Trautman v. City of Eugene

383 P.3d 420, 280 Or. App. 752
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedSeptember 8, 2016
Docket2015076; 2015077; A162081
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 383 P.3d 420 (Trautman v. City of Eugene) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Trautman v. City of Eugene, 383 P.3d 420, 280 Or. App. 752 (Or. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

DEVORE, J.

Petitioners Nena Lovinger and Paul Conte seek judicial review of a final order of the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA), affirming a decision by the City of Eugene (city) to grant approval to Oakleigh Meadows Co-Housing, LLC (applicant) for a tentative planned unit development (PUD). Among other things, LUBA concluded that a public notice of a limited hearing was adequate, although the record later was reopened for new evidence and testimony, contrary to the notice provided. In their first assignment of error, petitioners argue that the city failed to provide adequate notice, thereby depriving Lovinger of the opportunity to respond to new evidence or testimony. On that point, we agree, reverse, and remand. As to petitioners’ other assignments of error, we affirm LUBA’s decision without discussion.1

This decision follows a prior decision concerning notice of proceedings involving applicant’s tentative PUD, Oakleigh-McClure Neighbors v. City of Eugene, 269 Or App 176, 344 P3d 503 (2015). Applicant had applied to the city for approval of its tentative PUD, “a multi-unit residential development on 2.3 acres of land zoned low-density residential.” Id. at 178. Simon Trautman submitted a letter in opposition, thereby becoming entitled to notice of subsequent proceedings.2 The city hearings official conducted a hearing on the application. Trautman did not receive notice of the official’s decision. Id. at 179. When others appealed to the Eugene Planning Commission, Trautman did not receive notice of that hearing, and he did not receive notice of the commission’s order allowing the PUD application. Id. Neighbors appealed the order to LUBA, sending their notice [755]*755of intent to appeal to the same people to whom the city had given notice (i.e., not Trautman). The city discovered its failure to have given complete notice and rectified the failure by giving belated notice to Trautman and others about the commission’s decision on the PUD. Id. The neighbors likewise corrected their service of their notice of intent to appeal. Trautman moved to intervene in proceedings before LUBA, but LUBA denied Trautman’s motion as untimely. Id. at 180-81. We reversed and remanded, concluding that Trautman’s motion was not too late and that LUBA had erred in denying his motion to intervene. Id. at 188.

Thereafter, LUBA allowed Trautman’s motion to intervene. LUBA found that the city’s failure to have given him notice had deprived him of the opportunity to participate in the hearing before the planning commission on appeal. That opportunity would have allowed him to offer his opinion to the commission about the PUD proposal based on the underlying record before the hearings official. LUBA remanded the matter to the city to allow Trautman that opportunity to express his opinion.

The issue that we address concerns the notice and the proceedings that followed. The city scheduled a public hearing before the planning commission on July 28, 2015. The city gave a notice of a limited hearing, stating that the hearing would “remedy the procedural error that occurred in 2013 and *** allow Simon Trautman to testify.” The notice explained, in relevant part:

“Limited Participants
“You are receiving this notice because you were involved in the hearing process when the matter first was presented to the hearings official and planning commission in 2013 and 2014. However, the purpose of this hearing is to remedy the procedural error that occurred in 2013 and to allow Simon Trautman to testify before the Planning Commission. Accordingly, presentation of testimony will be limited to Mr. Trautman and to response bv the applicant,. Tf vou are not Mr. Trautman or a representative of the applicant, vou mav not testify (either in writing or orally) but may attend and observe the public hearing.
[756]*756“Limited Scope of Testimony
“Testimony before the [Eugene] Planning Commission in a local appeal hearing from the Hearings Official is limited to evidence that was presented to the Hearings Official. The Planning Commission will not accept any new evidence from Mr. Trautman in a local appeal hearing.”

(Underlining and boldface in original.)

Just before the July 28 hearing, Trautman submitted to the commission lengthy written testimony and several hundred pages of attachments. Among other things, Trautman suggested that the south side of the pavement of Oakleigh Lane, which was access to the PUD site, lay partially on private properties, so as to leave a narrower paved width in the public right of way. Given that, he raised safety concerns about accommodating emergency vehicles. At the hearing, the city attorney Davies advised the commission that it should decide whether to admit some of Trautman’s materials, because some could be considered “new evidence” that was not in the record before the hearings official.3 For the time being, the commission closed the hearing, awaiting further advice from Davies.

On August 12, 2015, Davies wrote a legal memorandum reviewing Trautman’s materials in light of the Eugene Code (EC). As for Trautman’s suggestion that some of the paving width encroached on several lots, Davies advised the commission that “any of the paved portion of Oakleigh Lane that lies outside the right of way that has existed for 10 years or more will be considered to have been acquired by the City as a prescriptive easement.”4

Reacting to Davies’s opinion, Conte and five other people wrote identically worded email messages, disputing that there was a prescriptive easement. They characterized Davies’s legal advice as “new facts” that should entitle them to respond with their own “rebuttal” evidence. They urged that the record be reopened.

[757]*757On August 17, 2015, the commission reconvened to deliberate. The commission determined that Trautman had proffered new evidence but that it was evidence on a point of concern that the commission wished to consider — a concern about safety if a portion of the street’s pavement was not within the right of way. The commission voted to reopen the record, limited to evidence regarding the width and safety of Oakleigh Lane. The record was opened for a two-week period, followed by short periods for rebuttal evidence and arguments. During that time, Trautman and the applicant tendered surveys and information on the issue of safety access.

During a meeting on September 28, 2015, the commission also accepted into the record the message from Conte and the duplicates from others objecting to Davies’s advice about a prescriptive easement.

On October 6, 2015, the commission issued a notice of its decision, finding access to be adequate and reaffirming applicant’s tentative PUD application, and adding conditions on a minimum paving-width within the right of way.5

Trautman and Conte filed an appeal to LUBA, and Lovinger intervened, aligned as a petitioner. Lovinger argued that, under ORS 197.763(7), the city committed a procedural error when it voted to accept new evidence from the applicant after having stated in the July notice that it would not accept any new evidence.

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Conte v. City of Eugene
425 P.3d 494 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2018)
Bowerman v. Lane Cnty.
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Central Oregon LandWatch v. Deschutes County
396 P.3d 968 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2017)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
383 P.3d 420, 280 Or. App. 752, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/trautman-v-city-of-eugene-orctapp-2016.