Portland’s North Deering neighborhood, photographed in May. The city is currently reassessing all property in the city to make sure assessed values are still in line with the current market. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer The Portland City Council met Monday to discuss for the first time proposed changes to the city’s zoning laws that city staff has been working on since 2017.
The city released the proposed changes in April. Staff held public forums throughout the summer and collected input from the public online. They made small revisions based on that input and presented the final version of the proposed zoning changes to the council Monday.
The workshop was held solely for the purpose of discussion; there was no vote on the proposal. Another workshop will be held Oct. 28, when the council can discuss the proposed changes further.
The council can propose amendments to the zoning changes before voting on whether to approve them on Nov. 4. Chris Jenette, a consultant with Camiros, who worked with city staff on the proposal, outlined some of the most substantial proposed changes.
The aim of the changes, he said, was to provide a framework for Portland to grow into a denser city with more robust public transportation and easy access to services in the coming decades. The city’s zoning laws had not been updated in more than 50 years before staff began work on the project. Among the proposed changes discussed was eliminating minimum parking requirements for developers in fa.