Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

TODAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2026. CHRISTINA, CAN YOU PLEASE CALL ROLL? OR MICHELLE. THANK YOU, MICHELLE.

CHAIR NAJAK.

HERE.

VICE CHAIR BRUCE. HERE. COMMISSIONER AVASAN IS ABSENT. COMMISSIONER GINNY.

HERE.

COMMISSIONER CALL. HERE. COMMISSIONER SLIGH.

HERE.

and Commissioner Twing, and that's it. Oh, and Planning Manager Olsen is here, is online as well with us, sorry.

Great, thank you. Do we have city council updates today? Do we have councilor verdict virtually? Okay, moving along then, we have approval of the minutes from a while ago now, our last meeting on July 27th, 2026. Are there any suggested revisions to the meeting minutes? All right, seeing none, if there is anyone who would like to move to approve the minutes, or again, if there are any revisions.

Motion to approve as written. I'll second that.

Perfect. Motion passes to approve the meeting minutes from July 27, 2026 as written. Thank you very much. Brings us to item five, public comment for items not on tonight's agenda. Michelle or Christina, do we have anyone?

We do not.

Thank you. All right, item number six, Commission for Citizen Involvement general updates. I have a couple of these for you all. First up, we have the First Edition Neighbors, Forest Hills Neighborhood Association Fan Fair, 2026. It will be September 18th, 2026 at 5 p.m. at Rossman Park. Enjoy a picnic and bring your friends and neighbors for live music, ice cream, and popcorn. Bring your own blankets, chairs, and social games to play. Go to web address fanforesthills.org for details. If you have questions or would like to be involved, contact Mike Perham, whose email is info at fanforesthills.org. Our second one is from the Uplands Neighborhood Association meeting. It is going to be October 15th, 2026 at 7 p.m. at Lake Oswego Middle School Library. Uplands Neighborhood General Meeting speakers presenting will be Mary Kay Larson from Lake Oswego School District on the Bond and Don Johnson on the LO Fire on Firewise. Come meet your neighbors and see the new middle school. If you have questions or would like to be involved, contact Thomas Bland, UNA Chair. Email is blandt50 at hotmail.com or call 503-860-8665. And our last... Update is Willuga Neighborhood Association meeting. It is going to be October 14th, 2026, 7 p.m. Our Savior's Lutheran Church on 15751 Quarry Road. Couple items on their agenda are one, the election of their 2026, 2027 board members. Two, what's next for our schools. Three, the library and community center. Four, fires and smoke in our neighborhood. All in Willuga are welcome. If you have questions or want to be involved, contact the Willuga Neighborhood Association, which is willuga.neighborhood.association at gmail.com. THANK YOU.

COMMISSIONER NAJAK, JUST TO GO BACK TO ADEQUATELY RECORD THE VOTING FOR THE MINUTES, I HAVE COMMISSIONER BRUCE'S MOTION AND THEN COMMISSIONER GINNY'S SECOND. WAS THE REST UNANIMOUS APPROVAL?

I'M SO SORRY, GUYS. MY APOLOGIES FOR GOING OUT OF TURN HERE. LONG DAY AS BRIAN AND I WERE DISCUSSING. YES, LET'S PLEASE GO BACK. Call the roll for the approval of the minutes as written.

Chair Najak?

Aye.

Commissioner Bruce? Aye. Commissioner Guinea?

Aye.

Commissioner Call?

Aye.

Commissioner Tsai?

Aye.

And Commissioner Tinker. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right. This brings us to our working session. First of all, do we have anyone signed up for comment on tonight's semiannual code amendments?

We did not.

OK. Moving right along then to our public hearing, LU 26-0019, to consider proposed annual code amendments. It's part of our city's annual development code amendment process. And it says, including one additional amendment to the tree code, LOC chapter 55. And our staff coordinator is Ellen Davis, senior planner. Thanks for joining us, Ellen.

Ellen, before you begin, do you have a list of meeting procedures there to read to open the hearing? Yes. If you could read that. We do not have Ms. Miller with us tonight, so if you don't mind reading that before we begin the staff presentation.

Okay. Here we go. Public hearings legislative suggested opening. Yes. Okay. Thank you for highlighting that for me. All right. Next on the agenda is public hearing for the file number LU26-0019, semiannual code amendments. Ask deputy city attorney to state the meeting procedure. THE PROCEDURE TO THE PUBLIC AND ASK FOR DECLARATIONS.

OKAY. MY APOLOGIES. I THOUGHT YOU HAD THE FULL TEMPLATE WITH EVERYTHING. BECAUSE MS. MILLER IS NOT HERE, The procedure for the meeting tonight is, for the public hearing, is we will start with declarations by the commission members if you have any conflict of interest or any financial conflict of interest. So if you have any, if you could please state it. We don't have to go one by one, but if you have any financial or conflict of interest, please state so now. hearing none and we don't have anyone in the audience to challenge any commissioners right to hear the hearing. So we will have first the staff presentation followed by opportunity for public comment. And then if they're after the close of public comment, then the hearing will be closed for deliberation by the commissions. I believe that covers the basic from my memory, but if you have any questions or we need any help for the procedure tonight, I'll be happy to jump in. With that, we'll do the staff report.

Thank you.

Hey, good evening commissioners. My name is Ellen Davis. I am a senior planner for the city and I am back tonight for a public hearing for our 2026 code amendments. The last time we spoke about this was for the work session. So I'll refresh a little bit on some items since it has been a few weeks since we've talked about this. This project is focused on relatively simple and time sensitive amendments compared to the more complex, bigger questions that are being tackled in the code audit project that will come back to this commission again at the next meeting. The 2026 amendment package contains some state mandated changes that will become effective at the end of this calendar year, shortening our timeline. This is our tentative schedule. We are in process on the Planning Commission public hearing tonight. If this commission reaches a decision on a recommendation tonight, findings will be brought to the next session on the 28th, followed by a public hearing before the City Council in early November. When the City Council adopts an ordinance, it is effective after 30 days, or the Council could establish a date certain, such as January 1st, 2027, if they prefer. Next, I'll go through the maintenance amendments, which are generally more straightforward. And I'll go through these pretty quickly. And after that, I'll get into the proposed policy amendments, which may generate more discussion. So I'll move through these ones pretty quickly. And I'll pause at the end of the maintenance amendments for any questions on these ones that I'm going to kind of breeze through. The first item would remove a section of code added during the pandemic that allowed construction of outdoor covered restaurant seating areas. That allowance hasn't been used by a single business and specifically references the COVID-19 pandemic, which hopefully is not coming back. ITEM TWO IS EVE DEPTH FOR TOWNHOUSES. IN THREE OF OUR OVERLAY DESIGN DISTRICTS, WE HAVE A SPECIFIC 18-INCH MINIMUM REQUIRED FOR EVE DEPTH. THAT CONFLICTS WITH THE BUILDING CODE, WHICH ALLOWS A MAXIMUM OF 12-INCH OF EVE FOR TOWNHOUSES WITH SHARED COMMON WALLS. SO JUST REMOVING THAT CONFLICT. For item number three, this would clarify that the requirement to have a primary entrance in a walkway does not apply to an accessory structure like a storage building or something like that. Item four clarifies that the sensitive lands codes progressive mitigation steps apply to impacts or intrusion into any portion of a riparian protected district, including the protected riparian area, which is already a part of the district in the district's definition. So just bringing that information into this code section, making it easier for applicants to find it. Item number five would continue staff's current process and clarify that projections into both the street front and street side yard setback plane are permitted. Item six will improve the legibility of the list of applicable zones and clarify that garage appearance and location standards are limited to residential uses and residential zones. Item number seven would correct a reference to multifamily residential and the bicycle parking section that should refer to five units matching the definition of multifamily residential development. Item number eight would remove a reference to required parking in alignment with the state of Oregon, which eliminated minimum parking requirements for our community a few years ago. Item number nine would reformat the standards for the public functions and parks and natural areas zone for clarity, making it easier to tell which types of lighting are exempt from regulation and which ones need to meet the regulation in both zones. Item number 10 would add the word boat garage to the definition of boathouse. This would better align with the building code. The building code refers to boat garages more often than boathouses, just having both terms included in our definition. Item 11 would again simplify a list of applicable residential zones, just making them easier to read. And item number 12 will update the definition for retaining walls to better align with the building code and reduce ambiguity. I'M GOING TO SLOW DOWN A LITTLE BIT FOR THIS ITEM NUMBER 13. THIS IS A NEW ITEM THAT WAS ADDED AFTER OUR LAST WORK SESSION. SO I'LL SPEND A LITTLE MORE TIME ON IT. THE CITY HAS JUST ADOPTED A NEW TREE CODE, CHAPTER 55. THE CITY COUNCIL APPROVED THOSE FINDINGS ON SEPTEMBER 1ST AND THE NEW RULES WILL BECOME EFFECTIVE ON OCTOBER 1ST. In the meantime, while the city has been going through that long process to update our tree code, the state has created some mandates and some changes have gone into effect and a provision of House Bill 4037, which became effective in July, limits the public notice that the city can provide for applications related to clear and objective housing, including tree removal applications that are related to clear and objective housing. So we are already following the state law directly because it is already in effect, but we're pulling this Chapter 55 Tree Code Amendment into this package of amendments just to update our code's wording to reflect that state law in current practice. BECAUSE THIS 13TH AMENDMENT IS IN CHAPTER 55 INSTEAD OF CHAPTER 50, THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CODE THAT THE REST OF THE AMENDMENTS ARE LOCATED IN, I DON'T KNOW HOW NECESSARY THIS IS, BUT IT IS VERY SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT PROCEDURALLY WHERE TECHNICALLY THE CHAPTER 55 MAINTENANCE AMENDMENT DOES NOT NEED A FORMAL RECOMMENDATION FROM THIS BODY OR FINDINGS BECAUSE IT IS NOT A LAND USE REGULATION. YOU COULD CONSIDER IT MORE OF AN INFORMAL RECOMMENDATION TO THE CITY COUNCIL. If you wanted to split hairs, it also sounds like that's not really necessary to dive too much into those details, though. So just a little bit of background if you're curious about how different types of code move through processes. And yeah, that's going to be the end of my maintenance amendments. And I'll pause here if there are any questions or comments on any of these 13 items I've rushed through so far. Hearing none, okay. Can keep this moving along. So our policy amendments could generate a bit more discussion than those maintenance amendments that I was breezing through. So I'll take just a little bit more time on each of these items. For a refresher, since this is still a relatively new idea, middle housing land divisions do not divide land for development purposes. They only divide land for ownership purposes. And they are also submitted after a building permit application has already been submitted. They're usually not requested until the building permit is at least in a state where it is approvable, so ready to be issued, if not already issued. And this doesn't fit well with the stated purpose for our traditional neighborhood meetings that we have in the city. Our neighborhood meetings were established before middle housing land division even existed in this state. And our neighborhood meetings are really set up and in their purpose statement, they say that they are intended to bring up issues or conflicts before an application is even submitted. They're intended to occur before development is really fully cooked. So in this case with a middle housing land division where development is already fully designed, it's approved, it meets all of the residential building codes, all the city setbacks, lot coverage, dimensional standards, it is all ready to go. Having a neighborhood meeting at that point could increase frustration for people who are attending those meetings because there is no real to talk about the project in the same way you would with a more traditional project and neighborhood meeting. The state has also further limited the city's ability to provide notice, accept public comments and allow appeals of staff's decision on this type of application. So yet again, if folks are involved in a neighborhood meeting and they're really invested in a project, and then they find out that they don't find out when it's submitted, can't comment on it, and can't appeal the decision, that's also really not a great fit for our process. So if there is an application that involves another type of land use application, like a traditional subdivision that does require a neighborhood meeting, If that is combined with the middle housing land division, we would still require a neighborhood meeting because of the application component that requires a neighborhood meeting. But if it's something is just a middle housing land division for ownership purposes only, we would not require a neighborhood meeting under this proposal. So this is just kind of trying to keep the intention of the neighborhood meetings for the projects that still fits in the process and makes sense for neighbors to get involved, but for applications where we can't really allow neighbor participation to the same extent that they're used to, I'm kind of taking away that neighborhood meeting requirement. So I will just keep moving along. Item number two is going to talk about a carport, and this is something we talked about at the last work session, enclosing an existing nonconforming carport into a garage with walls and a garage door. These applications currently go through a major variance process, which requires a public hearing before the Development Review Commission, adding process, timeline, and a little bit of cost for these applications. The minor variance process, on the other hand, doesn't involve a public hearing, so it can move quicker than a major variance, but it still requires public notice to all property owners within 300 feet of the site, the neighborhood association, all other budding neighborhood associations, as well as a sign posted on the property. Public comments are accepted and are a major consideration in one of the minor variance criteria. The minor variance process involves a staff tentative decision, which can be appealed to a public hearing before the Development Review Commission. but it doesn't automatically go to a public hearing. So that can take that step out for a project that is not controversial, that meets all of the criteria. At a work session a few weeks ago, there was some interest in limiting the potential expansion of an existing carport to make sure that we're not just allowing these things to be huge. The idea is that these are existing carports that are being enclosed, just putting walls and a garage door on them. So they're limited in impact because they're continuing the use of the property as it has already been, really a relatively small impact to the surrounding neighborhood. So we wanna keep that idea with this proposal for a minor variance of limiting the size of the expansion. Staff has proposed to use a 20% maximum for an existing carport's footprint or a maximum footprint of 450 square feet. And where this is coming from is that there are 20% thresholds for a number of other minor variances. So that's kind of logically just following along with some of the other items in the list of allowed minor variances. And the idea for that 20% expansion would be if you have a small garage or small carport, I'm sorry, a small carport that is existing, nonconforming, it's too close to a property line, it doesn't meet today's setbacks, whatever the case may be, that you could expand that small carport by 20% to allow flexibility for fitting modern cars in, improving the layout of that carport, something like that. If you already have a carport that is larger than 450 square feet, you can still expand your carport that extra 20% of the footprint. But if you have a much smaller carport, that 20% wouldn't get you to 450. We were proposing that 450 as a bottom threshold floor for the size of a two-car garage. That's pretty small and pretty tight and most people wouldn't necessarily, depending on what cars they have, be too, too happy with a 450 square foot garage. But if you have something that's very small and you can't get to a two car garage, I'm just trying to work with the idea that there are a lot of existing carports within our city. This is a fairly common application type. The DRC sees this application about twice a year. and just trying to create some parameters to make it easier for existing properties to develop their non-conforming structures that they already have. This image you can see here is a carport I took to the Development Review Commission at the beginning of this year. It was expanded by approximately four feet and a garage door was added. So it's not changing the location of the garage. It's not changing the use of the property. It's really keeping with the pattern of that site and that development and just trying to create a different pathway for small flexibility. And I will note that proposals that do not qualify for a minor variance could still apply for a major variance and still go through that process. This would just be trying to capture ideally as many options as possible that would, again, really trying to focus on limited impacts. Item three is our last amendment for the evening, and I will again provide a little bit of background. House Bill 2138 required local governments to expand middle housing allowances and provide more flexibility for the siting and configuration of middle housing. One component of that House Bill that is required to go into effect by January 1st, 2027, allows both attached and detached duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes. At the last work session, we talked about how the state is still working on administrative rulemaking, establishing siting and design standards for these detached plexes. Because we have to allow detached plexes by January 1st, but the administrative rules have not been established yet, staff is recommending a simple compliance approach for the interim between January 1st of 2027 and 2028. That will retain our current requirements when Plex units are voluntarily attached, then they'll have to meet our current requirements without changes, but allowing flexibility for detached units in compliance with state law. THIS STRATEGY WOULD MINIMIZE CHANGES TO OUR CODE FOR NOW, ALLOWING THE CITY MORE TIME TO DEVELOP SITING AND DESIGN STANDARDS ONCE THE STATE HAS PROVIDED THEIR PARAMETERS, AND IT ALSO AVOIDS OVERLAP OR CONFLICT WITH THE BROADER CODE AUDIT PROJECT THAT IS LOOKING AT PLEX SITING AND DESIGN standards and housing standards in general so we're allowing that broader discussion to continue while we're doing just kind of a short-term stopgap measure making as little change to our code as possible in this interim period and i believe that that is it that is the end of my presentation tonight so if there are any questions please let me know thank you very much for joining us

I do have this procedure for legislative land use hearings now if we'd like to have it read into the record at this time, even though we're a little backwards now. Okay, hearing no objections. Here I go. FOR, AGAIN, LU26-0019 SEMIANNUAL CODE AMENDMENTS. THIS IS A LEGISLATIVE DECISION WHICH IS GENERALLY A POLICY DECISION WITHIN THE DISCRETION OF THE CITY COUNCIL. THE PLANNING COMMISSION WILL REVIEW THE LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL AND MAKE A RECOMMENDATION TO THE CITY COUNCIL. Although a legislative decision may be discretionary, it must also comply with any applicable state law, as well as any applicable statewide planning goal or administrative rule adopted pursuant to ORS Chapter 197. A legislative amendment to the Community Development Code must also comply with any applicable provision of the Lake Oswego Comprehensive Plan. The public hearing process will begin with a presentation by staff, which we just heard. Thank you, Senior Planner Davis. Testimony will then be received from the public. Individuals will be allowed up to five minutes. Recognized neighborhood associations, homeowner associations, associations. government agencies or other incorporated public interest organizations will be allowed up to 10 minutes. The time limits will not include time taken up by questions from the commission or responses to such questions. Testimony by attorneys, representatives, and witnesses on behalf of or which are part of the presentation by a person shall be counted within that person's time limit. Any person in attendance may cede his or her time for testimony to another person, but in no case Shall any person's testimony be increased to greater than 10 minutes? And we confirmed that there was no one who was signed up for testimony on this topic this evening. And then we asked the commission if there are any conflicts of interest, which we did, and there were none declared. and then staff report other testimony, and then we close the public hearing and begin deliberations, which brings us to the present time. Do we have any deliberations, any comments on these items for Senior Planner Davis?

I have a question about the tree removal. After the proposed amendment,

Who would receive notice?

And what opportunity remains to comment or appeal?

Under state law, for applications subject to clear and objective standards, so it's been a minute since you had the tree code amendments. We had two processes. One is the clear and objective process, which is only applicable for new housing developments or the creation of residential lots. And then we had a discretionary process, which is basically all other application types, also open to housing applications if they opt into that process. Under the clear and objective track, the only people that receive notice are the applicant and properties within 100 feet of the site. Only the applicant has the ability to appeal an application, so nobody from the public can. For the discretionary, it remains the same. Anyone can submit a comment. We will post a sign on the site, just like we always have, so it's open to anyone who sees the sign. We'll also post it online, so people who monitor our type two tree removal applications can see those online as well. anyone has the opportunity to comment or and then for appeals only those people who submitted comments during the comment period or the applicant or the neighborhood association in which the site is located in is eligible to appeal. That still remains the same. Thank you.

A question about the carports. I saw in the examples that it was like seem to be three-sided enclosed with one side open, but carport includes like all the sides are open as well, correct?

That is correct, yes. We've seen all sorts of different kinds of carports come in. So we've seen carports that are attached to the primary structure that get enclosed. We've seen detached carports. That example I had just happened to be missing the garage door and have walls on all of its sides, but that I would say is less common than carports that are open on all sides.

I think I might have to declare a conflict of interest that my family is part of someone who owns one of these carports that could potentially benefit financially from the increase to the value of the property by enclosing it into a garage potentially. So conflict of interest declared. Thank you.

And it only matters if it's a carport that is non-conforming to today's standards. So if it is located, for instance, too close to a property line, which is the most common, or if it does not meet today's garage appearance and location standards. If the carport does meet all the setbacks and everything like that, then it could be enclosed without going through this. It would just be a simple building permit. So this is only talking about existing carports that do not meet today's standards, adding walls, essentially. Okay.

THANK YOU. I DO NOT KNOW THAT DETAIL, BUT JUST IN CASE.

COLLEAGUES, I HOPE WE'LL SPEND A LITTLE TIME TONIGHT DISCUSSING POLICY ITEM THREE. SEEMS THE MOST INTERESTING TO ME BECAUSE THE WAY I'VE READ IT IN OUR PREVIOUS PRESENTATIONS, Beginning January 1st, 2027, Lake Oswego cannot require duplex, triplex, or quadplex to be contained on the single attached building. They can be detached on the same residential lot as we've been briefed. This looks like it changes our city's existing approach, and with all the talk about there's draft rules in place, and there's still more to come on that, but it doesn't INFLUENCE OUR ABILITY TO REGULATE OTHER ITEMS LIKE THE SIZE OR BUILDING HEIGHT OR THE TREE CODE ACCESS AND DESIGN OF THOSE BUILDINGS. AND SO THERE'S SOME INTERESTING NUANCE IN HERE THAT I WAS PULLING OUT THAT IF ANYBODY ELSE WANTED TO TALK ABOUT POLICY OPTION THREE.

TELL US MORE, COMMISSIONER GINNY, WHAT NUANCE WERE YOU KEYING IN ON THERE, PLEASE?

YEAH. SO LOOKING AT THIS AND THEN AT HOUSE BILL 2138, THERE'S A LOT OF STUFF IN IT. AND IT'S BEEN A COUPLE MONTHS NOW, BUT During one of our lengthy presentation meetings, Mr. Olsen was laying out all the new things that are coming through. And one of the interesting things that I think we should spend some more time studying in future meetings or other areas, if a project qualifies for the statutory bonus units, the city must allow an increase in the development area floor height or density requirements necessary to accommodate the additional units. And that's kind of, There's just a lot in there, and that could be potentially missed, or as we're looking at all these other things with middle housing and these requirements, it's just one thing I wanted to call out as interest that we might want to take a look at future meetings or when more clarity from the state comes out on what does that actually mean here for the city, and where are places in the city that this would occur?

I'd definitely love to hear more about that, yeah. Thank you.

What is particularly complex about this bill is that their HB 2138, which was passed, I believe, in 2025, is that it has multiple components with multiple different deadlines and rulemaking requirements. And I have to be honest with you, I cannot remember off the top of my head which component of HB 2138, I'm sorry, what the effective date is on that one. So I actually have the bill open right now and I'm trying to find it in there. But essentially, I'm not sure that we have to apply that right now. We do know that the deadline for the detached duplexes is January 1st, 2027, so we have to comply with that component, but there's other components of middle housing and particularly cottage clusters where the rulemaking is still in process and hasn't been adopted by DLCD yet and is not effective. So that's the complexity with all of this is that there are multiple layers and it makes our job and your job very hard because it's hard to keep all of the deadlines and whatnot straight. So if you want to continue discussion, I am looking in here. I know which part of HP 2138 you're speaking of and I'm just double checking when that compliance date is.

THAT SEEMED THE MOST OR THAT SEEMED THE LEAST STRAIGHTFORWARD OF ALL THE THINGS YOU PRESENTED AND ALL THE THINGS STAFF IS DIGGING IN BECAUSE OF THAT, WHAT PROJECTS MIGHT BE OUT THERE IN THE PIPELINE OR WHERE AN INTERESTED PARTY MIGHT BE LIKE, OH, I CAN GET, IF I SATISFY THESE REQUIREMENTS, THE CITY DOESN'T HAVE, THEY MUST APPROVE THESE OTHER THINGS AND THAT MIGHT CATCH any one of the different groups off guard, ourselves, neighborhood associations, other neighbors, things like that. And then the city might be in a position where it's like, they've met all the other requirements. We have to apply this height or density or footprint or offset or something like that.

Yes, absolutely, and I will agree that there are a lot of components in this bill, and staff doesn't have all of the answers to this yet either, of knowing exactly how this is going to look in the end either. I can say anecdotally that the most common questions I have gotten about detached plexes at the counter and working on projects and things like that just in my daily life have tended to be more on the lower density side of things of having an existing single family house and thinking about building an ADU or a detached plex and kind of looking and weighing the options between those. That has been the most common way that I've seen it come up. But I see that Planner Olson has joined us and raised his hand and you might have something to add.

All right. I think if that is any, any final comments, looks like.

Yes, Commissioner, call.

I see that in the first sentence you've added district behind resource. You've done that again later on. And then in item F2 below it, it talks again about impact on the resource. So I was a little thrown off as to why that was just adding district to this part if the very next item talks about an impact on the resource rather than the resource district.

This is getting a little bit into semantics and hair splitting. You could probably notice I was kind of tripping over saying words of like, did I already say that? It sounds very repetitive of protected riparian area, protected riparian district, resource district. These terms are used many times in our code and they're defined in very specific ways, but there is a lot of overlap between these different terms. pieces. So thinking about a stream corridor, you have a stream, you have a stream corridor, which based on the slope of the banks of the stream will be a different width and a different location depending on slope. In that stream corridor is the resource itself, the stream. But our code actually protects a wider area than that for habitat purposes and to comply with our Oregon state goals for natural habitat preservation. And so we look at when you get to that stream corridor boundary, then we have a protected riparian area that extends 25 to 50 feet out from that area, depending on the class of the resource. And then outside of the edge of that protected riparian area, there's then a 10-foot construction setback in which limited development activities like stormwater and small accessory structures can occur, but other building cannot. So we have a lot of pieces of this area that is protected. And the moral of the story with this proposal is that we're not actually changing anything and just adding one simple word in one location is making it a little bit easier to pull those threads together and see that when we're talking about the purpose of this, it's in a section of code that is looking at proposed impacts to a resource. The way we look and resource, I keep using all these different terms interchangeably, so I do apologize for that. But if there is any sort of construction that's going to occur, let's say you're building a new house, you need to put in a sewer line that needs to go through that stream to be able to reach the public sewer system in the street. Then when we look at that, we start out by looking at can that impact to the stream, its protected area, its buffer, anything around there, can that be avoided? That's the step one. If you can go somewhere else, take your sewer somewhere else. If that can't happen, then we look at minimization and minimizing the disturbance. Can you bore under the stream? If you have to trench, can you make it as small of a trench as possible? And then step three is looking at mitigation, restoring the habitat, replanting native plantings, things like that. So this amendment is just trying to make it easier to connect the dots that when we're talking about that avoidance, minimize, mitigate, that we're talking about any impacts anywhere in that multi-leveled protected area. The resource district itself and the definitions does include the resource, it's protected riparian area. So it is a little bit confusing. It's very pedantic. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you. Any further comments? All right. Seeing none, going once, going twice. Item seven, other business.

You do need to, so this is a public hearing, so if you don't have any more questions of staff, then you would close the public hearing and then you would open it up for deliberations and then a vote on the amendments.

Thank you.

That would be a vote on a recommendation.

A vote on a recommendation, got it. Okay, so we need to deliberate on if we want to recommend this as proposed or if we have any changes that we would like to see. I think, Brian, you might. have some further changes?

No further changes. I just wanted to highlight that as an area of potential future study or discussion, or even just be on the lookout for clarity from Salem. But I, like staff's proposed recommendations, as written with all this tonight, this is a lot of great work.

Are there comments on anything that we would like to change or of the staff's presentation?

No questions from me. I agree with Commissioner Gini that I think these are good proposals.

Hearing no comments then, would anyone like to make a motion to approve for presentation to the City Council the staff's presentation as written.

I will make a motion to approve the staff's presentation for consideration by the City Council as written. Second.

Thank you very much. We will take a vote then. All in favor of approving the staff's recommendation to city council as written, please say aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Hearing none. All right. Now item seven. business or other business.

I will pass it over to Planning Manager Olsen.

Yep, there he is. Yeah, thank you, Planning Manager Olson. We had the meeting, I believe it was last week, for the NCLO. It's just a once a year meeting, primarily to review and discuss the insurance that's provided for different neighborhood associations for meeting. We go through the requirements for the insurance to apply. One of the main ones that always gets discussed is no alcohol can be served at any of these meetings if they want the insurance to apply. But yeah, it sounded like it's been a successful program. We provide insurance for a number of these meetings each year. And I don't think there's been any claims presented that we were aware of at the meeting. But it's a good group, a good group of folks that care about the community. And if anyone's interested, I'd be happy to fill you in on more. But yeah, NCLO is great.

All right. Thank you, Long Range Planning Manager Olsen. Do we have any other new business items to discuss? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to Item 8, Schedule Review.

Amen.

Thank you, Long Range Planning Manager Eric Olson, for that schedule review. With that, this meeting of the Planning Commission on September 14th, Monday, is adjourned.