broader community about, you know, do you just want to live near center?" It was something like 75% of the responses were yes, I would like to. So, I think we have to to think seriously about um how we're planning for housing around centers. I think we have to figure out ways to create subsidized affordable housing in or near centers. I think we have to uh plan for vers a diversity of housing types near centers. Um, and I think it's just a million-dollar question that we will be grappling with um, over probably the next 20 years of how do how do we do this in a way that creates human scale development that's affordable for people to live in, but also creates these spaces that are that are welcoming and culturally responsive. And so I feel like a lot of what we do in our jobs is finding balance in there. Um, so how do we require enough affordable housing to make it affordable for enough people to live there while also providing these other amenities that everyone feels are really important

to their their lifestyle and their well-being. So if you think you have any good ideas, all ears, we'll talk a little bit more about a project after our meeting tonight, but I think focusing more on that specific question. move to chapter five. So, we have enough time. Okay, we got two chapters left, right? Yeah.

Okay, chapter five, community health. How's everyone doing now? We're speaking on community health. You all stay still paying attention enough fall asleep on me. Oh, yeah. Okay, great. Um, this is attachment D of your AS, which begins on page 29. The community health chapter has three draft goals and 22 policies. And it guides the city's efforts when planning for future growth and development that provides a healthy natural and built environment, enhances equitable access and opportunity, and fosters community safety and belonging. So notable chap uh sorry notable changes to this chapter uh include we drafted the introduction. Um and we also strengthened policy 5.2 separation of uses. This is a policy we heard a lot about um and we heard a lot of support for making it stronger. So we worked with our land use team including Jeff Ger um to strengthen it and apply it to individual land use applications. Originally as drafted this policy only applied to city projects so like urban growth strategies as an example um that redesated the lands brought into the urban growth boundary. This change that we're talking about here tonight makes it so that a property owner could not reddes designate their property to create a situation where land designated for industrial use is abing land designated for residential use and vice versa. Importantly I think to note for all of you is that this policy does not change existing conditions on the ground. So in those situations today where we do have heavy industrial right up next to residential and vice versa, this policy will not change that layout. What this policy does is say in in the future we're going to avoid that situation. So another thing I should bring to your attention is that in our comprehensive

plan unless we specifically call out in policy that this policy applies to individual land use applications that these policies will not be used in that way. So this change in this policy that we're talking about added that um piece that says this policy should be applied as a criterion for approving or denying landriations. That language um is clearly stated in the introduction to the conference plan and that's describing what the policies are and that that language basically says that unless the policy expressly states that this can be applied to an application these policies don't apply. Um, so we made that change and we're really excited about it. We feel like it's a really good change. It makes this policy much stronger and it it's I think really responsive to the community, especially considering the public health standards and a lot of the um concerns we've heard throughout the broader community about folks being forced to live or having to live next to industrial areas. Um, so we're excited about that one. We also added two new policies. uh one after working with the youth advisory council and the community advisory panel we felt that it was important to save a to have a policy about planning for future generations. So this is policy 5.8 And this policy directs the city to consider the priorities of young people when planning for a healthy natural food environment. And also based on feedback from Lane County public health staff and you all we added policy 5.18 sighting of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis retail outlets outlets. And this policy asks the city to consider additional sighting or land use regulations to reduce concentrations of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis retail highways. Lastly, in this chapter, we removed two policies. one titled social equity which provided direction to the city to strive to eliminate barriers to inclusion in

city land use planning efforts which we felt that this policy was really redundant with many of our existing policies in uh the community engagement chapter. So we removed it and another policy on coordination with regulatory agencies which directed the city to continue coordination with regulatory agencies like EPA and DE. This policy was determined to be redundant with policy 5.4 local air water quality and noise standards. So those are the most significant changes we made to chapter 5 and we would appreciate if needed feedback questions on it. I have a question. Um, in the introductory material um, page 29 down near the bottom there's a there's a reference and it says the it talks about the forthcoming natural resources and environmental quality chapter. I hope I'm not going to embarrass myself, but what chapter is that and when's it forthcoming?

It is forthcoming in phase three update of our comprehensive phase three. So, there are two remaining chapters to be updated. Natural resources, which this is its long name, it's a working name and um and resilience. So those two chapters um have yet to be updated. Sort of the goal five policies, the environmental quality natural resource policies have yet to be moved over from the metro plan as appropriate for the ones inside the urban growth boundary. And

they're not really listed at this point in the outlines that we've been using. It's listed in the It's in the table of contents in the comprehensive plan. Um, we know they need to be included. We just they're especially the natural resources policy because it contains all of our contains all of our goal five guidance, our protected lands guidance. It's it's a bit of a heavy lift and so we have to uh resource it. So, they'll follow the public These are these chapters, correct? Yes. Which is coming.

Public facilities chapter is coming next year, but it is part of this phase. We're actively working on it. These two I would say we're sort of passively working on because as things come up in this, we're like, "Oh, no, those will belong in those chapters." And so we put them in that folder, but um we it hasn't been scoped yet in terms of of the work effort. Thank you, Mr. Brley.

Yes. Thank you. I um I want to acknowledge that I was very concerned initially to see that community health is the shortest chapter in the whole document when to my mind community health ought to be the city's highest priority. All of our highest priorities. Community health is so essential to everything else. that it's like ought to be the groundwork and the foundation everything else stands on. And as I sat with that and thought about it a lot, I realized a lot of the issues around community health are actually addressed in other chapters, in other ways and other policies. And I think it would be useful to have some cross reference if not in this chapter then in those other chapters where those policies do exist if it made some reference there to the benefit to community health.

Does that make sense? Do you do you follow? I think so. Commissioner. So what I'm hearing is is you would like us to say you know maybe in the introduction to the chap to the community health chapter policies related to health uh healthy housing are contained in chapter 4 housing. Is that what you're saying? Um or the other way around that in the chapter 4 when you're talking about housing you include something about the overall um benefit to community health as described in chapter 5.

Great question. Yeah, thank you for that. We can definitely take a look at that language that we use. Okay. Thanks. It's a very short chapter.

And you are you're right. It is a short chapter and you're also right that it's kind of all-encompassing um and does have a lot of tendrils into our other chapters. There is a lot of sort of cross-pollination between the chapters and hopefully once it's together as one comprehensive plan document, it'll feel more holistic and it won't matter quite as much which chapter a policy is in as long as it um is the right policy. But if if you can identify anything that feels really missing from this, this would we would really welcome that input.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Isacson.

Thank you. Um just finally finally finishing my drive from Portland. Um I was wondering I I we there's a lot of talk always about mental health uh behavioral health uh funding and prioritization. That's great. When it comes to active uh mental health strategies like therapists and access to treatment and care and wraparound services, there are things that that come up when it comes to mental health in terms of how we design things and lay out um cities in terms of park access for example. And I'm just wondering if we can um put in I don't know if it's part of the budget or not to bring in people who are from that space who have through that lens to see that we're doing things that increase and help people's mental health um in the communities that we're building um by the codes that we're enforcing or the prioritization that we're doing um uh from all the different factors that we're discussing today. Can you speak a little bit to that um if we are already doing it? not if it's feasible to um start adding that as part of our consultant list.

So, did you understand that? I I think maybe I think

Okay. What I'm hearing you say, Commissioner Isacson, is that you'd like to see a policy around us coordinating with mental health professionals of of various um professions to figure out how well our policies for planning in general are working um to achieve better mental health outcomes for the community. Yes, I mean there's a there's a number of different u communities have already kind of gone down this road already um in terms of how to increase the overall um mental health of a community through its planning and design. And so rather than having to reinvent the wheel um I'm wondering if we have already looked at that and if so if we if not if we if we can. Um as a reminder we have we are the most chronically ill um uh community in the country. um and the least access to mental health options. And so it isn't just simply let's get more therapists and more patients and more prescriptions. It's how do people um experience a lesser lighter load to their mental health by their interactions with their environment that that they are surrounded with every single day and that uh has an intersection between what we design and how we design it and where people live.

That's great input. Thank you. Um, we don't currently do that to my understanding and we don't have a policy in here that's that straightforward. As you pointed out, there are policies that talk about um sighting of parks and recreation that can also help folks with mental health as well as physical health and other reasons. but we don't have a sort of broader holistic policy and so um so thank you for that and I'd be interested in um doing more research on that.

To give you an example just not to believe the point we talked about needing to have somewhat of a little bit of a setback between the sidewalk and the front of commercial um real estate city when you're walking down the road or the sidewalk you don't feel completely cramped. That's an example of it. If you lived every single day where you're constantly confined, constantly cramped, can't find a parking spot, you're you're part of a community, but you have to walk an exorbitant area of time, you can't get to your bus, all that weighs down as toxic on people's mental health. And so, their experience with the environment around them is less. And so, as we're talking about these things, putting that through that lens doesn't mean we have to cater to everything, but it definitely changes the way that we look at things. And if this is the community health portion of of this um of this plan, then that would be a good lens to put through.

Thank you. But I don't you know it was kind of a minor uh bit and I know the word consider isn't there. We talked about that earlier. I was kind of more curious on the the sighting of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis retail outlets. Mhm.

Um I was trying to try to get a count of how many of those there are in our community. I know there are many if you count, you know, just dispensaries versus liquor stores versus bars and restaurants. Are you talking about miniarts that seem to make a lot of their money selling tobacco and tobacco related products? So not trying to come forward as defender of these businesses, but they are legal retail businesses that employ a lot of people in our community. Um, and I mean the cannabis industry seems like it may be the number one or two employer. I don't know what the stats are in our area if you include all the people that work in all the different levels of it. So, I'm just curious what that thought is and, you know, how we balance that need um and that concern that was clearly expressed by many people in the community with um ensuring that people have access to things that are, you know, legal without having to drive over the long distance and that we're not

punishing people at the lower end of the spectrum by making it harder to get to those things, which uh I won't say that we do, but sometimes I think those challenges can be there for sometimes the auto the automotive related related uses, you know, trying to find places to get your tires changed or or that kind of thing. So, I'm just curious a little bit more if there, you know, if there's any more color on that. Right now, not a whole lot to report. Um, so based off feedback from you all and from working with Lane County Public Health staff, they are actively Sorry, sorry, said we have this policy based off of feedback from you all and from Lane County Public Health staff. Man County public health staff are actively working to find ways to reduce access to tobacco specifically especially for minors and uh to reduce concentrations of um tobacco retail outlets in underserved communities. So they have the data. I don't know off the top of my head what that looks like for Eugene. It needs to be broken out so we can take a better look at at how it looks looks for Eugene because they have it broken out as far as the county goes countywide. Um my understanding there's a lot of concentrations in lower income neighborhoods specifically in Lane County and that's probably true for Eugene as well. So what this policy basically does is gives staff the direction to say take a look at this consider what our options are and if it seems like there's a good option let's talk about putting it into play. Um I don't think that anyone right now is talking about banning any of these things. I think um what I've seen some communities do is um put regulations um as to like how many of these uses are allowed within a quarter mile of each other um like we have done with cannabis for example you know you have to be cannabis read outlets can't be within a thousand feet of each other um so there are some communities who are experimenting with this um kind of approach and um so we wanted just to

have a high level policy to support us considering it thanks for the additional explanation Commissioner Isacson.

Yeah, just to duct tail on it. I wasn't going to raise my hand specifically on it, but since somebody brought it up to subject, I know there's 55 dispensaries in Eugene. Um and I guess the question I would ask is we already have that thousand foot farer zone and since it was specifically called out is there thoughts on on you know letting I mean right now there since we put the moratorium on additional licensing by the state and we put the grandfather clause in which said that if you're within a thousand feet and you were there prior to it as long as the principal um uh use of the building is not changing. In other words, one dispensary is becoming another dispensary as it changes ownership hands um is still allowed. That is one thing that can um arguably I'm putting my non-biased hat on um be taken away to reduce the number of of dispensaries. Otherwise, as we've seen for the past at this point almost 6 years, there hasn't been a real reduction in the amount of of dispensaries in town. And in addition to that, um, almost every available space to put one has put one there. So, um, I'm just wondering, is there any conversation about, uh, what that looks like when we say specifically to to add that? I get there's tobacco products and alcohol. That's a field that I don't have as much knowledge in. Um, but I'm wondering if there has been conversations about u the other stuff. I mean perhaps at Lane County Public Health, but not among this group of staff at the city. Um, so we have not started any of this work or investigation or research yet. Um, I think that as Stuart said, it was based on concerns from Lane County Public Health with with the concentration of

these types of uses in certain areas. And so this gives us the platform to look into it if we are directed to do that. Um, but haven't done it yet. Any other questions? We've got about 18 minutes left in our schedule meeting time, so it should be plenty of time. If anyone else wants to Commissioner Rainey's fighting his time.

All right, let's move on to our final chapter. Um the final chapter we have discussed with you tonight is chapter 11 land use. Uh this chapter will include the new land use designation map which once adopted will replace the metro plan diagram which I think many of us are very excited about. Um you can view the new uh draft land use designation map by following the link on the screen here. They'll take you to an interactive story map which explains some of its background, talks about more what the map is and shows a really cool sideby-side comparison between the metrop plan diagram and the new map and how different that is. It's it's shocking. So, this chapter is attachment F in your AIS, which begins on page 34. This chapter contains three draft goals um and policies for Eugene's land use designations and designation map. The urban growth boundary and urban reserves which are interconnected components of Eugene's comprehensive land use planning that work together along with Eugene's land use code to guide the growth and development of the city. The map on this slide shows a screenshot from the new land use designation map which you can see is kind of exciting because it shows a little bit of the satellite imagery as well as the different designations on there. Now I want to point out that this chapter is quite a bit different than the other chapters. Um first of all this chapter is currently adopted. So we'll be making amendments to this chapter to add uh the new policies for lane submission map. This chapter was originally adopted in 2017 and then amended in 2023 and when adopted uh the in 2017 we established a policy that actually established our urban growth boundary and official map. Uh this policy map were adopted as part of phase one of the

comprehensive plan um process and Eugene's urban growth boundary identified the land that was anticipated to be needed by Eugene's growing population over a specific period of time which at that time was anticipated to accommodate growth through 2032. Chapter 11 also has a policy establishing Eugene's urban reserves and its official map which is shown on the slide with the urban reserve areas in orange. When the city's future land needs have outgrown the current urban growth boundary, Eugene's urban reserves are the areas where uh that will be prioritized for future urban expansion. And this map was adopted as part of this chapter in 2023. Like the other chapters, the goals, policies, and designation descriptions in this chapter received clarifying edits. We also added policy 11.3 consistency with the land use designation map as an approval criterion in individual land use applications. So similar to the separation of uses policy and the community health chapter we discussed earlier, staff felt that it was important to be able to use the land use designation map as a criterion for approving or denying individual land use applications when the Eugene code requires consistency with applicable policies of the comprehensive plan. And that term or that phrase uh consistent with applicable policy to the conference plan is used in a number of places in our current code. And some of those places are things like zone changes um tenative plant um planned unit developments and conditional use permits. Um so we made that change so we could actually use this designation map to approve or deny those different applications for land use designation change. Policy 11.7 density r density ranges was also updated. Um this policy was in the the last version of chapter 11 that you

saw over the summer. Um but we added uh sub policy D. Um and this this sub policy exempt middle housing from this policy per state law and clarified that adopted land use plans like neighborhood specific plans cannot regulate density for middle housing. This this policy is in the metro plan and it's pretty similar to the one that we're moving into this chapter. So this addition of sub policy D is really just to add that piece about exempting metal housing from this condensity regulation first. And those are the changes we made to chapter 11. Questions discussion? Well, that was a lot to to think through. That's a product of how long have you all been working on that?

We have been working on this for about two years now. Wow.

Um, so thank you very much for all of your input over that time and tonight. And if there is more that you have, um, like Commissioner Bon indicated, we are happy to get it offline. We're happy to meet with you or you can um send it to us. Uh this is the final draft before we move into the public hearings draft. So this is a great time to talk more if you have any additional input, but it's not your last opportunity because it's coming in your it it will be part of the public hearing process. So there will obviously be opportunities for you to provide input then and for the public to pro provide input then. So it's not done by any strategy. Just starting really

it's all very good. I thank you

and and I I've talked about this a bit already. I the idea of all of this is becoming clearer. There's kind of this this clarity. It's um more comprehensive. It's offering up for me kind of the framework for getting the code developed. Can you I think you've talked about this a bit, but just kind of in general, we're in we're headed into March. when I'm ready to look at some code just to say and so you're gonna I know we're gonna we're going to go through a process here of this and another draft and then public hearing.

Are we going to be seeing code like in August or October or April?

Well, Dan's been bringing code concepts to you, right? Um and will again in March on March 11th, we'll be bringing middle housing code concepts and changes to you to talk about. Um and the sort of sequence is working internally with our working group have a they have a lot of input from our housing and developer working group on the code concepts bringing the concepts to planning commission getting uh this questions revising those code concepts. Lauren has a lot to do with this.

Um, and then coming back with the hearings ready package which will include the actual code, the actual code changes. Um, and so that piece is coming to you in June, we believe. Okay. for our first

public hearing and we'll have a public hearing with the county planning commission because the comp plan pieces need to be jointly adopted. Um the co most of the code pieces, not all of them, but most of them um only need to be adopted by city council. So there will sort of be two paths and um we'll have a work session with you before then to go over everything again probably at the end of May. Um but then the target for the public hearing is in June. So not August. You only have to wait until June. Okay. Thank you.

You'll have when the law come Oh. Okay. Yes. And thank you again. Thank you for all your work. Thank you, Commissioner Bailing. Well, next or finally on our agenda is items from commissioners and staff. Uh first, any items from commissioners? I just wanted to add uh congratulations, Rebecca. Oh, thank you. That's just exciting to see so many changes and the planning department kind of new fresh vision come in place even though working with the folks that have been there for many years. Um so best of luck.

Thank you. Um thanks for a great presentation and taking us through a lot of you know potential changes. It's really cool to see this come together with some new stuff. Um we have just a staff update left I think. Is that coming from Stuart tonight since Terry's out?

Correct. Yeah, I have a kind of exciting update to give you all. Um, so the city of Eugene planning division and community development division has been selected u one of eight jurisdictions to participate in what's called community planning cohort um along with other cities from across the United States. This is an opportunity that we applied for back in October thinking, hey, let's just throw our name in the hat and see if it works. And we were selected. Um so this opportunity is supported by the government alliance of on racial equity also known as ge which city is a member of and race forward which is a nonprofit organization. Um and the point of this uh planning cohort is to provide technical assistance and facilitate a series of meetings intended to accelerate the adoption and implementation of community plans and land use policies to promote equitable growth particularly to increase the supply of affordable housing. Um so we've selected an internal staff team um which is myself, Leah, Genevieve um from community development division and Terry and we are also continuing our work with some of our community advisory panels. So we've invited them to be on our team as well and you've met a few of those folks so far. So Eva who came and spoke with you all and Timothy as well and then one of um our great community partners Felicia Brown who's works with the Black Cultural Initiative. So, we have this kind of community and um city staff team built and we are working on a project that we've selected based off of a lot of feedback you all have received or given us tonight. Um and it's building off the ongoing work of urban growth strategies including the comprehensive plan housing planning work and our work on the equity atlas to identify ways to increase housing that is affordable to all income levels in amenity rich neighborhoods also in the centers specifically increasing housing

your centers that focus on racial equity. So thinking back to that uh cultural considerations piece, how do we create housing and support affordable all folks in the many rich neighborhoods that are centers? This is the project that we'll be taking on over at least the next year. Um so at the conclusion of this project, we will go to Raleigh, North Carolina and present on our project and get speed feedback from these other cities. And so this opportunity is super exciting because we get technical assistants from larger cities from around the nation who have kind of gone through this process already and kind of help us navigate what that looks like and um some opportunities. So we'll keep you posted as we learn more. Um but just wanted to let you know that we're excited about this.

Great. Thank you, Stuart. Thanks to everyone else here in the attendance tonight, the staff and planning commissioners. This meeting of the planning commission is now journed.