City council struggles with bundled ordinance

With a fairly lengthy agenda, the Sisters City Council meeting last Thursday stretched over three hours, due mainly to a process issue.

In an effort to save staff time and City money, the community development director presented a single ordinance to the Council, bundling together five separate development code text amendments. The single ordinance saves preparation time for the staff and requires only one public notification in The Nugget rather than five. Each notification results in a cost to the City. However, it presents Council members with a great deal of preparation and study to be done in a few short days prior to the meeting.

Council easily reached agreement on several of the changes, but struggled with those regarding proposed changes to residential garage setbacks and the definition of a formula food establishment.

Following a number of previous public hearings by both the Planning Commission and City Council, it was decided that a formula food establishment is one that meets qualifications spelled out in the definition, and is substantially identical to 13 or more other establishments regardless of ownership or location. The current definition says, "three or more establishments."

In an effort to correspond to Federal food and drug definitions, which state "20 or more establishments," the figure of 20 was adopted by staff and incorporated into the suggested text amendment. This change prompted a great deal of discussion among Council members who decided to return to the "13 or more" figure.

The longest discussion revolved around changes to garage setbacks and residential building heights, which have ping-ponged back and forth from the Planning Commission to City Council to staff and back again.

Because the five proposed text amendments were bundled into one package, Council could approve the ordinance as proposed, modify it, or continue the public hearing to a future date, which would delay implementation of all the changes, not just those for which Council needed more information or more deliberation time.

Council chose to approve Ordinance 468 and its five separate parts, as amended with 13 or more formula food establishments, but indicated that the garage setback question should be re-referred to the Planning Commission to take another look.

City Attorney Steve Bryant told Council they would have been correct in continuing the hearing if they wished.

Davenport informed Council there is another ordinance with bundled amendments in the pipeline. Several Council members expressed a desire to consider each proposed change as a separate ordinance.