Applicant Final Argument - Laserfiche WebLink

Eugene Hearing Official November 23, 2015 Page 14 apply for approval under the alternative, discretionary track." That position is contrary to the statute. It is the very same position that LUBA rejected in Home Builders when it tanked the stormwater standard. As LUBA explained in Group B, every needed housing applicant needs to be able to find a way through the clear and objective standards to an approval. b. The statute requires that each developer of needed housing is entitled to a path to approval under clear and objective standards, not that some developers are entitled to such a path. The city's final spin is that only some developers of needed housing need to have a path to development, not all of them. The City cites no authority for this proposition. If one entertains this thought, it leads to an obvious question - How many developers of needed housing would it be OK for the City to prohibit from a clear and objective path to development approval? Taking as an example the stormwater standard that LUBA struck down, how about if the City had readopted that original standard, exempted out the drainage basins in northeast quadrant of the City, but left that prohibition in place everywhere else. Here the City is suggesting that would be OK under the statute. Not likely. The City can't suggest why that would be so. 6. The potential to file five separate partition applications in three consecutive rounds in order to escape the 19 Lot Rule also does not comply with the Needed Housing Statute because it unreasonably increases the costs and delays the provision of needed housing. At the hearing, in their oral remarks, Staff asserted that the site could be developed by partitions under the Needed Housing Track, avoiding a PUD, and thereby avoiding the 19 Lot Rule. The undersigned was skeptical in the moment, asserting that a PUD would be needed, subjecting development to the 19 Lot Rule. On closer review of the code, Staff is correct. Staff elaborated on the availability of the Needed Housing Partition option at pages 3-4 of their November 12 memorandum. As the Staff Memo explains, a partition of up to three parcels that does not create a street can be done with a "Needed Housing" partition, outside of the PUD process, which would avoid the 19 Lot Rule. In order to get to the same development proposed here, the applicant would need to go through the partition process five times in three successive rounds. The first partition would create three parcels. The second round would request three more partitions, that is three more applications - one creating three parcels from each of the initial three parcels. That would get the applicant to nine parcels. One more partition round would be needed to get to ten parcels; one of the nine parcels would be divided in two. Put differently, the Staff is saying that the applicant could get to where it proposes to go here (the creation of ten buildable lots under clear and objective standards) by filing five separate partition applications instead of one PUD application and the related subdivision application. It is important to note that, under the code, both a PUD and a partition have two discrete steps - a tentative approval, and then a final approval. Additional tentative applications on a subject property cannot be submitted until the final approval application has been approved.