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Stewart Road Closure <br />May ] 0, l 999 <br />Page 15 <br />5.055(1) Special events of community interest including parades and public <br />gatherings. <br />This criterion does not apply to this decision. <br />5.055(m) Construction within or adjacent to the street. <br />This criterion does not apply to this decision. <br />5.055(n) When establishing conditions upon the use of parking in the public <br />way and city-owned parking facilities: * * *. <br />This criterion does not apply to the decision to alter the use of Stewart Road. The <br />Administrative Order applies it to how the road should be regulated once it is closed. <br />The City intends to limit parking close to the barrier, but has not yet done so. Discussion <br />Summary Remarks <br />Closing Stewart Road is a bad choice made because there are xo good options. It <br />has many more negative aspects than positive contributions for the people most directly <br />affected. It has serious implications for other poor streets in Eugene which, absent <br />improvement, will someday soon be in the same situation as Stewart Road is in now. It <br />seems, however, that the City determined that closure is the only practical choice. Within <br />the context of Eugene Code S.O55 and the hearings officer's authority, the appeal does <br />not warrant reversal of the City's decision. <br />Nothing in the Code prevents the hearings officer from offering several <br />recommendations. First, this problem of deteriorating streets that are not eligible for <br />improvement should be a subject considered by the Council in their reexamination of <br />street improvement policy. If the City is going to start closing streets rather than <br />improving them, then much of the City's policies concerning the construction of streets <br />should be reexamined, so that businesses and residents are not promised a street system <br />with connectivity, only to have this promise modified by deteriorating conditions. <br />Second, I recommend that the City traffic division and the City Council review <br />the policy decision that closure is better than the continuing deterioration, especially in <br />the light of the negative effects that closure hastens. It would be better if the policy is <br />more fully articulated before the next application. The Council might want to gather <br />information relating to the speed of deterioration so that they can provide some overall <br />policy direction on where the threshold exists such that crossing that point means that a <br />deteriorating street needs to be closed regardless of other consequences. The Stewart <br />Road decision marks the beginning of a policy to the effect that the condition of a road <br />can and should be a reason to close the road. It would be valuable if the Council could <br />instruct the City administration not only on the appropriateness of that as a general <br />policy, but also on the appropriate boundaries of the problem: how fast does the <br />deterioration have to be to justify the decision; how serious does the deterioration need to <br />be before it is appropriate to close a road? <br />Possible Review Procedures <br />Eugene Code section 5.045 provides: <br />