Eugene Hearings Official <br />October 12, 2016 <br />Page 6 <br />September 21 hearing submittals, including the four maps. This is plainly obvious, too, for the <br />GIS data used by the opponents. <br />Whether the Hearings Official uses the applicant's precise survey data or the opponents' <br />imprecise GIS data, he must choose whether to (a) fit the property to less than all the referents or <br />(b) to use all the referents and fit the property in a way that matches none of them. This <br />approach has been referred to as the Ouija Board method. <br />The Applicant suggests that the more sound approach would be to start with the survey data <br />rather than the GIS data. The reason is simple. The survey data are accurate in the real world. <br />The GIS data are not accurate. <br />The Applicant also believes it is more sound to locate the property with respect to less than all <br />the referents on the Diagram. The alternative - the Ouija Board method - requires picking a <br />final location on the Board with nothing to go on other than how it feels. The final location will <br />float among the referents. The Hearings Official will have nothing to justify the final location <br />fitting the survey data to the Diagram other than how it feels. Put differently, it will be hard to <br />explain in the decision why the final location is any better than a slightly different final location. <br />If less than all the surveyed referents are used, then the Applicant believes that the Hearings <br />Official should affirm his initial decision, using the surveyed centerline of 301h Avenue. That <br />decision is fully defensible on remand, provided additional findings are made about what data <br />sources have been considered. That approach was explained by the Hearings Official in the first <br />decision as relying on the surveyed referent that is closest to the surveyed property. That <br />rationale is fully intact in the remand. <br />Describing the line: The Applicant believes that the Hearings Official needs to reduce <br />the boundary line to a metes and bounds description. The City staff is fully capable of drawing a <br />metes and bounds description for the boundary line they believe is correct. Indeed, the City staff <br />was charged by the Hearings Official in Round I to verify the applicant's proposed metes and <br />bounds description after the decision. However, the staff has not suggested a metes and bounds <br />line of its own. It is just a matter of time, interest, and will power. <br />There is now only one metes and bounds description of a boundary. That is the Applicant's <br />description approved in the first decision. <br />It would not be good enough for the Hearings Official to pick a line on a hard copy map and say <br />that is where the boundary is. Any line on a hard copy map has a width on the ground. The <br />width on the ground, of course, depends on the scale of the map and the thickness of the pen <br />used to draw the line. How is a pencil line on a map, approved by the Hearing Official, going to <br />be transformed into a metes and bounds line? The pencil line itself could be acres on the ground <br />for a site of this size. Put differently, turning an approved pencil line on a map into a metes and <br />bounds line after this decision is made really would be a new fact-finding mission. That is <br />something that needs to be done in the context of the decision being made now, because that is <br />