Eugene weekly., August 07, 2003, Page 12, Image 12

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12 AUGUST 7, 2003
BY ALAN PITTMAN
True
Customers
Who should the city work for,
developers or citizens?
T
he city recently paid $25,000 for a re-
port that focuses on better serving de-
velopers as the city’s “customers.”
“Governmental performance is measured
by customer satisfaction,” says the 49-page re-
port by San Diego consultant Paul Zucker.
“The community perception is that Eugene is
a hard place to get things done, i.e., it is anti-
business.”
Zucker offered dozens of recommenda-
tions on how the city could speed permits to
developers and be more “flexible” in enforc-
ing laws designed to protect the environment,
quality of life and public safety. “Planners
should take a problem solving role rather than
a regulatory role” toward developers, Zucker
said. The end goal should be “standing around
the completed project singing Kumbaya.”
But at a recent council meeting to review
the report, no one sang Kumbaya. Councilor
Betty Taylor said the city should focus on citi-
zens, not developers, as its true customers.
“What are planners for?” Taylor asked. “Are
they there to satisfy the needs of the commu-
nity, or are they there to satisfy developers as
quickly as possible?”
Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey, elected with
record-breaking donations from developers,
said the city should do more to serve develop-
ers. “We have a problem on this council that
somehow developers are bad and other people
aren’t,” Torrey said.
But Councilor Bonny Bettman responded,
“Nobody thinks developers are bad. The ques-
tion is how much they should dominate the
process.”
Zucker acknowledged Taylor’s concerns.
“There’s a danger to say the customer is the
developer,” he told the council. “Many of the
customers are residents, businesses, persons in
this city who simply want to carry on with
their life.”
But Zucker’s report focuses heavily on de-
velopers rather than citizens as the city’s cus-
tomers. In writing the report, Zucker met with
only five citizens or homeowners, but met
with 16 people representing the development
industry.
The small portion of the report devoted to
citizen concerns notes that they feel commu-
nity interests are underrepresented in the plan-
ning department, city staff do not return calls
or provide information when asked, staff
spend too much time with developers, the city
has failed to comply with state requirements to
protect natural habitats, and citizens were not
part of earlier customer service efforts.
The Zucker report comes on the heels of a
$22,000 business climate survey this spring
that also focused on developer concerns to the
exclusion of the broader community. The sur-
vey found that at least some businesses view
Eugene as anti-business. But the unscientific
study had only a 19 percent response rate and
couldn’t conclude that a majority of local busi-
nesses were critical of the city climate.
That some developers don’t like popular
regulations is nothing new in Eugene. In 1996,
the
city’s
comprehensive
Growth
Management Study found citizens favored
more regulations to protect water quality and
natural habitats by scores of 70 or more out of
100. The Chamber of Commerce gave such
new environmental regulations a zero priority.
Zucker said “increasing flexibility” in the
planning code was his top recommendation,
but councilors questioned how that could be
done.
Councilor Scott Meisner noted that devel-
opers had just successfully appealed the city’s
updated land use code by arguing that it was
too vague and didn’t include clear and objec-
tive standards.
Councilor Nancy Nathanson said the city
should have taken a different, outcome-based
approach to regulating development during its
massive code update over the past five years.
“It’s too bad we spent so many months and
years and dollars getting to this.”
‘ No bo dy t h i nk s d ev el o pe r s
a re b a d . Th e q u es t i on i s
h o w mu c h t h ey s ho u ld
d o mi n at e t he p r o ce s s .’
— Bo nn y Be t t m an
Zucker noted that the city’s land use code
update project had failed in one of its major
goals. “The original intent of a new code was
to streamline and simplify. However, the result
has been the opposite.”
But overhauling the code at this point
would be a “huge project,” Councilor David
Kelly said. “Where are the staff resources to
do that?”
The Zucker report noted that many citizens
and developers felt that the planning depart-
ment was understaffed. But the report did not
analyze whether the staffing level was adequate
compared to other cities or to the work load.
“I don’t know that we could ever fully staff
the requirements of our code,” said city
Planning and Development Director Tom
Coyle. He said the department needs twice as
many planners.
One source of funding for more planners
may be to stop subsidizing permits for devel-
opers. The Zucker report noted that developer
application fees cover only about half the staff
cost of reviewing the applications. “In a time
of staff shortage, it may be useful to look at
this situation,” the report said.
Bettman faulted the study for focusing on
complaints from developers rather than an
analysis of what the optimum staffing level for
the department would be.
Councilor Taylor said the city could have
better spent its money on an independent per-
formance audit of the planning department’s
efficiency rather than paying Zucker $8,000 a
day for his three-day visit to the city.
In all, Zucker found Eugene’s Planning
Department “generally well run” with staff “a
cut above what we normally see.”
Zucker didn’t have the same thing to say
about the quality of local developers. He noted
that it was “unusual” for them to submit com-
plete applications for building permits. Last
year, for example, only four out of 13 subdivi-
sion applicants and three out of 35 partition
applicants provided complete applications for
their permits.
ew