City Council, March 28th - Getting to Yes

Earlier this month in an opinion piece published in the paper, Planning Commissioner Michael Slater encapsulated our approval process and underscored it was not adversarial:

Salem’s land-use process, which derives from Oregon law, is designed to “get to yes.” The legal and administrative structure is set up to help the landowner gain approval for their application....the city can’t say no. It is required to help the applicant succeed.

Commissioner Slater earlier this month

On Monday Council has three items in various states of process that illustrate this.

The new Staff Report and Recommendation on the revised proposal for the Meyer Farm development immediately expresses the impulse to "get to yes." The revised proposal reduces the total number of lots from 139 to 126 and "results in the preservation of 11 more significant trees." Consequently the Staff Recommendation is to

Affirm the Planning Administrator’s decision approving phased subdivision tentative plan case no. SUB21-09 with the applicant’s proposed modifications dated March 9, 2022 and the additional conditions of approval in this report.

This will not be popular.

No change in concept, just deletion of lots
(yellow added)

The revised plan looks like trying for the minimum. They didn't try to rethink the concept at all. The plan retains the street layout and devotion to lot sizes for single detached housing, and simply deletes a number of the lots that overlapped with significant trees. (But are 126 or 125 lots remaining? There's an oddity in the count, though that might just be the "remainder parcel.")

It will be interesting to see whether Council can find additional reason to press for further modification or whether the requirement, as Commissioner Slater says, to "get to yes" ends the thing now for Council. (Though an appeal to LUBA seems likely no matter what.)

Here are some other interesting notes, but of much lesser direct relevance of course.

One citizen, an interested party to the disputed Meyer trust it should be noted, proposes a design alternative to save even more trees. We should be talking more about road design speed, and this drawing highlights the curves as a central ingredient. It may not be possible to shoehorn this in now, but as the City turns to an update to the TSP, this may be an interesting case study for more analysis and debate for our approach to collector streets and other larger streets.

A citizen "reasonable design alternative"

With the new Audubon facility out at Ankeny in the news earlier this year, it is interesting to note the signature of County Clerk "Max Gehlhar" on this 1913 plat. Mark Gehlar, whose benefaction substantially funded the center, was Max's child I believe (the historical record shows some variation in the spelling of the name). The Stoltz and Westacott families, involved in various fermentation businesses, are also named. Though recency itself is an important ingredient here, the late 19th and early 20th century history is better documented than any earlier Waldo part and may be more significant for the actual development of Salem.

County Clerk Max Gehlhar signed the 1913 plat

As debate on the Meyer Farm has developed, with focus on trees rather thanon  history, talk of any historical significance for the Waldo settlement has disappeared. People have lost interest or the significance turned out to be smaller than initially claimed.

Two more Big Land Use Items

There are two appeals, but one is merely advance notice and the other a recommendation to continue the matter out to May. These also illustrate the situation of "getting to yes."

Revised concept plan (yellow added)

On the Kuebler Village zoning application, just east of the new Costco, the Staff Recommendation is to "open the public hearing, take no testimony, and continue until May 9, 2022, to allow Staff and the public adequate time to review the new proposal." There will be more to say later. The project now has its own City web page. And here, some previous notes: "Another Contested Development Proposal at 27th and Kuebler" and "Losing our Way on Climate: Casino and Kuebler Village Move Forward." 

State and Cordon designated Commercial (2019)

New proposal for Apartments (2022 inset)

Separately, a proposal to reconfigure part of the Mushroom Plant redevelopment is just an information item. The Hearings Officer had denied a conditional use on the southeast quadrant, at State and Cordon, of the new subdivision. It had been assigned a little commercial pod in the first iteration of the plan (top diagram). Now the developer is abandoning that and wants to put in apartments on the quadrant, which are not a by-right use, but are a conditional use, under the existing zoning (second diagram). The developer has appealed, and it seems likely Council will choose to review rather than let the Planning Commission handle it.

With direct connections via Cordon/Kuebler, the emerging commercial hub at Costco also could be siphoning away demand for a smaller commercial hub on the corner of State and Cordon. 

There will be more to say on this also, as it might be a case study in ways we do not yet have incentives or conditions aligned for Neighborhood Hubs to succeed. Even though this corner was not designated strictly speaking for change to a Hub, the commercial pod was like a hub, and as we have seen at Fairview and in West Salem with the NCMU site, the general concept has been very slow to take off.

Other Items

Another big item is of course that we have a new Councilor for Ward 8. Last week Micki Varney was appointed to finish out the term for former Councilor Lewis. Councilor Varney will now run this year as an incumbent for a full term starting in 2023. She'll be sworn in at the start of Monday's meeting.

The City has some budget adjustment, moving around some new funds, and one item it is pleasant to note is an unanticipated extra $350,000 in fines from photo enforcement of speed and red light violations. Some have criticized the move for photo enforcement as an unfair extraction of revenue from trivial speed violation, but the City should push back and note that a person has to be exceeding the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour to get cited and fined. That is not trivial speeding!

Bullets for the rest:

• A tree report. So much still on the ice storm from a year ago. There are interesting notes on analysis of aerial photography and tree canopy loss/gain, among other things in it.
  
• And finalizing the NESCA boundary change (previous note here)
  

Addendum, March 28th

In the final written statement by the applicant for the Meyer Farm proposal, they take aim at a number of objections saying that the City lacks "clear and objective" criteria, and therefore no deficiency can be identified that can function as grounds for denial.

Here is the subset on transportation.

Part of criticism about "clear and objective"

On other projects applicants have seemed to echo this criticism, claiming approval criteria are not "clear and objective," and it would interesting to see a discussion of this in general. Has the City purposefully adopted criteria with fudge-factor as a ploy in negotiations? Are the applicants simply blowing smoke, and criteria don't have to be "clear and objective"?

I do not know the answers, and we will likely return to this later.