Weekly Update 6/7/21

The two main substantive actions taken at this week's meeting were two different ordinance proposals.

The first was an ordinance to eliminate the residency requirement for the position of Assessor. This is an outdated requirement that may have made sense when the position was established but no longer serves a valuable purpose. The position of Assessor is one that requires a high level of expertise and specialization. Removing this requirement will allow us to have a larger pool of qualified candidates for these positions moving forward, which will help ensure that the Assessors Department is in the best position to carry out its duties on behalf of our residents.

The second ordinance was to allow for fee waivers, which came about as a result of the Union Block housing project downtown requesting a fee waiver. When this ordinance was first discussed in Council of the Whole, we came to a consensus to advance a proposal that would allow for fee waivers under certain circumstances, including for nonprofits, houses of worship, educational uses, municipal uses, and affordable housing. The Law Department sent us a draft ordinance on May 24th that accomplished this objective. On June 1st, the Law Department sent a new draft that would allow for fee waivers that were deemed to be in the public interest to be determined at the discretion of the City Council. This proposal was much more broad than what we had discussed and agreed to previously; it did not establish any specific circumstances and did not outline any guidelines for this process. For that reason, I voted against advancing the proposed ordinance. If the ordinance passes, however, I will vote once again to approve the fee waiver for the Union Block project due to its significance as it relates to our downtown revitalization.