City-wide Land-Use

Meeting Minutes

February 2000

The meeting began at 7:05 PM with introductions.

Margaret Mahoney, Director of the Office of Planning and Development Review, (OPDR) gave an introduction and overview of the evenings discussion and tour.

The first presentation of the evening was made by Rick Schute who has been leading the implementation of the new GIS system (Geographical Information System) for OPDR. He gave several examples of potential usage such sewer line estimates, zoning information, actual overhead view of property footprint and property information. The policies over which information is available via the web page versus in OPDR’s building is still being worked out but there is a wealth of information available.

Questions included:

Will transportation systems be included? (yes)

Related-what about streets that are on paper but not for real on the street? (will be available)

How much history will be included? (as much as time allows for updating and adding)

This system will be available on limited functionality within one month and it is being tied in directly with TRACS, the database for OPDR also.

Margaret then introduced Bonnie Morris who led a tour of the OPDR offices and work areas.

Upon completion of the tour, the group reconvened and spent the last 25 minutes discussing the potential options available for the future of this group. Several issues were listed in the agenda provided in advance by Amanda Fritz. Tom explained that it has been mostly a committee of one with staff support through ONI and other bureaus for providing speakers. He has been able to maintain effective speakers because informally, people ask for topics to be on the agenda. Ultimately his goal is to see a plan developed with a committee deciding what steps to take, what agenda to have and other such activities.

Topics from the original agenda were:

Good neighbor agreements
Title 34 continued discussion
OS Zone (problem with the same zone covering paved areas as well as EP zones)
Reviewing the E zone development standards to see if they are working or not.
The Willamette Greenway update
Code Maintenance 2000 (and the old Code language improvement (CLIP)

Ideas that came up at the meeting included:

Stream corridors
Strategic planning-visioning (how NA’s want to see Portland grow)
Row house design/narrow lots
Open Space, especially in light of Civic Stadium related policy changes
Endangered Species Act
Portland Future Focus
ONI staff led discussions/training (such a Land Use 101)
Lessons learned from neighborhood issues
Transportation issues

Debate occurred over whether this body should be lobbying and coordinating citywide NA positions or whether it should be educational and for networking

Another submission was from Lynne Coward:

Part 1
1. Orientation of new land use chairs of neighborhood associations
List of reference documents-codes, plans including the interrelationships of these documents. How to access the above. How to research public decisions on a given piece of property
2. Directory of bureau contacts that specifically handle land use
3. Existence and relationship of Metro and other entities that impact land use decisions
4. Brief presentation on the existing plans and their hierarchy
5. Role of the Planning and the Design Review Commissions, directory of members, meetings times and policies
6. Discussion of hypothetical cases to illustrate complete process, from sub-divisions to zoning to design review. Include timing and what is required at each point.
Part 2
Develop a web page where neighborhood associations (and other civic groups, individuals, etc) can post current issues, requests for information and comments. Here could be links to other web sites with planning as a focus. This site should also have a potential for conferencing and building a common document.

Note takers editorial: The citywide land use committee has a web page at www.neighborhoodlink.com\cwlu