Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

No, you're fine. Like break time. You're going to Costa Rica? Mike's going to Costa Rica. How about that? For Christmas. Oh, well. All right. I am going to call to order the meeting of the Salem Planning Commission for December 2nd, 2025. And Jennifer, if you could for the last time read the role for us. Commissioner F is absent, excused. Commissioner Fryback here. Commissioner Heler here. Commissioner Leven here. Commissioner Rhodess

here. I think. Can you hear me? Commissioner Rhodess. Can you hear me? Not yet. We can see you. We can't hear you. I am here. Not sure. Is talking to your speakers. My degree in lip reading tells me that she said she's here. But I don't know if we could get more.

They switch here. Computer off mute. No, I think it's our our end. Other Zoom attendees can hear us or I just have talk to see if if it's on our Hello. Can you hear me? That's like if you're not here, raise your hand. Right. Can you hear me now? I am talking.

Take a second. Well, we finished roll call. I think before we move to the minutes, we have uh let's take public testimony. Haven't finished minutes yet or roll call yet. You haven't finished roll call. Oh, sorry. I was confused. President Slater here. Commissioner Tev here. Commissioner Vier Bendell here. We have quorum. All right, we have quorum. And uh why don't we see if we have public testimony, which I think we do. Which of you would like to join us first?

All right. Okay. Slater, members of the commission, Mike with the home builders association of Marina counties. So here to talk about the uh I guess we'll call it draft or the proposal that you've talked about tonight. I'm not going to talk about you know some of the the maybe the process concerns but I think we want to talk about some of the more substantive concerns with what's in in the draft and

I'm sorry. Can you just clarify when we talk about draft? Can you what draft are you talking about? Is this the draft ordinance? Okay. No, no, that's okay. It says the city will designate as environmentally sensitive status is not the outcome of a finished inventory analysis. the policies land from that land is mounted largely prohibits structures only several exceptions and I think for you know for many private parcels that touch you know those features really functions as a link some cases I think really the land or development potential. What is the impact for example on an mining operation prohibits mining resource extraction. So the language in that proposal, those waterways and lakes are are deacto. Um, you know, when we're dealing with a a development site that's dealing with these lands, you know, the owner will have to split that environmentally sensitive area into a separate part conservation piece for the HOA dedicated to the city.

Let's look at under they require a clear nexus. You know, land owners are unquestionably going to challenge and there's no discussion in the report of the legality of this loan. how the city would pay those judgments or how it would lie on those. Of course, state law, you know, says that when you're protecting significant resources within the land that's already in an acknowledgement is that capacity by expanding regions. And so, if we're going to use These type of land large areas affect law requires that you add land to the course that undercuts entire means longer trips. It means more vehicle that by taking that And of the things that's really concerning that allows a nonprofit or a tribe or 50 signatures from voters to request a site. So, can I just jump in on this one? I apologize. I won't take away from your time. I think either that was poorly worded, which would be my fault, or easy to misunderstand, but it was to initiate

the process to ask the council to determine. It wasn't to Okay, just okay. Okay, there

easy to weaponize against specific developments because again, 50 signatures is nothing. We don't think that's going to happen every single felt application cases, then we're not looking at this realistic. And again, it obligates the city council to initiate that process. I'll get the outcome necessarily, but delays to virtually every potential settlement site. And so even if it's ultimately unsuccessful, all of this really flies in the face of of go forth on this concept at all. Think the recommendation here at the city process of the gold five ins to uh envisioned by state law. So that would certainly thank you. Before I step down, are there any questions, please? Um, what was the common situation here? We have both ahead. We'll reverse it next time. So, I um I read the draft ordinance and um and recognizing the real enjoyment that I had developing 9 and a half acres that used to be the um black top bat plant on 22nd in Gilrest. It only took me two years under the

current administrative rules etc. Um and the addition of additional layers of government involvement have taken that development process in the Portland area to four years. And I asked uh somebody in real estate that is active in industrial and commercial development uh how do you possibly plan for money commitments for that kind of change in market that will occur over a 4-year term and they said it was a challenge. So, so I will tell you that I absolutely agree with the concept that this is creating an additional layer of administrative involvement where the majority of the concept is not required. Um, one of the things that I delighted in seeing was that the proposed ordinance was going to include uh administrative conversations regarding White Oak when the city of Salem all already has a substantial involvement with the tree coverage, canopies, permitting, etc. And to say that this is a grievous conversation would be polite. I I don't know how the city could potentially consider this draft ordinance and say that they are also considering

the draft and housing program. their question. There was a comment. Fair enough. We take that.

I just was wondering if you had these honestly committed writing. This was abbreviated to try and get it within three minutes. So we have a more expensive set of I see I can provide to and they give indulge. I like this comment that I think the real concern here too is that you know under protected resources get their own levels of protection. They're not all treated with the they brush. That's the real concern here is that everything here once it's designated as as this environmentally significant it's not sensitive it's often as complete or that you're doing goal five doing those protections then you have certain resources of stricter mos don't count for this under this concept once it's designated such as that's a discussion between what's proposed here and states more other question.

I have just one um you made the comment that uh you see that this proposed ordinance um flies kind of contrary to the intentions of the urban growth boundary and that it allows it to expand. So your thought then that everything within the urban growth boundary is developable like when we have land in the in the growth boundary at the beginning. Absolutely. Yes. when it's included in our global inventory, we need not be available. It's hard to set the boundary. And if we're going to take a big of land and say all of a sudden that is now off limits because it's designated again 10 to 25% of the city and if the state requires you to compensate that protection by expanding the early growth boundary, then by default you you're pushing that future development that could have taken place closer into the city core and pushing it to the office. Wow, that's very helpful. Thank you. Other comments.

Good evening, President Slater and the civil commission. My name is Adam. I'm a civil engineer at Pacific Engineering. Our office is at 1155 13th Street Southeast in Salem. Um I also wanted to talk about the um the presentation that will be happening later this evening. Um I wanted to specifically talk about um number seven under finance. I know you haven't seen the presentation formally yet. So maybe that's how go. So um number seven talks about how regulated resources are quote unquote committed away um which maybe clarified in the presentation but the implication in that is that somehow um all of the protected resources that are listed as possible designations under this proposal are somehow allowed to easily be permitted away. Um, that's simply an an oversimplification of a very complicated process. I could speak to almost all the processes because we do a lot of people in Montana and I've applied for all these permits. I've recently applied for a tree or little permit within the city of Salem. It was not what I would consider to be an easy process, nor was I allowed to just permit away all the trees. um we had to make significant changes to the development that I'm thinking of tree sanitation development talking about in order to save a significant number of trees large oaks and all other types of varieties as well. In fact, we had to make changes and one of them fell down after such changes to us. Um, another example would be wetland permits, which uh wetlands are regulated not currently by the city of Salem as it's what would be proposed under this, but there they are under this jurisdiction of the department of state lands. They can also be under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers. When you're under the jurisdiction of the Art Board of Engineer, you're required to get a 401 water quality certification that

involves the Department of Environmental Quality and you're also required to get a slopes assessment from the National Marine Fishery Services. So, we were talking about uh what was that five agencies that are looking at permits that you have to justify why you should be allowed to remove those wetlands and mitigate for them. you're not just allowed to remove them, you have to mitigate for them um within your wershed. And as a part of that process, we provide alternatives analysis. A biologist goes and he rates the uh the um the quality of the wetlands and those are all taken into account and you're not always allowed to remove the wetlands. We've had many projects where we've had to change the development in order to preserve wetlands, preserve swers to wetlands. Um, and so the the idea that this is somehow needed within the city of Salem to provide another layer of protection to resources that are regulated by other agencies almost implies that those agencies aren't doing their job, which I think um would be an interesting statement to make um because it is in no way easy to get about It's in no way easy to get a flood plan development permit. It's no way easy to get a tree. I wish it was easier. Um, but it's not. So, I think maybe a better use if the if the plane commission is interested in having a positive impact on water quality in the Harriet would be maybe to direct staff to look at some mitigation measures for existing imperous services. There's a lot of this town that was developed prior to the MS4 permit requirement from BEQ to provide water quality treatment. I mean any new development that would come in subject to these provisions would have to meet the city's water quality standards and

so they would be required to treat their their runoff um which a lot of places in town they're not required to do that. So I think that would be a better way to protect the environment and would provide a more positive benefit to the wershed than this proposal. That's all I have. Thank you. Any questions? Commissioner Rose, you have a question. No questions.

Say no at the moment. Uh I do have one question. Um she said you've done some you've done some development in the city which I am aware of and that's involved you know um tree removals wetland kills uh flood plane development. So were those applications successful? I mean in some cases were you able to then build the wetland or develop the flood plane? Um I it's been a while since I've done a flood plane development permit in um Salem, but the last flood plane development permit that I did was in stating um and we were able to get the flood plane development permit through Marian County. But essentially what you're doing is proving that you're not going to have a negative impact that you're whatever you're filling you're also supplying. And so that's part of the permit. It's not that you're failing to take away the resource. You're proving that you're not impactful resource like for for a 401 water quality certification that you're required to get as a part of your core permit for run. You have to build you have to list every TNT for every wershed that you're going into which has to talk about how you're mitigating for that T&L. You have to prove that you're treating the twoear the 10ear draft versus five. I mean there there's so much that you have to do to prove that you're not providing you're not impacting. So that's kind of you're getting the permit by proving that you're not providing for what for development permit questions.

What does the rule look like if you're getting a permit from the city of Satan where you have to submit to the city? Well, the city state also does not regulate wetlands. Most cities don't regulate the wetlands because they are so regulated by the state and the federal government. Sorry. The the city estate does well. So it was through Mer count. Okay. And so we didn't provide analysis that showed that we were not impacting the storage capacity in the area where we were proposing to fill. Thank you. Other questions? All right. Thank you both.

President Slater, could we request a fivem minute recess to try to fix the audio for Commissioner Rhodess and then Commissioner? It looks like the audio for the computer is muted that right. I think this is I think that's the sound coming out of her computer. You can try now. But there's many different I have my mic on now. Thank you.

Okay. Audio on the speakers. Just select testing, testing, testing. Testing. Testing.

Testing. Commissioner Rhodess, could you say something again? Testing. Testing. She is. Oh, she is. Okay. She is. I don't know. Recess. Test. Come up first. Did Who won the Ro Shambo? Go first. But you can

echo cancel. Yeah, you had all the positions. You could hear that only one that was working. Yeah. Okay. Can you try again? Commissioner Rhodess testing test. But it's not. Can you guys hear her enough for it to that to work? That's not how it's supposed to be. Is it not? I guess it's getting recorded due to the fellow. Yeah. Yeah. Tom says he can hear her and he's on Zoom with her. Okay. Well, we can hear you. Commissioner Rhodess is just not the way it's supposed to be, but I think that Okay. works fine for us. Okay. I will just text if I have questions. No, no, we can hear you. So, you can go.

Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Sorry about that. Okay. I guess we're ready now. Are you ready? Are you ready? Okay. Bang again. Thank you. Call us back to order. All right. I believe we have a motion from Commissioner Levin for the minutes. Yes. Um I would u make a motion approving the minutes. Thank you. As stated. As stated. Is there a second? Second. Mr. P. Second. Is there any requests for changes or amendments to the minutes? This is November 4th.

The minutes of is it November 4th we dealing with? Yes, that is correct. Yes. Yes. I had emailed one. Um the uh consent calendar was motioned by me, not Commissioner Ver. Yes. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. So with that correction, could we get a roll call? Commissioner Frybeck. Hi. Commissioner Heler. Hi. Commissioner Levin. Hi. Commissioner Rhodess. Hi. Uh, Commissioner Slater. Hi. Commissioner Tev. Commissioner Vier Bindo.

Hi. All right. Oh, Commissioner Commissioner Rhodess. Yes. Okay.

Very good. Motion passes. All right. So, let's see. We have no resolutions, no public hearings, and we're on to the subcommittee reports, which is the unsurprisingly wellness subcommittee. All right. Um I think well, let me make it a little preface here. So, uh a few weeks ago, the wetland subcommittee learned that uh contrary to previous information, the meetings of the subcommittee had to be public. Um the result of that is it has been difficult for the subcommittee to get together at the same time and go through and finalize a range of details that we had hoped to finalize before today. In addition, we had a number of conversations with staff about the best process going forward. As a result of this, I wanted to provide two pieces, two updates. One is tonight is a draft presentation. Um so at some point the subcommittee will find time to get together and and finalize this draft. So this is primarily a draft version that I finalized. Uh so while I will say we at this point I'm taking responsibility for errors and omissions and misstatements uh until uh my colleagues have a chance to send in their comments and we have a public meeting to approve it. The second thing is consistent with our conversation with Lisa, uh we agreed that introducing or discussing uh the text of an ordinance was confusing um and probably not uh the best way to move forward in light of the repairing inventory that is going on. Therefore, we won't be focusing in this committee on um the actual language of an ordinance. that that does not mean that we will not recommend that at some point an ordinance is developed uh but that this committee will not work on developing

the language of the burdens. So I hope with that clarity uh I can then start this draft report that make sense. Any questions on that piece? All right. Um it feels weird to chair a meeting and give a report. Would someone like to chair the meeting and call on me? Don't all rush at once. I have no daggers under the clothes here. It'll be helpful. Someone Robert. All right. With your permission, I do what I thought of. Uh so what I tell you commissioner is not present for these moments.

Would you please present the report of the subcommittee from the wetlands um subcommittee work?

All right. Thank you. So as I said this is draft report your comments both during the session and after the session. So I want to begin by noting that um under Salem under Oregon land use policy we tend to divide lands we speak of lands in two different pieces. We talk about rural lands which are primarily focused on farm and working lands and timber industry. And we're talking about um urban lands and urban lands primarily are focused on kind of developing and providing people the needs that they're looking for in urban areas. Um and I think we've heard some testimony already that by and large the purpose of urban areas is for development. Um, I think that our viewer's mind going into this is that there's a second type or a third type of land that was not fully addressed and it's not been fully addressed by Salem, even though there are opportunities to do do so, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. Um and therefore, you know, we need to we need to balance this a little bit more than we have in the past by making sure that we are both developing sufficient urban lands to meet human needs, but at the same time, we're preserving enough significant undeveloped land that we meet the ecosystem services that people also need in a municipality. In other words, we simply can't um we can't export all ecosystem services to outside the urban growth boundary. Um as much as we may like to do that in terms of what environmentally significant lands means. We've identified these 10 items. Rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands, repairing areas, flood planes, white oak groves, open spaces, and wildlife habitat. Um, and I will say the the ones the three the four in bold are a goal five uh inventory items which I'll discuss in just a minute. Um, and I'd like to make clear at this point that the reason that we put all of these up here is because we want to think about them as a coherent set of objects that

are all within the class environmentally significant lands. not suggesting that these all have the same value um or even the same regulations, but that instead as a framework as we think about how we manage Salem, how we manage Salem lands and grow that we look at these as a set of categories that together add up to an important blue green network that provides critical ecosystem services for the city in which we all live. So by ecosystem services, a word that was not even around in 1975 the land use was created when our land use policies were created simply means the ecosystem benefits that people receive from I mean the services the benefits that people receive from ecosystems. They're generally grouped in four. Some people will argue that they're three. I'm not getting into that argument. Um but they are provisioning which of course is direct things such as water takes our water from the Sandy River for example. uh food, fabrics, fibers, uh other things that we get directly from the land. Regulating services, which are probably more important for the city of Salem, are things such as flood control, uh temperature moderation, uh and similar uh disease control and a range of other items. Cultural services, which are probably most popular. Um those are services such as uh walking in a park, bird watching, um gardening, uh sports, other outdoor activities, things like that. And finally, uh the much unappreciated supporting services, which is just the the natural ecosystem processes of decay and growth and um systems like that. Uh and those really have not been factored into goal five, I think, or into our planning system, and it's certainly not something that the city considers as it goes about managing development and growth in future direction of our city.

I want to talk briefly about sorry Oregon policies. There really two that I'd like to discuss. The first is natural resources. This is goal five. Um I think that goal five very much was an attempt by the legislature to address that third land area. Not rural, not urban, but significant lands. Um but in this case uh for a number of reasons it became an optional uh set of policies that cities or counties could choose to adopt uh but did not have to adopt even though we were required to adopt many other aspects of our land planning goals. In Salem's case, the city decided not to implement any of goal five uh any goal five uh goal five goals. So although the city could have chosen to set repairing uh boundaries, they chose not to. They chose not to to do a wetland inventory and adopted. I understand they did do a wetland inventory uh but did not adopt it. Uh we did not adopt any uh wildlife habitat. Uh the one area that we have done a very good job on two areas actually. We've done a very good job as I've been told on um historical resources which is not a natural resource but it is a goal five resource. And I think we've done a very good job on open spaces which is essentially parks. I think the city has done a very good job setting aside parks and they're very strategic um in some of their acquisitions of parkland uh that have enabled us to maybe meet some of the other goals. Um so that's so goal 5 is still available for us and this uh proposal or these recommendations from the wetland and streams committee recommends that we do go ahead and implement the goal five uh inventories but also that we add to that a few other categories specifically uh we talk about repairing uh sorry we talk

about um flood planes white oaks and uh one other which I will think of in a And then the second important uh policy to discuss that still has not fully considered although I've seen some mentions of this in various planning documents is the Oregon conservation strategy. The Oregon conservation strategy is the official uh ODFW plan for the conservation of critical wildlife in the state. The Lamid Valley is one of nine eco regions that they address. The four strategy habitats, the four key habitats within uh the Wamut Valley are flowing water and repairing habitat, excuse me, grasslands, wetlands, and oak woodlands. So, these are the specific areas within the Wamut Valley that Oregon official wildlife policy is trying to conserve and protect. Um, Salem is inside the the mid Wamtt Valley River area. Um and there are about uh Leslie talk about there are a number of conservation opportunity areas that they describe. So uh that's a little bit background in there. So regulated not conserved. I think it's very important that we understand that there's a difference between regulation and protection. The point of regulation is to determine a um maybe a less harmful use or to identify a grad degradation of uses some of which are allowed and some of which have not been used. Unfortunately, I think what we've experienced in this city and we've experienced elsewhere is that in fact we can we can regulate something and at the same time find that at the end of the process we have none of the original land left. It's all been converted in some form of developed plan. Whether it is less impactful or more impactful may

have changed, but the fact that it is developed and by that it means it has an impervious surface or a roof or lawn over it. Um in those cases the the u ecosystem services of those kinds of lands decreased significantly. And this is in fact one of the more significant problems we're dealing with I believe in the city and especially when it comes to our flood plane um which has been slowly eroded by development over time is no longer able to provide some of the critical ecosystem services we need. This is particularly important because we expect to have significant uh increase of flooding um in Salem, excuse me, and the Wama Valley over the next many decades thanks to climate change. So sale uh does follow a number of regulations. We have the river and harbor act which is what puts the core of engineers uh in charge of waterways in the city. We have the clean water act which is related to our discharge of sewer and storm water acts into the streams and into the valley. The endangered species act which triggers whenever we uh use federal funds. We have the migratory bird treaty act. There's supposed to be a Y there a bald and gold eagle protection act and then the national flood insurance program which is an optional program the city engages in for very good reasons but the national flood insurance program as a recent court decision has found actually creates a perverse incentive um to develop a flood plan and has led to um increasing pressure on uh endangered species in this case salmon. So I think we can fairly say in this instance that the national flood program in the permitting system uh with flood planes in fact did not meet its intended uh outcome at least it was con concentration flood plane capacity and in fact we recently passed new laws much more strict laws related to flood plan regulation. We will see how those u bear

out. uh Oregon has its own wetland uh statutes and finally the city of Salem has has a significant tree statute and repairing vegetation statute. So that's kind of the basic framework uh of land regulations here in the city. So, I talked just briefly about the why, ecosystem services. Um, and I've talked a little bit about the how, the preservation of uh environmentally significant lands, certainly the categories. And now I want to talk about how much because how much is really the important question when we're dealing with land use and questions of housing and development. Uh, and so we've tried to answer that with a series of maps. Um, I want to be very clear that these are estimates. I think these give us an order of magnitude. Um, they are not exact. They're they're designed to help shape the conversation. Uh, I think my goal is at the end of this process, we can at least come to the agreement about the size of what we're talking about. I think I think the sub the subcommittee is very clear in the fact that our responsibility is to uh simultaneously support development um and meet the needs for housing and other economic needs in the city while also trying to balance the needs for ecosystem services in the city. And that really is a is a tricky and challenging question. I think we're trying to embrace that in a good spirit. And I think that spirit talks about how much how much land are we trying to address. So looking first at the Wamut Valley which I know no one is pressing to develop. Uh that's about 542 acres. There is already a 75 ft buffer around this around the Wamut River that adds up to about 216 acres. Um that those two areas combined the total area

of the Wamut River and the buffer is about 1% of Salem. Salem's a little over 60,000 acres total. Um, so we talked about that just to give us a perspective of what we're what we're doing. Streams is the next area. We have about 91 miles of stream in the city. Apologize. I have to find my notes here. 91 miles of stream in the city. So streams here are really one of the important areas uh in terms of ecosystem services. Um our findings that we'll show in our report later is that streams provide important services including storm water management which of course is what we particularly use it for. Groundwater recharge. This is recharging the water table. Uh we're having a problem in some areas around the country, not necessarily sailing in land subsistence where land is is sliding and breaking apart because the groundwater has been tapped too much. Uh climate regulation, fire risk mitigation, and of course recreational, cultural, and educational opportunities. Salem streams are significantly degraded. Sale urban streams are characterized by altered hydraologic flows, higher water temperature, simplified channel morphology, hardened banks, altered chemical profiles, and excessive pollutants. Notwithstanding the fact that we um that we have a storm water quality permit. Smrs, as I already said, is an important component of our storm water management system. That's how they're being managed today. primarily um they're being primarily managed to as our storm water system and all the quality uh requirements that are associated with those and then uh despite the fact that we have storm water permit our existing storm water system puts significant stress on our existing system we have thousands of outfall pipes that

discharge into local waterways even when storm water is filtered the unnaturally rapid and concentrated flow excuse me deliberate delivered through these pipes create stream astability erosion and sediment mentation repairing buffers are what's under consideration uh by the city right now. Uh they are doing a repairing inventory. The information that I have I think was just an estimate. This will be replaced by much more detailed information I think in the next few weeks even um and so uh repairing buffers are one of uh goal five's items. Goal five allow goal five with preparing buffers allows for um a safe harbor provision of a 50-foot buffer on either side of the top of the bank. That is likely to be I would that my estimate is that is our outcome here that if there is uh an adoption of repairing buffer it will be 50 ft. Interestingly, uh, some of the scientific research that I've read on repairing buffers indicates that 50 feet is the the smallest but most reasonable number that you it is the lowest number in which you can get a reasonable outcome for water quality pro perfection uh, protection. So, if you're looking for something like wildlife corridors, which is not at stake here, you're looking at anywhere from 100 to 300 feet. When we're talking about water quality, we're looking for something at least 50 feet, but up to 100 feet. In this case, the s the state safe harbor allows for 50 feet. So, of course, Salem has not yet established this. Um, this was the opportunity to do so was put in in 1999. Number of other cities have done so. The city has not uh done that. My estimate right now is there are about 1,300 acres uh in aggregate of repairing and buffer throughout the city not including the laminate of course. Um and the key importance for repairing areas

for ecos services include pollution mitigation, habitat provision, climate regulation, biochemical processing, fire risk mitigation, and recreation and cultural services. There's a lot of scientific evidence about the value of repairing buffers at this point. So wetlands is another goal five resource and our our hope is that the next step after uh the wetland after the riparian inventory will be the wetlands inventory. Sylum did undertake a wetlands inventory uh at the I think 1999 or shortly after 1999 1999 it was not adopted. Um it is a goal five resource. Uh wetlands provide important ecological services including storm water management, water quality management, groundwater recharge. Um there are well let me see I have something else. There are according to this map and again I want to be very clear that this math is really an estimate and is probably more of an estimate than some of the other maps. Um there is about 2,867 acres of wetland. That's the the lime green color here. I think if you look carefully, you notice that a number of those have already been developed. This is out of date. So the number of wet of wetland acres that we know about is probably smaller. They say maybe you know 10 15 20% smaller at least than what we see up here. The other part about wetlands is uh these are really estimates. They're not necessarily the results of any sort of delineation. Therefore the boundaries may change. Uh and finally the orange in there represents uh any remaining undeveloped hybrid soils. So hydrate soils trigger an investigation into whether there are wetlands there and could result in a wetland. Um so I just want to point out that uh there's a possibility as I said

that uh while we need to take some acreage away or develop wetlands we need to consider there are possible additional wetlands on developable land. the flood plane. Uh Salem has approximately 6,192 acres of flood plane in the city. Flood plane flood planes are incredibly vital for ecosystem services. They provide storm water conveyance and storage, habitat for native species, groundwater recharge, water quality management, and of course cultural services. Um, Salem permits flood plane development. Um, that is regulated as we've noted. Again, I would note that regulations have not stopped the development of flood plan. I think we recently had a development I just saw maybe six months ago uh just couple putting a parking lot just a couple feet off of Mil Creek um near where Habanos is on state. So, and I just a couple quotes here from the biological opinion uh in the recent lawsuit. Um, so flood planes are vital to the health of anodramas fish. So, the fish that return from the sea back to spawning areas because they provide important habitat during the freshwater phase of Andadama's life cycle cycle. And then I think what I particularly thought was useful in this context quote the reduction in flood plane habitat function is constant incremental permanent and self-propagating once development occurs in an area subsequent development follows. So this is from the book biological opinion from the national fisheries talk a minute about open spaces and sale is done quite well on open spaces. The open spaces again is a goal

five resource. It's defined as parks, forests, wildlife preserves, natural resources, natural nature reservations or sanctuaries, and public or private golf courses. All right. So, the city owns and manages about 2,335 acres of parkland distributed across 90 parks. That's about 3.5% of Salem's total area. Terms of size wise, 10 parks are classified as NA as natural areas for a total of 1,391. So the majority of our parks are actually natural areas and the majority of our parks are Mento Brown. So Mento Brown accounts for 1,216 acres of our park system. The city also has 119 acres of golf course which is called the olive color and another 109 acres of cemetery that I know of. Uh that is the other one. So wildlife habitat. The city has no demarcated wildlife habitat. It's not something that the city has looked at. The department of state lands has designated a number of our streams as um essential salmon habitat. that includes uh of course the Wamoth but also Mil Creek the mouth of Pringle Creek and um Glenn Creek uh and a little bit of the north west Little Pudding River. Westport Little Pudding River also has is also part of the Salmon. I just want to briefly mention Lace and Pods probably included them as important. This is a very small area uh in Salem. It's about 400 I say it's about 400 acres of lakes and ponds. Um our legs as we know are mostly man-made gravel the result of gravel mining operations. The ponds are a little bit different. These tend to be associated with low areas wetlands and flood planes. Uh the importance about ponds is just they have a unique ecological function that are not taken up uh by lakes or wetlands

themselves. Uh so I wanted to point those out for the committee. So I tried to aggregate this. The real challenge in kind of looking at these numbers is that they're they overlay each other. Uh so if you count them up, you're going to get a very large number that's not in fact an accurate representation. So I tried my best here to um look at uh what we're really talking about what what are the numbers that we're looking at and so we took the area taken up by the Wamtt River the streams and the repairarian buffers the wetlands that we know of uh the flood planes and ponds and lakes we get about 10,000 acres uh that's about 16% of sale uh so that I think when we talk about land preservation I think what we're looking this is what we're looking at and this is the map that I would encourage us to start with. Um and I think I had I want to go back to flood plane. One of the critical features in all of this is that a significant part of u of what I'm calling what we're calling significant environmental lands is flood plane lands. Um, in fact, a lot of the wetlands that we're looking at, a lot of the ponds and other areas that we're looking at, the repairarian areas, quarters we're looking at are also on flood planes. Um, and the fact is that 80% of flood planes are owned by the city of Salem. So, when we talk about buildable inventories, we're looking at what the impact of this is on housing and on building. Well, we can say that a significant part of the of our conversation does not impact the local lands because a significant portion of those are already owned by the city of Salem and flood planes. The state owns another 10% of those flood planes. Um, so overall 90% of the flood planes are not in are not in the buildable lands inventory. The other 10% I haven't categorized. So there will be a mixable private and publicly owned lands within

the within the flood planes. But I wanted to create kind of an outer boundaries on the conversation so that when we when we kind of have the debate about how to balance this, how to best balance development and housing and ecosystem services, we're dealing with um some more specific numbers. Again, even though these are estimates, I think they're accurate in terms of order of magnitude. Let me move forward. So, um so this kind of captures all of those areas. I haven't done a breakdown as what what of this is again owned by the city but we're looking at some percentage around 80% is owned by the city or state and this just know this does not include open spaces so that would be an addition although again half of the open space is island brown um and uh some of the other larger parks are also in flood planes which is why they were purchased to take up flood planes so specifically So finally I just want to raise the conservation opportunity areas. The state went through a long technical process with this with the large stakeholder process to identify areas around the state that they felt were excellent opportunities for conservation. Uh and they developed what are called conservation opportunity areas. Three of them intersect with Salem. Uh we have kind of the uh the lower Ankeny that's the Ankeny area that's about 3,00 sorry around 1500 acres with the midwam area which again is mostly M Island Brown that's about 1500 acres we have a tiny little bit up in Eola Hills in West Salem um that's around 5600 acres total so if we were to look at kind of where the states focus on again what I would point out is the significant overlap at least two of those with flood plane areas. But I think what we are looking at is a

is a discussion a future discussion around flood planes and conservation areas and buildable lands uh and how these pieces all fit together as well as uh urban grow urban growth boundary expansions. Uh one of the points about goal five and I think Mr. Urban mentioned this is that uh goal five does allow the city to compensate itself for lands designated as goal five. So while we take lands out of the buildable lands inventory, we can add them back in through the urban growth boundary. So moving to the conclusion here, this is uh push past your product awesome findings here. have I can't uh where's the phone?

Yeah.

Okay. Uh number one, Salem's land use policies contrary to our comprehensive plan are not aligned with state natural resource policies. Number two, Salem does not have a vision or integrated policy framework to preserve or manage our natural resources. Number three, natural resources other than the urban forest have no political or senior staff champions. Number four, planning and managing environmentally significant land are divided across several different city compartments. There is no quote owner. Number five, Salem's natural resources policy is by default compliance driven. Six, there is no citizen advisory committee or ongoing public engagement for natural resource management. And seven, regulated resources are quote permitted away.

And then if you could also do the recommendations for us. Number one, align Salem natural resource policies with Oregon land use goal number five and uh Oregon conservation strategy. Two, enact an environmentally significant lands ordinance. Three, manage environmentally significant lands for ecosystem services and natural habitat. Four, preserve environmentally significant lands through conservation easements, deed restrictions, or other legal mechanisms. Five, develop rehabilitation and management plans for each class of environmentally significant lands. Six, make best use of GIS capabilities to track and report on natural resource management. And seven, improve cross departmental planning and coordination among staff that set policy and manage natural resources.

That brings us to questions. This is by the way a photochrom. So I believe you are going to be fielding questions if any.

Okay. Do we have any questions? So the the concept is broad. Okay. Um, is it reasonable or appropriate or correct to say that you want to preserve and protect natural resources? And the short answer is yes.

Okay. the the devil is in the details and that is how do you reasonably accomplish that. Right? So, so one of the concerns that I have is that is that making a statement about the need for something is is simply a statement if there is no effective way to accomplish it. So the question that I would have and this is for an open question. Um how did you conceptualize that something regarding natural resources evaluation management uh documentation inventory etc. How would that be accomplished in the city of Salem? That's one question. And number two, what department in the city of Salem do you think would shoulder that task? Thank you. Thank you. Those are great. Good question. They're not comments. There were questions this time. They're like other at all, right?

Um, so I was just kind of curious. So if say going back to like 1999 and we adopted Lamb's whole five, would we be we have this conversation right now? I mean in the short answer I believe no we would have had this conversation 25 years ago.

So if we just stop it on either one and just say we're going to start doing five now like would we need to do anything else? Well, I I guess I think my understanding of the situation is that to enact goal five um this is sort of a way to do that and as commissioner stated the devil is in the details. So trying to enact goal five great I would love if we could just have that but how do we do that and how do we do it in a way that is quite frankly palatable to all the stakeholders that are involved here so that it can actually be achieved and it's not just um not just a statement that we're making saying hey I'd like to do this um and that's hard that's real hard um and I don't have a great answer but I think that that's I think that's what we're trying to part is have that discussion so that we can get to a u truly feasible proposal to enact go five.

Are we aware of any other cities in Oregon that have passed up this opportunity to adopt goal five and are now thinking about it?

Any others that have passed up the opportunity and are now thinking about it? Um I am not. I know of many cities that have also passed out working on this. I know many cities that did enact um regulations. You know, I would just add if I could uh I would add that um to enact five, which I think is one of the things that we need to do, we're going and and it would be very similar what we would have to do with something like this as well is we'd have to do an inventory for each one. uh we'd have to identify within each inventory what is significant of what we want to protect which may not be everything and then we'd have to go through you know a public process involving notification of the property owners that's a significant aspect to all this as well and my guess is the way that we would do it would be sequentially not all at once so um so that so I think we staged that over many years I think might be the case if we were to take another approach to And I think that also that this came out of some frustration that the goal that the original riparian inventory was taking many years and we were skeptical that it might actually be achieved and wanted to make sure we had alternative approaches if go if the the repairing inventory was not completed or pursued. As far as uh permitting goes, I mean it sounds like there are already a lot of groups in order to keep this stuff up because I mean I don't want to add unnecessary burden some kind of policy as a city to preserve our natural resources. I certainly don't want to double the time takes to develop a property all around

the city. There factor that's likely to be supplies every month that somebody would have to do this process most of them filtered out. Well, I think and and I'm not trying to organ, but I I think part of what uh was getting at the end there is that of the areas that would be plausibly designated as environmentally significant, most of it is owned by the city and the state. And so it really isn't going to affect a lot of developmental properties in the first place. And um and I believe the idea would probably be that it would have to um be inventoried and then selected somehow as environmentally significant. Um before we ever even have that discussion and it is a pretty small percentage uh of the cities we're estimating would would actually be affected anyway.

Um but but this is the beginning of that process and we don't know. I think that is the discussion we're trying to have, right? Is is what is that present and and how do we address that?

There is a couple of uh items in here that were uh raising concerns. Uh one of which is that um in the development activity that I've been involved in, uh we've always talked about a 50-foot setback or buffer. Um this uh document and the draft uh document uh discussed a 75 foot buffer buffer. Have any clarification on that one?

Um the 75 ft buffer exists today for the Wic River. That's where the 75T comes in. It's not it's not contemplated elsewhere.

Okay. because um all of the streams and ponds and everything else that I've been involved with as far as uh flood zones and floodways and and a variety of different classifications, I've only heard of the 50 foot. um knowing that the 75 ft uh buffer applies to uh Wand River only and not everything else uh is a huge step. Um the other thing is that the majority of the development ground that is uh lowline um adjacent to uh H waterway etc is normally toward the south in the in the uh let's say the Salem Air Force general area and and is not uh impacted through the the city uh perspective. There's there's there is a lot of industrial acreage that is impacted by this conversation. Um it is important that this I think if if there's going to be a discussion that it needs to be the the first priority needs to be the inventory and and once the inventory is complete then there is going to need to be a discussion with property owners uh regarding the impact of that inventory and potential classification

because one of the the things that I've been involved with is working actively with civil engineers through the development process as they address each component of the potential development. And and what uh really took me up short was all the new regulations regarding water quality that were layer upon layer of of requirements that had a a uh basic level of service requirement obligation commitment etc. And then when I did the new development, then we found that changing the use from what was there and was a much rougher situation to a much better quality situation that mitigated so many of the other industrial applications. Not only did I do that, but then I was obligated to do an additional level an additional level and additional level of of water treatment, purification, etc. of of of runoff going into a pond that I own, you know. So, so we were improving the situation and it just wasn't good enough. So the concern is that is that putting something like this into place is going to be another level of serious expense

that will challenge the viability of a project. I understand that point and I understand the point about the cost and the time and the labor involved in the applications. I think one of the things I hope that one of the outcomes uh if this advances the length is that again we're we're talking about not developing instead of developing a less intensive level. So if there's not development that's occurring there's not the application there's not the test is not developed. Um, so that's just a very different sort of approach.

Okay. So, so then that begs the question, if I've purchased a property that is properly zoned that is is appraised, evaluated by Marian County Tax Assessor and I have been charged property taxes for the property as it is and that may or may not be in a flood zone, etc., etc. at the if this were to encroach into that area that could or could not be developed, then that is a taking. Well, I should defer to some of my lawyer friends here, but it it is a taking when it um doesn't have an appropriate nexus in public. So, there's a test to it. So yes, we have to be careful that as we look at this from a land parcel by parcel perspective that it would pass, you know, the Nolan Dolan test on all of this. But we know for example that the 50-foot safe harbor for repairing areas passes that test. It's there is a safe harbor.

Y

so um I think as we go through this process part of that conversation needs to be had. Well, I I think that the mapping an accurate mapping and inventory is part and parcel to this concept. And then once that inventory occurs, then you can initiate a conversation about how to uh categorize, evaluate, protect those sensitive areas. Okay. I think you can do them both at the same time, but I certainly think that we don't want to have legislation to be on the map. I I think that initiating conversation about how you're going to handle sensitive property before you've identified what the sensitive property is is going to be a problem. Okay? And and the reason is that if somebody is in the process of developing a a piece of property and and you come in with a comment and say, "Wait, there may be a sensitive area, that's going to be legal problems for the city." And and that's what that's what we should be sensitive to is the question of of enforcement that comes after the identification. Okay. Other questions? Mr. Heler, you have any comments? I guess if Robert wants to wrap this up shortly.

Do you have any comments? No. Okay. You sure? Any comments?

Just just one uh I hear a lot of concerns about individual pieces of command and really what what this um concept is all about is the city as a whole and how these pieces are interconnected. And so when you chip away at one piece of land at a time, you chip away at the system. And that's why we have water quality problems. That's why we have habitat loss and all of these environmental issues. It's a cumulative cumulative impact. Um, so I just wanted to throw that idea. I haven't heard that bounced around too much. Um, just wanted to throw that.

All right. Thank you. Do you want to just take us home? Okay. Well, I was going to say hearing hearing no other questions. Is that correct? No other questions and comments, we will uh close up the agenda item. Aa wetlands. Did Commissioner Rose have anything? No. Okay. Uh well subcommittee discussion. All right. Very good.

Somewhere in order. Uh so we're going to open item number nine report. Sure, we can see my mic on. Yes. Okay. Um, the only thing I have to note is our December 23rd meeting is cancelled was requested, right? Happy holidays. Um, and we don't have any items yet for the January 13th meeting. We do plan to have a wetland subcommittee meeting on the 13th. Okay. Um, in this room immediately following planning commission if we have a planning commission meeting. If that meeting ends up being cancelled, the wetlands will meet at the city offices.

It's important to get a clear communication out about that. We will. Yes, we will get that clearly out. Um, so we still have a few more weeks before we know for sure if we'll have items for January 13th. And we hope our members of the public do join us either way. That's all I have. And this is Jen's last meeting. Oh, mission. So, thank you, Jen, for your work. It's It's a pause for your future, not your last. Exactly. Thank you. Anything else before we turn? All right.