Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, we're on.

Okay, I will call to order the Planning Commission regular session with Tuesday, July 14, 2016. Could I have the roll call?

David Fully? Here. Max Koltove?

Present.

Gary Lillard?

Here.

Roxy Ogilvie and Matt Gowardy are absent. Excused.

Any changes to the agenda?

Yeah, not tonight.

1 observation, I think I would share.

Okay, so whoever makes the motion, if you'll do that as amended, then we'll get that fixed. Just approve the minutes as amended.

I'm going to approve the. May 19th, 2026 as amended.

Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Let's see. Any public comments? Is any of you here for anything other than what we're talking about tonight? Okay. So I guess there's no public comment. Let's see. Next is new business. Nope. You want to read the rules of order for us, Kenley?

The Planning Commission will conduct one quasi-judicial public hearing tonight to consider a petition to vacate file number 489-26-16, VAC applicant Brian and Michelle Peterson. The hearing will proceed as follows. The chairperson will request the staff report, which includes applicable criteria and standards for the issue under consideration in the application. As part of the staff report, the applicant may have the opportunity to address the commission prior to public testimony. The chairperson will then ask for public testimony relating to the application. The chairperson may state a time limit for testimony. If no time limit is announced, testimony will be limited to three minutes. All testimony must be directed toward the applicable criteria. Oregon land use law requires that all issues raised by a participant during the hearing must be sufficiently clear and specific to allow the hearing body and other parties an opportunity to respond to those issues. Failure to raise the issues during the hearing may invalidate a future appeal. The order of testimony this evening will begin with that of proponents, those in favor, followed by opponents, those opposed, and ending with those neutral. An opportunity will be provided to parties, proponents first, then opponents, to clarify any issues raised or to rebut testimony. If additional documents or new evidence is introduced during the hearing, any participant may request a continuation of the hearing. Any participant may request that the hearing record be kept open for seven days to submit additional written evidence or testimony for the purpose of responding to new evidence. Unless waived, the applicant has seven days to submit a written response. The proceedings are being electronically recorded to be converted to written minutes. When testifying, please step to the podium and state your name. Members of the Planning Commission may ask questions of the staff or hearing participants, if present, at any time. The chairperson will then close the hearing or continue the hearing at a specified time and place. All decisions must be based on findings of fact from the staff report or evidence and testimony received which relate to the criteria of the land use decision. A commissioner must declare any ex parte or pre-hearing contact, including the person's name and the nature of the discussion, as well as any site visitations to the area in question. Commissioners should declare any personal or financial interest in this matter and will disqualify themselves from participation in this hearing. Does any commissioner wish to make a declaration? Let the record show there are none. And does anyone in the audience wish to challenge the right of any commissioner to hear this matter? Let the record show there are none.

Okay. On to the staff report, Mike.

Yeah, thanks. So this request is to vacate 10 feet on each side of Cherry Street between Cove Avenue and Penn Avenue. And this is an 80 foot wide right of way that would be narrowed to 60 foot, which is our current city standard. In the early 1800s, most of our city was platted with 80 foot wide right of ways, but we don't build those today. The right of way currently, the area to be vacated is predominantly developed with private improvements. It's mostly landscaping. There is some fencing and driveway improvements within that, but it's mostly private landscaping type of improvements. The process that is followed for the right of way vacation is governed by state law. And it requires 100% of the adjacent property owners to sign a consent to read to the vacation and it requires 2 thirds. Of the property owners within roughly you go 400 feet off each end and 200 feet off each side. So it creates an 800 plus foot. by 400 foot oval around the vacation area. And the applicants went door to door and I don't know all the different means of trying to contact folks, but they received over two thirds of that. So they exceeded the signature requirement. And so they met the criteria for applying for the vacation. So that's what gets it here before you. Your decision tonight would be a recommendation to the City Council who's scheduled to look at this at their August meeting and then again at their September meeting and adopt the, hopefully adopt the vacation by ordinance and then we're done. And so that's the process. In preparation for this, the public notice did go out to all of those property owners that are within that large boundary, as well as all utility companies and city departments. And generally, it's the utility companies that we worry about in the notification as to whether they have a utility within those vacation areas. And would the vacation be in conflict with placement of their utilities? And in this case, there are no utilities that of concern, there are some utility poles in a couple locations that will be within that vacation area, but OTEC didn't raise any objection to moving forward with vacating. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. I've laid this all out in your staff report. There's some illustrations in there to kind of show you what the area looks like, and so if you have any questions of me, I'd be happy to answer those. Well, the right of way, the street itself won't be impacted. Not on this particular stretch of street. There are sidewalks along Cove Avenue, but that's all.

And it looks like there will be room for sidewalks in the future.

How many, I mean, I guess also wondering about the precedent. I mean, how many other I'm not asking for an exact number, but I don't know if I do have any concern of a. Of a similar streets elsewhere, if all the streets people on streets like this in the grand came and asked for this, would you foresee any problems with pose and vacating all of those?

I think as long as long as there weren't already sidewalks installed. They would all be approved. based on precedence. So just to give you an idea on this application, one of our applicants actually went through a process to get a right of way encroachment to build a fence out in the right of way. to utilize some of that space that was already improved as their property, or that they enjoyed as their property, and they fenced that. And so that's through an encroachment process. The applicants that are also here were looking at doing some other improvements, and public works steered them this direction rather than an encroachment permit. And the 10-foot is typically what we do encroachments for, because that narrows the right-of-way down to what our standard is. We've rarely done an encroachment permit for something greater than 10 feet. But to get to your question is we have a lot of these around town. And we try to do entire blocks. And so that's been kind of the precedent set by City Council is we don't do half blocks. We don't just do one property in a block. You just either do the entire block or you don't do any. And then the other thing that we do as staff is we ask the applicant to try to do an entire segment. So if there's a logical... multiple number of blocks in order to to make a right-of-way vacation kind of consistent with an area so you don't have right-of-ways jogging 60 feet and up to 80 feet and then back to 60 feet so in this case we asked the applicants to look at the entire stretch all the way up to island avenue but they were unable to get consents from i think at least one property owner yeah so that created some challenges with doing the entire segment so So their scope was just kind of narrowed to the block that was of their primary interest.

From a legal standpoint, if the city vacates ownership, then the folks who own these lots, their lot, in effect, is 10 feet wide. Yes. When the next person purchases it, they can't be like, I don't want that 10 feet. Now it's just part of that lot.

It becomes part of that lot, part of that ownership.

were saying if there was sidewalk improvement if someone else came forward with one of these in a spot where there were sidewalking sidewalks there would one of these findings then be negative yeah because you'd have a finding that we would have a utility or a use in that space so it wouldn't be consistent with uh with the city standard sidewalk utility well it's a city improvement you know so it's uh um

Generally, if there is a sewer, if there's a sewer main, or a water main, or something typically we'll see that in the alley. We've had requests where folks have wanted to vacate alleys or portions of alleys. Yeah, and those have generally all failed if there's a utility in there. Yeah, the other 1 that is, you know, we generally harp on is the Vista utilities. A Vista is not real keen about having their stuff within an easement. They want their stuff in the right of way. So. um otec is mostly overhead in most places but they're they're happy with easements and so so tech is a little bit easier to work with on on these so sidewalk is never on private property is that what i'm hearing or there's an easement oh yeah there's an easement if if it is but uh on a very rare occasion is the sidewalk on private property

Just for my point of reference, can you tell me if my block on Penn Avenue, is that a 60 footer?

I don't know. I can look it up and get back to you on it.

Okay. I think it is. Yeah, I'll have to look it up and see. Do we request public testimony?

Yeah. Yeah, so we're to vacation because it's a good deal for us and it's a good deal for the city because then maybe the property line matches what you think it would be.

And the improvements remain on all documents.

They don't need to be moved by the city because it's a future one. Yeah, it would be an encroachment. The city retains the right to have to move things out of the way and so to either the city or to the property owner or to both for undoing the improvements so that whatever other thing needs to happen can happen, and then you have to pay to redo the improvements. So the vacation eliminates that exchange of rights, essentially. And we wanted to thank the city for AND FOR GIVING US THE OPPORTUNITY AND EXCUSE TO GO AROUND AND MEET A BUNCH OF OUR NEIGHBORS.

SO I'M THEIR NEIGHBOR. AND I HAVE BEEN, WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN AN EASEMENT FOR THE FRONT AND THE SIDE. That we haven't, we're going to put a fence in, we're waiting to see what goes on with this, and then we would extend the fence out. So we haven't put the fence in along Cherry. We have every intentions of doing that. We can't thank the Petersons more for their leadership in this. They have been fantastic. And I believe, looking at what they've told me, that this will be a benefit to Cherry.

the water meters are usually right at the edge of the of the right is that in our case uh the water meter is actually on cove avenue because we have a cove avenue address but our driveway and garage entrance is on chair

That is a good question. So for all of the properties in this, so the ones that border Cove Avenue, their utility, water utility is in Cove Avenue. The ones that are bordering Penn, theirs is in Penn Avenue. And so there's no water meters. There's no water meters on Cherry at all. So that's. Because that's one of the things that we also look at, because we have on occasion, as a condition of approval for the vacation, is that the water meters also have to be relocated to the new right-of-way line, which is at the property owner's expense. And so fortunately, that's not the case here.

But if this is common, and we've come up against it elsewhere over the decades, and you're not concerned about coming up against it other places, then it seems like they've met all the requirements.

Yeah, we kind of set the precedents, and especially since our Public Works Department actually promotes this process.

The process itself is a mild deterrent.

I mean, as these come to us, everyone's going to be considered individually, and they're all going to be called differently. So I don't know what the precedent is. Okay. With that, am I ready to close the public hearing and entertain a motion? No. Okay.

I move that the finding of facts and conclusions set forth in the draft decision order be adopted.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's it? That's it.

Thank you.

You're welcome to stay for the last few minutes, or you could go and have dinner and enjoy your evening, either one.

Thank you very much. Thanks again for making the process easy.

Yeah, so the only, I guess I have a couple comments. And so I wanted to just let you know that on June 24th, anyway, Max was present, but we had a roundtable, a housing production roundtable that had a really good turnout. So anyway, I was kind of impressed with how many people showed up. We filled this room. And we had a combination of contractors and housing advocates, some just general citizens. But it was a good discussion. It was information passed back and forth that I think everybody pretty much already knew, but it validated the need for housing that we have. One of the things that kind of came out of that was more confirmation and support for us is we're working on getting an incentive program put together for promoting new housing. was a couple of months ago. I don't know if you were following, but the school district is doing their next Tiger House subdivision. It's eight properties or eight single family homes. And they went to the city council and asked for a waiver reduction in fees and we did that for them a couple years ago when they did their first homes and it's that program right now the way the fees waiver reduction opportunity is it's limited to government entities or like government entities like the school district as we kind of support them and they it was justified as we're supporting their career tech program and as an educational thing and so that's that's how the that reduction was done and the fee waiver that was provided to them this year as they received a percentage reduction in their water and sewer utility costs they still have to pay the hard dollar cost so this is what it costs for a meter this is what it costs for actual pipe and you know and those kind of things but there's extra costs if there's a buy-in to the system of that is you know part of every utility new utility fee So they got that waived. They got our planning fees waived. They got their building permit fees. I think they got a reduction of like 40%-ish, which is based on the number of permits that the city issues versus the county, because the city building department does both city and county. And so that way the county permits are not subsidizing the city fee waiver. And so anyway, so we used that model that the city council approved as kind of our model that we're going to be proposing in August for the council to allow for waivers of fees for new developments. So folks like True Construction that's doing all of these houses that are in the right price range, they would have the opportunity to submit a request to the city manager's office for a fee reduction or a waiver of some fees. This is a change from the Right, because otherwise the current ordinance says no fee waivers. You can't even ask for it. You just get denied. If you're not a government entity, there's just no opportunity to apply. And so we're going to be proposing to change that to create the opportunity just for housing only. And then it would be for this needed housing that's in this 120% or less. That's the way it's structured because that's how the state has their... their housing definition set up. And a lot of the programs that you apply for through the state use that threshold for qualifying folks to get grants or different types of incentives. And so we're following that rather than trying to be arbitrary because you could get some criticism if we just kind of make up a number. And so we're kind of sticking with what's already out there. But anyway, so that's going to the council in August. And then I anticipate that we'll see some development that will take advantage of that. And the hope is that we'll not necessarily see it for somebody who's just going to build an individual house, but somebody who's actually going to do a subdivision or a development so that they're actually building multiple homes. So that's kind of our desire or intent is to hopefully offer an incentive that will just make a project pencil that might otherwise not.

Do you know roughly what those title homes are?

I don't really know, but I think the new ones that they're proposing to build in single family, I bet you they're going to probably be up in the 350 range just by looking at 350 to 400, just looking at the floor plan that they have. They're bigger than what True Construction's doing.

What's getting built on that loft across from the Hart Center?

That's a nine-unit apartment, and so it's a three-story building that has three units on each floor.

Right.

Yeah. So that hopefully will fill a need that we have in our community.

The Tiger Homes, they sell it and use it to use the profits to make more. And that finances the tech program. I thought they were doing something like subsidizing housing for employees or something like that.

I know they talked about doing that, but that's not that's not a program that I'm aware that they've been doing yet, but I know that that was something that they talked about doing in order to try to attract more, uh, teachers or cause that's one of the problems we have. And so, um, I think the very first tiger house, the, uh, the hospital purchased that for, uh, visiting doctors or I'm not sure who's occupying those, but they bought the first tiger house. It's a duplex. Yeah. And then I'm not sure on the second one, uh, That one, I think, is just getting finished.

Where's that one?

Right next door.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so they're side by side. Oh, they're on the corner of 3rd and I. They're really nice looking. Yeah, so when you have time, you can just drive up there, and then the subdivision that they're doing is catty-cornered to that. There's an open lot.

It's a cool program when they've got that ramp there, but it's obviously the district has had for a while, right? No, it's private.

Yeah, they just got it, and it I don't know if it took some arm twisting or not, but yeah, there's been a lot of folks at least that have come through my office interested in it. And we helped them look up who the property owner is and the property owners had no interest in selling. And all of a sudden it was just last year that the school district reached out to them and they finally just decided that they were ready. And so the school district just had a good opportunity that showed up and yeah I don't know enough about it but they didn't hesitate to sell it to the school district it didn't seem like so yeah so anyway that's all I have right now I don't think we have anything on the docket for August anyway we don't have anybody nothing pending at the moment I don't think so so yeah yeah friday to submit yeah yeah so you may have august off that may be a good month oh it's good about to take vacation