The Lane County Board of Commissioners showed more signs of division this week. It came during a discussion about a report on how the county could remove barriers to affordable housing.
Last year, in a 3-2 vote, commissioners hired two local land use consultants, one of whom used to work for the county for decades, to study barriers to affordable housing.
The report they produced was presented to the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday.
The consultants, Kent Howe and Jim Mann, recommended that commissioners should be directly involved in more land use decisions. They also argued the county’s planning department had customer service problems, not enough information on its website and denied too many applications.
Commissioner Laurie Trieger called the report flawed. She said it was unfair to county employees, and the consultants didn’t interview any nonprofit housing providers.
“If I was your professor I would give this report an F,” she said. “I don’t know whether to be angry - or just mystified.”
Commissioner Heather Buch also raised concerns, calling the report a “missed opportunity.” She said she had hoped the consultants would identify county codes the county could rewrite that were interfering with wildfire victim rebuilding efforts, infrastructure needed for more development and ideas for preserving existing affordable housing.
In his response, Howe said making the county’s application process less complicated would make housing more affordable.
“For the county, we’ve given you information to process land use applications faster and less costly for the rural area,” Howe said. “That helps reduce demand, provides supply and helps the overall picture.”
Commissioner David Loveall said he agreed with many of the report’s findings and recommendations.
“The government’s not going to build 16,000 houses in Lane County. It’s the private sector that’s going to put the dent in that,” he said. “I get five complaints every other week about people going to the county's land management division and all they [encounter] is barriers and hardship and they have to hire attorneys and lawyers.”
Loveall said he was interested in pursuing a few of the suggested changes.
The county’s planning staff will present their response to the report at a future county commission meeting.
The consultants, Howe and Mann, were selected from five applicants last September and were awarded a $60,000 contract.
At the time, county staff recommended a different consultant who submitted a bid that was about $30,000 lower. The county’s legal team had also raised ethical concerns over potential conflicts of interest.
Both men had been employed by private landowners in the past to guide applications through Lane County’s permitting process and Mann still had an application before Lane County when their consulting firm was selected.
In letters to the county, Howe said had not taken on private land consulting work since 2020 and Mann said he was withdrawing from private land use work and would not interview any staff who had worked on the land application he was involved in.
Commissioners Pat Farr, Ryan Ceniga and David Loveall voted to hire the pair, and then continue working with Howe and Mann in September and December of last year, arguing their ethical concerns had been addressed and Howe’s decades of experience working inside Lane County’s planning department was worth the higher cost.
Lane County Commissioners have also clashed over a redistricting charter review proposal and a food-waste diversion facility. Farr, who did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, was the deciding vote in both of those clashes, siding with Loveall and Ceniga over redistricting, and Trieger and Buch on food waste diversion.
You can read the full report below.
