City Council - workshop

One that's not clear and objective. Correct, yes.

So along those lines, I'm curious when it comes to new legislation, what's the remedy? So we just mail something and we'll call the notice and everybody's face and do it terribly within 200 feet of the development. What's the remedy that the developer has?

So a hypothetical situation. I'm a developer. I want to develop Wake Park or whatever. Just hypothetical. And then I go and I apply for it. They notice everybody within 200 feet. Clear violation. And I lose. And I go to LUBA and then if I win anyway, I don't care, and nothing happens if the city, say, did 200 instead of 100. But if I lose as a developer, then I might have a reason to get them to get a second shot at it. Correct.

So the remedy for not following this rule, if... I know it's all hypothetical, just got passed, but you think the remedy for violating the rule would be somebody getting a second shot at the worst, I guess the worst possible consequence for the city is somebody has to go through it twice. That is one path.

Okay. So that would be the other... So I'm trying to think what the hazard of litigation on this particular item is. If we wanted to be more aggressive or less aggressive, what are the risks? The risk if we wanted to be sort of more aggressive... is that one, we could risk having the cost of an appeal, and two, we could have the risk of HAVO coming in and telling us that we have to do something different than what we're doing. Right, exactly. Sorry, that was my... That's a great question.

Except for if Don were, if I were to write a letter to Don, and he thought my letter was unclear, he could ask me for clarification, right?

Okay, so say we just change it so the city council was the decision maker and then, I don't know, Melody came, let's not confuse the issue, came and asked us, sent a written correspondence and then it was unclear and said, what are we talking about? Are we talking about, you know, southeast third or northeast third, you know? And we can't go as a, if we were the decision maker, we can't go and ask her to clarify that or, you know. So what is the difference between, I mean, I'm not saying anything bad against Dawn, but The chances of somebody being arbitrary in one person I think are greater th

I mean, I'll take it. I'll say it right away. All right, so they can go to us later. It's on YouTube, so watch the YouTube video. But the idea is... they're saying we don't want it to be a public process, but we want it to be a behind closed doors process. Is that, in essence, what they're saying?

behind a closed door. And I guess if that's what they want, that's what they want. And the question is, do we as a city want to risk litigation by bucking that trend and keeping the decisions made in a public setting versus a behind closed door settings. Because obviously every single city planner or city planning commission in the state will always be objective and reasonable because why wouldn't they be? But the reality is the perception, I think it would feed into the perception that people are arbitrary, even if they're not, you know, when things are put into private, you know, behind clos

Even particularly from the public, but every human, because you're a human, there's discretion involved. You know, just like the police officer decides which persons to pull over. There's discretion that he has, there's discretion that every government person has. As you all know, I make my living on the fact that I object to the discretion of people who are supposed to be following clear and objective standards. I do it in the tax code area, but basically the government people that are making decisions based on clear and objective standards are often wrong, and that's why I make my living off

Having been a computer programmer before, I know I have been asked to make computer programs lie. So the computer has, the only difference between a computer lying and a human lying is the computer has no conscience.

Council President Hemsley, you are echoing and it sounds like because you're logged in twice.

So if we make the clear and objective path, the clear and very narrow and objective path, then that could solve some of these problems?

So I think what we're saying is that if, like I say, if we had a clear objective and put in parentheses narrow path, then that would encourage people to, so I guess the trick into keeping the local control is to make the clear and objective path sort of, And I'll just be, I'll exaggerate on purpose, but be the worst possible scenario for the developer from his bottom line and then force him to go the discretionary path if he wants something better. Now, I'm not saying I want to make the worst possible, but I'm just giving as an example of what would give us maximum Does that logic, that same k

So let me get through another hypothetical, because I love hypotheticals. So if somebody comes in, and not Don, but somebody else that was of more human mind than Don, decided to allow something that was clearly not... clear an objective, but he called it that to let the process go through because maybe he was getting paid on the side from the developer or something to that effect. Is there an appeal for that, something that was called clear an objective but factually wasn't? I'm just saying, is it the public still have recourse?

I will say, Dave, that I didn't follow the clear and objective paths, but it was approved of anyway by the decision maker. Is there a loss to appeal rights just because the decision maker, whether it was us or the commission or a person sitting in Don's chair that's not Don, made a clearly erroneous decision on whether it was clear.

Or if the plan was approved, that was clear and objective, but the builder built it with the setbacks only five feet, even though it was approved at first, normally, you know...

So... I have the idea of having some recent historical examples because then it kind of puts out a real, not my silly scenarios, but a real one in front of us.

So that's really... Those apartments on territorial that went up recently are, you know, those kind of things.

So if a demo was coming up next door to me, and I was within 100 feet, and I decided to write my opinion on it, from what you're saying, if the guy's done clear objective standards, it's just a waste of trees, right?

Basically, I don't think there should be a development next to me for whatever reason, unless I can point out, unless I know the clear objective standards, I can point out where they deviate from it. It's just not something that goes in the trash can, right?

Okay, so the idea is even the written notice and written letters and stuff don't really, if it's clear and objective, don't really affect the process anyway. It's just some way from the event.

I had an empty lot next to me until they built a house on it.

My opinion on that should be we should make a reasonable push into being aggressive on notice. Maybe not deliver it to everybody's house beyond this, but at least in a... either a newsletter on the website that tells what plan developments are coming in or things like that where um and i like because the thing is like it seems like from what you're saying although there is a risk to the city it doesn't seem like it's but open when you describe a giant risk, you know, as far as they're not going to suck millions of dollars out of us if we do something.

If I could just, sorry, just thoughts come to my mind, I'm sorry. But obviously the citizens are always upset when things happen, they feel like they have no control over it. Especially when they, and my question is you weren't, before we weren't geared to thinking you were bad or nothing, but sometimes there's a perception out there that things go on under the table or that sort of thing. Would it be a problem if the whenever somebody approved if the reasoning was made public and say they did all this and then something to the effect that if you do not like these clear objective standards you

I just want to say thank you for the presentation. I've been very much educated, and I apologize if I've been going off on the tangents. One of the things I'm worried about, I see happening, and unfortunately in our society it seems to happen more often, is that you end up with people with a tyranny of those who know the process versus those who don't. Those who don't know the process are stuck in a place where they can't, don't feel able to influence anything, but those who understand things really well end up being able to put wrenches in the gears or whatever just because of their knowledge