In this year’s legislative session, Oregon lawmakers approved several bills aimed at increasing the amount of housing in the state. But one of those laws applies only to Eugene. And it will allow the city to grow in a way it hasn't in decades and a way no other Oregon city grows.
Take a look at a map of Eugene.
Now, focus on the northwest quarter: specifically the River Road area from the railroad tracks to the Beltline and Santa Clara north of the Beltline.
At first glance, those neighborhoods look like any other part of the city. But on the special maps Eugene and Lane County use for things like taxes and voter rolls, there are dots of city and county land all over these two neighborhoods, like islands of Eugene in the sea of Lane County.
There’s no apparent rhyme or reason to it. On both sides of any given street, some houses might be in the city, and some might be in the county.
Kate Perle knows why these islands are there.
Perle has lived in Santa Clara for almost 30 years. She grows fruits and vegetables and raises cows and chickens on a 21-acre farm, and she’s the chair of the Santa Clara Community Organization.
Perle says each dot of city land surrounded by county is a property that Eugene annexed. Annexation is what the new law is about.
Perle first learned about this polka-dotted property even before she moved to Santa Clara. Perle says she moved into a residential area of River Road in 1992.
“I had a couple of chickens,” Perle says. “And then a neighbor complained about the chickens. And then an inspector came out and explained to me about what the code was.”
The inspector explained there were two different sets of chicken rules depending on whether a house was on city land or county. And there is no way to tell if a house is city or county just by looking at it.
Perle says nearly everyone who moves into River Road or Santa Clara today experiences some kind of confusion because of the scattershot of city and county land.
“Residents can be confused about why certain services aren’t available to them,” Perle says. “If you’re a city resident, you pay city taxes, you receive Eugene Police Department, Eugene fire and safety, you receive library services. And if you’re an unincorporated resident you don’t pay those same taxes, so you don’t receive those services.”
The confusion can be more serious than how many chickens you can have.
For example, what happens when you call 911? Eugene Springfield Fire covers River Road from the railroad tracks to the Beltline; county residents pay a dedicated tax just for that coverage. But north of that, in Santa Clara, Eugene Springfield Fire only covers city residents.
Chief Mike Caven says if you call in a fire in Santa Clara it’s important to get the address right.
“You could be a taxpayer and your home’s on fire and if the right information doesn’t get through you might not get the full response from Eugene Springfield Fire,” Caven says.
County residents are covered by a rural fire district, but Caven says it has fewer resources, so its response time will likely be slower, and it will send a smaller truck with fewer firefighters.
Caven’s headquarters also houses Central Lane Communications, which receives 911 calls for most of Lane County and then sends them on to whatever agency needs to get them. That includes law enforcement like the Eugene Police and the Lane County Sheriff. Both cover River Road and Santa Clara.
Caven says if someone’s life is in danger, the closest police force will respond, but if, let’s say, a county resident were to blast music at top volume on their front lawn and a neighbor calls the cops…
“There most likely would be no response,” Caven says.
Tim Wallace with the Lane County Sheriff’s Office offers an even more definitive assessment. Wallace says there is zero chance a deputy will respond to a noise complaint against a county resident in River Road or Santa Clara.
Wallace says the Lane County Sheriff’s department is seriously understaffed due to lack of money. Any call that is not about something immediately life threatening will get a much slower response for a county resident in River Road and Santa Clara than from a city resident. At any given moment, he says the nearest deputy might be in Florence.
One more 911 hypothetical from Fire Chief Mike Caven: Fireworks are banned in Eugene, but not Lane County. So, on the Fourth of July, a county resident can light off a row of Whistling Petes in their driveway.
“Your neighbor’s trying to do the same thing but they’re on a city property and you can call and complain even though you’re doing the exact same thing next door, ” Caven says. “It’s a really weird patchwork to manage.”
Weird may not seem like a very technical term, but Amanda Ferguson says it’s apt, and her title is plenty technical. Ferguson is the Planning, Policy, and Practice Lead for the Institute of Policy Research and Engagement at the University of Oregon. She says it’s not just weird, it’s almost unique.
“The piecemeal annexation is a Eugene thing,” Ferguson says.
To understand why there are islands of Eugene in Lane County, Ferguson says start with the Urban Growth Boundary.
UGBs are meant to stop urban sprawl. A city draws a bubble on the map from its city limits out into the county and says inside this, people can build subdivisions and apartments, but outside will stay farms or forest or whatever it was before.
In 1982, Eugene drew a new UGB that included River Road and Santa Clara.
Terri Harding, the Principal Planner for Eugene’s Community Planning and Design Team, says right after that, groundwater contamination from old septic tanks was discovered. The state said the city had to extend sewer and water service to its new UGB pronto.
“The city did attempt to annex the whole area to fix this problem and was met with a lot of resistance,” Harding says.
Resistance, because when the city annexes a property, the owner’s tax bill goes up to pay for things like sewers and libraries.
So Eugene dropped the idea of annexing the whole area. It made a rule that if someone made a big change to their property, like adding a second house, it would become part of the city.
Normally when a city expands its borders into its UGB it does it contiguously. That is, it only annexes land that touches the existing city boundary. That’s to allow for slow, steady expansion of city infrastructure.
But all along River Road, Harding says, “Well, they were already connected to the sewer, so…”
So why not annex anywhere in River Road and Santa Clara?
State law says annexation must be contiguous. But Ferguson says a legal quirk used to allow an exception for the state’s largest cities.
Ferguson says Oregon counties usually have most of the power over growth decisions in UGBs, but it’s reversed for places like Portland and Eugene. There, the cities call most of the shots. Ferguson says you can find a few islands of Portland outside its city limits, but only Eugene has what amounts to an archipelago.
However, no new islands have been created for a while.
In 2007, the state legislature passed a law that stopped Eugene from annexing properties that didn’t touch its city limits.
Harding says they have ways to work around that ban.
“Like extending city limits along a roadway, creating kind of a cherry stem situation,” Harding says.
Think of it as annexing peninsulas rather than islands.
But next year, Eugene may start creating new unconnected dots of itself in River Road and Santa Clara for the first time in 20 years. The new law started life as House Bill 4108. State Rep. Lisa Fragala introduced it at the request of the City of Eugene.
Fragala—whose House district borders the southern end of the River Road/Santa Clara area—says there aren’t enough places for people to live in Eugene.
“And we absolutely don’t have enough affordable housing stock,” Fragala says. “This is one way we can have another tool in our toolkit to build diverse housing types and more affordable housing.”
Fragala says only building new housing on land that’s contiguous to the city is just too slow. Being able to annex anywhere in the UGB will mean more housing faster.
This law is specific to Eugene, but Fragala says if it works well here, the legislature might allow other cities to do island annexation. And she stresses that under this new law, only people who volunteer to be annexed will be selected.
Before 2007, there was a lot of anger toward the city in River Road and Santa Clara. People made changes to their property they believed were not big enough to trigger annexation, but the city disagreed and annexed them anyway.
Both city planner Harding and Santa Clara Community Organization chair Perle say the anti-city sentiment in Northwest Eugene has died down a lot in the last few years.
But Perle says she and many of her neighbors do not want to become part of the city any time soon.
“It’s like dating,” Perle says. “We’re not begging to be married off. We’re a community with resource and capabilities and an intrinsic value and a strong ethic of self-determination.”
But there are county residents in River Road and Santa Clara who would raise their hands and say “pick me, pick me” to the city.
Lane County Commissioner Ryan Ceniga represents River Road and Santa Clara.
“It’s about fifty-fifty who I hear from,” Ceniga says. “Some of them never want to be annexed. Some are upset because they can’t annex.”
Ceniga says those who want to become part of Eugene have a lot of reasons. Some want city services like police, firefighters, and the library.
Others want to have more of a voice in what happens in their neighborhoods. Remember, unlike most of Oregon, Eugene is in control of what happens in its UGB, not the county.
“Some people are represented by a city councilor, and some aren’t,” Ceniga says. “They technically live inside the Urban Growth Boundary but they don’t have a say.”
For many of those who never want to be annexed, the big reason is they don't want a tax hike.
Lane County Assessor Mary Vuksich-Shafer says any county resident in River Road and Santa Clara would see a significant tax increase if their property were annexed by Eugene.
She gives as an example the house where she grew up: a 1,500-square-foot ranch style on Carthage Avenue in Santa Clara.
If annexed into Eugene, Vuksich-Shafer says, the tax bill on her childhood home would go up by $1,864 a year. That’s a 41 percent jump.
Perle says her taxes would go up by 51 percent if she became part of the city.
But despite having to pay higher taxes, there are people who want to live on a new island off the coast of Eugene.
Jolene Siemsen has been a county resident in the River Road area for more than 40 years. She’s a retired nurse practitioner and has been involved in neighborhood issues for a long time including on the River Road Community Organization.
She really wants to live in Eugene.
“I would annex in a minute,” Siemsen says. “Overall, adding up various current taxes and levies, unfunded maintenance, inadequate public safety, and lack of representation adds up to a lot that we are missing out on or paying for on an incremental basis.”
But even with the new law, the city may not be willing to bring her into the fold.
Harding, the city planner, says one analysis suggests that if Eugene annexed all of River Road and Santa Clara the added tax revenue would not pay for the increased services the city would have to provide.
What the city wants is not more houses but more housing. That is, more urban growth in its Urban Growth Boundary.
The new law allowing more island annexation is meant to encourage building new, denser housing.