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September 25, 1989 William E. Eaton 2311 Willamette St. Eugene, OR 97405 Subject: Concerns Regarding the Vegetation Abatement Courtesy Letter Dear Mr. Eaton, This letter is in response to your letter to Councilor Freeman Holmer, dated September 3, 1989, upon the above referenced subject. I understand you may already of had these concerns aired in a subsequent conversation between yourself and Johnny Medlin of my staff, however if not, this letter provides a good opportunity for me to personally respond to your concerns. The letter in question is for the most part a long standing standard form letter which is sent to approximately 800 property owners each year. Each letter sent is normally in response to a specific citizen complaint, regarding an obnoxious or nuisance vegetation situation, received by our office. The section of the letter printed in capitals, detailing the property owner action needed, is specific to each individual letter and is computer generated from information obtained from a site inspection of the property. The tone of this letter has been a topic of staff discussion several times in past years. Our intent is to present a professional quality legal letter which is both firm but courteous at the same time. This is a difficult balance to maintain but one in which we feel the current letter presents our best efforts at attaining this compromise. The purpose of this letter is to bring notice to the property owner that a problem exists which needs to be resolved at their earliest opportunity. We have found in the past that a soft spoken letter is ignored by a very large number of property owners or worse, they have felt from the tone of the letter that the City is not serious and that they had plenty of time to correct the problem. Unfortunately the City was serious and the time allowed is very short. The Municipal Code's defini- tion of the time allowed to correct the problem is only ten (10) days. Further compounding our dilemma, the property owner is then severely angered when the next step of enforcement, as required by the Municipal Code, of physically placing an abatement posting upon their property is performed. Upon reaching this stage of enforcement, cost to the City becomes a signif- icant concern. Each vegetation abatement which requires posting is costing the City approximately $70. This compares with approximately $20 each for those resolved prior to this point. I'm sure you can see from an economic standpoint why we need to avoid the expenditure of this additional $50 for each of the 800 annual complaints.