2009-01-20

HIDDEN SPRINGS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION MINUTES MEETING OF JANUARY 20, 2009 CALL TO ORDER. The meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM at the West Linn Adult Community Center by President, Lynn C. Fox. Other officers in attendance: Donna Baker, Treasurer; Charles Lytle, Secretary. QUORUM DATA. Nineteen members attended the January 1st meeting. Therefore the quorum was two. There were 14 members at the beginning of the meeting, 26 total. PREVIOUS MEETING MINUTES. A member noted that the minutes stated the Erickson property was zoned R-40 when in fact it’s F-40. The corrected minutes were approved. TREASURER’S REPORT. The current balance is $1896.91. POLICE REPORT. New officer Ryan Lesmeister introduced himself and talked briefly about his background. He did not have an incident report for the neighborhood but stated he would bring one next quarter. ANNOUNCEMENTS. None. GUEST SPEAKER: Dr. Roger Woehl, Superintendent, West Linn – Wilsonville School District. Dr. Woehl explained that step one of the annexation of the Erickson property will be considered at the January 26th city council meeting. Step two has not yet been scheduled. The money to build the school will come from the capital bond passed by voters in the November 2008 general election. Current plans are to have the school built and operational by fall of 2011. The district is definitely planning on building the school, and it will not be built anywhere else. An advisory team will be assembled that will include citizens from the immediate neighborhood. There will be an informational meeting on Friday, January 30th from 9 AM until 2 PM at the high school. Lunch will be provided. In response to questions about the district selling the Dollar Street property to a developer, Dr. Woehl explained that the district had every plan to build a school on that site, but that the city blocked it. (This was not generally known amongst the members present, who expressed surprise.) He also stated that the district paid for running new water and sewer lines from Sunset west on Parker Road and up along Rosemont into both the middle school and the adult community center. The city was supposed to pay back a substantial portion of these costs out of system development charges on future developments along Parker and at the Santa Anita-Rosemont intersection. There was a stipulated time limit during which this re-imbursement could occur. Members commented that this may explain why the city was so anxious to annex properties and approve developments in the lands adjacent to these lines. Dr. Woehl noted that the time limit has since run out and that because of the current economy the district now will most probably never recover these costs. Members expressed concerns about the wetlands and the increase in traffic. Dr. Woehl explained that there are about 3.5 acres of wetlands on the site and that the district is open to ideas on how to use the wetlands as part of environmental education for students and citizens. Questions about traffic centered on how many driveways will be constructed and their locations and the extension of Bay Meadows, which now ends just past the intersection with Churchill Downs. Dr. Woehl offered no details on how traffic will be handled except to say that they were considering staggering the bus schedules with Rosemont Ridge Middle School. Chris Kerr attended on behalf of the West Linn Planning Department but despite a request from the HSNA president did not provide copies of the Staff report from the October 16, 2008 pre app meeting which stated that the zoning at Step One of the annexation process should be R-20. OLD BUSINESS. President Fox stated that she would like to devote a future meeting to discussions on the Palomino Loop Trail. After a short discussion, Scott Howard moved to have the topic put on the agenda for the February meeting, seconded by Donna Baker. The motion carried 18 – 0 – 0. HSNA Meeting Minutes January 20, 2009 Page 2 NEW BUSINESS 1) President Fox noted that documents pertinent to upcoming agenda items for the council or the planning commission are either not posted in a timely manner or are not posted at all. One reason for incurring the costs of the new web site was to correct this problem. There was a short discussion that the web site is still not “user friendly” for those searching for reports, maps, or publications. 2) President Fox asked if there was interest in providing input on the regional transportation plan. This plan will impact Highway 43, requiring that WL provide through bus service and bear increased traffic to benefit The LO to Portland Transit project (Trolley). She noted that West Linn had no vote in the Portland-Lake Oswego transportation corridor plan and that the plan had proposed construction of a parking structure in WL and major changes to the bus service in and through the city. METRO has not provided requested information regarding the plan to HSNA so available information is incomplete. 3) Verizon contacted President Fox regarding siting a cell phone tower on Rosemont Water Tower. President Fox said she was unwilling to talk to them without first getting the sense of the membership on the issue. While it was generally agreed that a tower was needed because of poor communication with the closest tower down at the 10th Street exit, a new tower might interfere with the existing Police & Fire and Safety towers. A co -locater study may be necessary to assure that public safety is not compromised. President Fox asked for interested members to email her. Verizon will be contacted and a presentation scheduled for a future meeting. 4) Several members asked about the status of the neighborhood plan. President Fox explained that the basics of the plan have been finished for some time, although it needs to be updated to reflect new issues relating to growth and development. She explained that the leadership team stopped moving forward when they realized that Brian Brown of the planning department was removing segments of other neighborhood plans with which he disagreed or which he was instructed to remove. Also, the consultant hired by the city kept inserting things into our plan that were specifically omitted by the leadership team, such as requesting the building of an aquatic center and other civic issues not germane to the NA. On the one hand, the city council was insisting that the neighborhood plans were aspirational only. On the other hand, Mr. Brown kept removing things that were at odds with current code. If the plans were really just a wish list, there is no conflict with items in the plans that simply object to current code provisions. Thus, a neighborhood might aspire to change the code. The planning department was systematically removing all such suggestions (aspirations). The leadership team felt that such “neutered” plans would be used in the future to falsely claim that citizens had no objections to certain portions of the code. The two most common objections in the draft plans were to flag lots and to tearing down houses and increasing density by building a higher number of new houses or adding additions/second stories to houses with the final products being all out of proportion to other houses in the neighborhood or removing the views or sunlight that existing residents had paid for when they purchased their homes. These have been ongoing concerns in the Sunset, Robinwood, Bolton, Marylhurst and Tanner Basin neighborhoods. In the other three plans written simultaneously with ours, these aspirations were removed by the planning department. The leadership team concluded that the planning department was in essence writing the plans, and all the efforts of everybody were just so much show so that the city could claim that the plans were grass roots. The leadership team was insulted by this tactic and chose to stop the process rather than participate in a fraud. The membership refused to approve the plan provided by the consultant. After a short discussion, it was agreed to talk further about the plan at the March or April meeting. NEXT MEETING DATE IS FEBRUARY 17, 2009. ADJOURNMENT. There being no other business to come before the membership, the meeting was adjourned at approximately 9:30 PM by President Lynn C. Fox. Recorded by HSNA Secretary Charles Lytle.