HomeMy WebLinkAboutApproved Minutes - 2009-01-12•
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City of Lake Oswego d .
Planning Commission Minutes . ro'~'
~pP January 12, 2009 "
CALL TO ORDER
Chair Julia Glisson called the Phuming Commission IIleeting of Monday, Jc:mrney 12,
2009 to order at approximately 6:05 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall, at 380
"A'' A venue, Lake Oswego, Oregon.
II. ROLL CALL
Ill.
Members present were Chair Glisson, Vice Chair Philip Stewart and Con:unissioners
Adrianne Brockman, Scot Siegel* and Alison Webster.
Staff present were Sidaro Sin, Senior Planner; Denise Frisbee, Planning and Building
Services Director; Sarah Selden, Neighborhood Planner; Evan Boone, Deputy City
Attom~y and Iris Treinen, Administrative Support.
*Commissioner Siegel arrived at approximately 6:20 p.m .
CITIZEN COMMENT
None.
IV. MINUTES
Commissioner Brockman moved to approve the Minutes of October 27, 2008, as
corrected. Colllffiissioner Stewart seconded the motion and it passed 3:0.
Commissioner Webster recused herself and Commissioner Siegel was not present.
Commissioner Brockman moved to_ approve • ili:e. Minutes of November 10; 2008.
Commissioner Stewart seconded the motion alld'it passed 4:0. Commissioner Siegel was
not present. \
V. PUBLIC HEARINGS
Community Development Code Amendments
A request from the City of Lake Oswego for amendments to the Community
Development Code (CDC) and an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan. (Continued
from September 22 and 29, 2008; October 13, 2008: November 10 and 24, 2008 and
December 8, 2008) ..
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of J~,inuary 12, 2009 Page 1 ofS
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Ordinance 2525, LU 08-0052, CDC .. General Housekeepipg Amendments
Amends portions of the Coinrtlumty Development Code, Chapter 50, for the purpose of
clarification, correction, formatting, and updating sections. Proposed updates pertain to
the following topics: Definitions, the master plant list, uses, map administration, setbacks,.
structure heights, accessory structures, dwelling design, commercial development
standards and requirements, accessory and temporary uses, flag lots, vision clearance,
exceptions, special standards, flood management area, building design, open space,
landscaping, access, on-site circulation, street connectivity, street lights, downtown
redevelopment district standards, Old Towil.neighborhood design standards, W~st Lake
Grove district standards, variances, conditional uses, and procedural requirements. Staff
coordinator is Dei1Ilis Egner, Long Range Planning Manager.
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Comprehensive Plan Update -Periodic Review I Visioning (PP 08 .. 0012)
A proposal by the City to update the Comprehensive Plan through the state-required
periodic review process a,nd the City-initiated visionjng process. The Comprehensive
Plan is the basis for all land use plai1Iling and growth management actions in Lake
Oswego. The City is requesting consideration and approval of the proposed evaluation
and work program.
Chair Glisson opened the public hearing and explained the applicable procedure and
criteria. She then invited public testimony.
Public Testimony
(Related to Both LU 08.,;0052 and PP 08-0012)
Sherry Finnigan, 128 Condolea Drive, representing the Lake Oswego Neighborhood
Action Coalition <LONAC), read aloud a letter from LONAC that discussed priorities
adopted by LONAC membership on January 3, 2009. !he organization wanted highest
priority placed on timely adoption of neighborhood plans and overlays and infill
development standards. LONAC recoinrtlended limiting current work on the Community
Development Code (CDC) to only the most basic ''housekeeping" amendments and
deferring others until there could be a public examination .of land use goals and policies.
The group advised that . the City could not afford an elaborate community-visioning
project and should rely on existing plans, reports and stud_ies. After goals and policies
had been adopted, the City should completely rewrite the CDC. ·
During the questioning period, Commissioner Webster wondered wh~1.t LONAC m.eant by
"public examination'; · l:f they did not support a visioning program. Commissioner
Brockman related that she had attended the LONAC meeting and liilderstood the group
felt that visioning could come later, and current efforts should focus on what the City
already knew from. past efforts and citizen involvement She reported that LONAC had
involved many people in fashioning the recommendation. Ms. Finnigan said members
felt the City did not have time to begin an 18-month visioning process. When asked, she
confirmed that visioning should come after a complete rewrite of the CDC, if at all. She
said she believed the reports the City already had were fresh enough, especially the
Quality of Life Indicators Report, which she .had helped write, and which had itself been a
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of January 12, 2009 Page 2 of8
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kind of visioning process. She acknowledged that she had not seen the most recent staff
report (dated .December 22, 2008) that offered more options about how to integrate a
visioning process into the periodic review process. She and Commissioner' Brockman
estimated there had been at least 35 people at the LONAC meeting from 15 to 18
neighborhoods.
*Commissioner Siegel joined the meeting.
Chair Glisson closed public testimony on LU 08-0052, General Housekeeping
Amendments. Vice Cha:ir Stewart moved to continue LU 08 ... 0052 to February 23, 2009.
Commissioner Webster seconded the motion and it passed 5:0.
Comprehensive Plan Update/Periodic Review Process
Sidaro Sin, Senior Planner, presented the staff report. He asked the Planning
Commission to recommend a work program for the City Council to consider and forward
to the State Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD). He advised
tha:t periodic review was a state requirement. He recalled the Planning Coinniission had
originated the idea of using a visioning process to help the City Council establi!>h
community policy the Planning Commission could base their recommendations on. He
pointed out the staff report listed issues and discussed input received in public meetings,
from board and commission members and from the City Council. It offered options
related to the process. He suggested visioning would provide the foundation and
direction for the City for decades to come, but he acknowledged the City could choose to
use some other, less-intensive, public process .
Mr. Sin pointed out that the staff report listed some "hot" community issues that had been
identified by Planning Commissioners as high priority items. It went on to offer three
timeline/workflow options showing when the three . components -visioning, periodic
review, and addressing community issues -were to be addressed. Jie recalled the
Commissioners had expressed concern about the length of the process staff had
previously proposed. He advised the DLCD typically wanted the periodic review process
completed within three years, but they supported lengthening it to incorporate a visioning
process. He explained staff had to compile the necessary background infori11~tion and
reports that supported the process early in the process. When asked, Mt. Sin Suggested it
was better to determine community values in a visioning process before addressing
community issues, including neighborhood planning. Cpmmissioner Siegel recalled the
Planning Commission had recommended that City Council not halt neighborhood
planning, but continue with the plans already underway and with gathering infortnation
necessary to fashion new plans.
The Commissioners wanted to know if the City had the staffing resources to work on all
three tracks at once. Denise Frisbee, Planning and Building Services Director,
confirmed that visioning would require more staffing resot.Jrces, and that it would be up to
the City Council to decide to budget for it. She encouraged the Planning Commission to
suggest which option and "fall-back" option they thought was best. She agreed they
could suggest narrowing the scope of the visioning process to a few critic~! areas .
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of January 12, 2009 Page 3 of8
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Public Testimony
Richard Reamer, 398 Furnace Street,. Chair. of .the .Old _Town Neighborhood
Association, asked the Planning Commission to protect neighborhood character during
periodic review and the Comprehensive Plan update. He stressed that Old Town already
carried their share of the density burden and infill had become an excuse for higher
density and sacrificing lot lines, scale and setbacks ..
Jean Baumann, 17 Aquinas Street, Chair of the Sustainability Advisory Board
(SAB), encouraged the Planning Commission to focus on planning for the future and to
use the SAB as a resource during the process. She said the SAB was about to develop ~
community sustainability plan and she suggested that process could be synchronized with
the Comprehensive Plan update process because the elements of the Comprehensive Plan
all had sustainability aspects to them. She reported that SAB members had been assigned
to serve as liaisons to other City boards and commissions. Ms. Baumann encoUraged the
City to both revisit all existing plans in order to find common threads and look at the
broader horizon for new things not seen before.
Carolyn Krebs, 16925 Denney Court, Vice Chair of the Lake Forest Neighborhood
Association, said the Association board had voted unanimously to oppose spending
money and staff time on new visioning efforts when the money would be better spent
implementing existing plans, such as the Lake Grove Village Center Plan and the plan to
connect sidewalks l:llong C~an Drive. She cautioned the Planning Commission not to
consider recortunending the work plan staff suggested without knowing the estimated cost
and that there would be good project management. During the questioning period, she
clarified that she and many others in the community fully expected the City to continue
neighborhood plaililirtg. She said the Lake Forest Neighborhood Association did not
support visioning, but they understood the need to conduct periodic review. She said her
neighborhood plan had sustainability elements in it.
Mr. Sin related that staff bad some prelimi11ary cost estimates, but they needed to know
what the City wanted the scope of work to be before they presented a cost estimate. He
estimated the periodic review component of the work plan would cost about $775,000.
He said staff was looking into the possibility of paying for some of th~t work updating the
transportation system plan, with a $300,000 Transportation Growth Management (TOM)
grant from ODOT and a technical assistance grant from the DLCD to do other required
periodic review work. He said they believed that a full-blown visioning program could
cost $200,000 to $250,000. He agreed the City should consider existing neighborhood
plans and other plans, but he advised that they were plans for specific geographic
locations and purposes, and a visioning process had a broader community focus.
Ken Sandblast, 4 Falstaff Street, advised the Planning Commiss_ion that tbey had an
obligation as an advisory committee to help the City Council define the meaning, scope
and structure of "visioning." He advised that the City was suffering froiil a lack of
process and might otherwise continue in an endless reinventing cycle that would never
meet public expectations. He said all the technical reports to support periodic review had
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of January 12, 2009 Page 4 of8
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to begin early, so that information could be used to fashion policy. He agreed that lots of
work had al.ready been done and there were many existing reports and plans that could be
used. He said he planned to submit ideas about how to structure visioning in writing so
the Commissioners could consider them at their next meeting.
Carolyne Jones,. 2818 Poplar Way, cautioned that the City should not focus so
completely on visioning that it missed changes happening in real time. One example was
that the City was focusing on a clean water plan while residents in her neighborhood
needed stormwatet drains to address erosion.
Staff asked the Planning Commission to recommend the evaluation and work program to
the City Council. The Con'liliissioners wanted more time to fashion a recommendation.
So111e recall~d that it ha,d been the Plruming Commission that had originally suggested th~
idea of using a visioning process to fashion City Council policies that would offer
guidance to the Planning Commission regarding matters such as what was expected from
neighborhood plans (llld if dem~ity was to be distributed throughout the City or
concentrated in centers and along transportation routes. At that time they had called it
"visioning lite" because it was to pinpoint certain issues. One of those issue$ was th~1t
different neighborhoods had different ideas about what should be in a neighborhood plan
and typically resisted accommodating more density in their neighborhood. The City :
Council had subsequently broadened the scope of visioning.
The Commissioners agreed to spend more time fashioning a recommendation with a
narrower scope that would serve Planning Commission decisions. They acknowledged
the City Council could again decide to broaden the scope and pay the cost of a full
visioning program. The Commissioners' "bottom line" was to do visioning related to the
most burning community issues and that would help the City move fotwatd With periodic
review. Questions could be tailored to things that related directly to that purpose. Some
felt it did not have to be a sepa,rat~ process and it did not have to cost so much, because
asking for public input and examining options had been part of every planning effort. For
example, the Affordable Housing Task Force report had described problems and
suggested different ways to deal with the111. The Planning Commission could compare
completed plans to find "common threads;' to discuss in a transparent public process. It
was important to prioritize what was vetted because the cost of public outreach was of
concern, Commissioner Siegel observed that a recession was an opportune time to do
that. Mr. Sin confirmed there were fewer pre-application conferences being scheduled.
Chair Glisson observed the technical work needed to be started soon and that information
would be useful in finding common threads. She anticipated that staff could give the
Commissioners a refined work plan and budget estimate after the Commissioners defined
the visioning process. She cautioned that visioning should not be put off too long,
because the City needed to take a comprehensive look a:t the <;omniunity after they were
done addressing the "hot" issues.
The Coininissione:rs agteed an effective visioning process would be a structured process
with a narrower focus. lf the City Council decided to expand it, the Plaliiling
Commission might ask tha:t visioning regarding land use planning issues be broken out
into a separate process. A. community-wide vision related to housing and density would
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of .January 12, 2009 Page 5 of8
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guide neighborhood planning. Meanwhile, the Planning Coinniissiort would .continue to
move forward with the work in progress related to CDC housekeeping amendments, infill
and sensitive lands amendments, and neighborhood plans. They acknowledged they
might have to revisit infill amendments after the visioning process. They would work on
the hot community issues and periodic review, regardless of whether or not visioning was
done.
The Commissioners asked staff to research the visioning processes that other cities had
used, including their scope and cost. Cm:nmissioner Siegel advised that "v~sioning lite"
could be accomplished Within a year. He advised that planning and visioning could be
integrated into one coordinated effort, and it would not be necessary to spend $250,000
on the visioning program. He also observed that making the code more readable and
understandable did not rely on visioning. When asked if the vision was to be for 20 or 50
years in the future, staff said tb~ Planning · Commission could decide what period to
recoinmend. The Commissioners plahned to talk about where to "draw the line" if the
City had to match the scope of the visioning program to limited resources. Chair Glisson
observed the Commissioners were inclined to favor Option-3, with some IJ10di_fications,
but they wanted to continue to discuss it at their next meeting.
Mr. Sin sUiilmarized that th~ Commissioners wanted to do whatever was required to
accomplish periodic review, and that meant staff had to complete the technical
background reports. The Commissioners would focus on the hot co:n:utJwrity issues and
continue the work in progress on infill, sensitive lands and code update amendments, and
neighborhood planning. They wanted the benefit of staff research about the processes
used in other jurisdictions, and the cost to those cities, in order to define a narrower-scope
visioning process to recommend to the City Council. They understood it was possible
that the City Council would expand it, but they wanted to recommend the nlliTOWer scope
process as the minimum necessary to help them with Plahning Commission work.
Sarah Selden, Neighborhood Planner, clarified that staff never. intended to stop the
processes currently tmdetway to addtess coiilm'uhity issues in any option. Staff assured
the Commissioners that in ~1 3 options the processes would b~ designed ~th a level of
integration to ensure coordination amongst projects. The Commissioners observed that
the SAB could provide input on Plahhing Commission work whether or not there was a
visioning process. Some suggested breaking community issues into smaller pieces to
work on. M_r. Sin anticipated sU:lff would have the background reports that informed the
processes done in fall 2009 and then the public outreach program could be rolled out.
Part of that background research would. be to review existing plans and studies. He
anticipated that he would retu,m to the Planning Commission with an outline for a
narrower-scope visioning process, with better cost estimates, and to report whether the
DLCD would help the City with the cost of technical assistance. Commissioner
Brockman suggested using cable access TV to engage the public.
Cmtun.issioner Brockman moved to continue PP 08-0012 to Januarv 26. 2009 in order to
define the visioning pro9ess. Com.missioner Webster seconded the motion and it passed
5:0. The Comll1issioners plafiiled to take public testimony at that meeting.
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes ofJanua:ty 12, 2009 Page 6 of8
• Chair Glisson announced a five-minute break in the meeting and thereafter reconvened it.
VI. WORK SESSION
Communitv Development Code Amendments. A request from the City of Lake
Oswego ·for ameiuhnents ·to the Co:mmwrity Development Code (CDC) and an
amendment to the Comprehensive Plan.
Ordinance 2523, LU 08•0053, Comprehensive Plan -New Infill Policies. Adds
policies in support of overlay zones for neighborhood plans and residential design review.
Ordinance 2524, LlJ 08-0053, Community Development Code-Intill Amendments.
Amends portions, of the CbC, Ch~pter 50, for the purpose of enhancing the compatibility
of infill development and clarification. Proposed updates pertain to the following topics:
lot coverage, maximUIIl floor ~ea, stn:tcture design, setback planes, y~d setbacks, sloped
lots, residential infill design review, variances, non-conforming uses, duplexes and
attached dwellings, flag lots, and serial partitions.
The Plartrting Commission agreed to postpone the work session so they could discuss it
when the Long Range Plaru.ring Manager was present at their next meeting on January 26,
2009.
VII. OTHER BUSINESS -PLANNING COMMISSION
• 2009 Planning Commission Goals
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Chair Glisson was scheduled to present "2009 Planning Commission Goals/Status
Report" to the City Council the following evening. She asked the Commissioners to
examine and comment on the document she had drafted. She said she would ask the City
Council to appoint a Councilor to serve on the Neighborhood Planning Work Group. The
Commissioners recalled they now considered community visionJng (with 1:t narrower
scope) one aspect of periodic review, Commissioner Brockman wanted the City to hire
mote neighborhood pla.nners to speed up the process of fashioning neighborhood plan,s~
The Commissioners recalled they still bad to decide which Buildable Lands Inventory
housing mea,surement option to recommend. They recalled they intended to continue to
move forward with CDC amendments, starting with the easier, "housekeeping,''
amendments, but completing the update of the CDC could take more than a ye~ because
. the Commissioners had to work on periodic review, and because it might be affected by
the timing and scope of another goal to audit and rewrite the CDC. Commissioner Siegel
suggested asking the City Council ifthey wanted to expedite the reWrite.
The Commissioners considered . work related to Lake Grove Village Center Plan
implementation. Chair Glisson observed that the City Council had narrowed the Boones
Ferry Refinement study to just the transportation aspect of it and they expected that to be
done this year. The Commissioners anticipated that other area,s of the City besides the
Lake Grove Village Center might also want a stylebook to guide design. Commissioner
Brockman reported that LONAC would lobby to make the CCI a sewate body. The
City of Lake Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of January 12, 2009 Page 7 of8
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Commissioners observed they had not yet been asked to make a recommendation about
the Stafford area, or develop a "Stafford vision plan." Commissioner Webster observed
the list did not include other work the Planning Commission had discussed doing for
years, such as considering a lakefront zone. Mr. Boone recalled Palisades planned to test
a smalllakefront zone.
Team Building
Chair Glisson announced there were five applicants to fill vacant' Planning Commission
positions and they Were to be interviewed the following week. The Cominissioners
agreed to p~icipate in a "team building" work session.
Vtli. OtHER BUSINESS-COMMISSION FOR CITIZEN lNVOLVEMENT
None.
IX. ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the Planning Commission, Chair Glisson
adjourned the meeting at 9:25 p.m.
City of La,ke Oswego Planning Commission
Minutes of January 12, 2009
Respectfully submitted,
Q~
Iris Treinen
Administrative Support
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