Code woes

Auditor finds fault with LO’s code

By Rebecca Randall

The Lake Oswego Review, Jul 29, 2010 (1 Reader comment)

Some local residents and building contractors had their complaints confirmed on Tuesday night.

The expert thinks the city’s community development code is “long” and “extremely complicated.” It has “archaic language … missing definitions, missing flowcharts and no user’s guide.”

But “that was not a surprise to anyone,” said Don Elliot, a consultant from Clarion Associates who audited the city’s code.

The code – as in many cities – has been amended over and over again through the years without consideration to structure, order or readability. The goal is to make a newly formatted code easier to amend in the future.

There is also a “perception that there are exceptions to rules and criteria and often the exception is not located near the rule,” said Elliot.

Elliot presented his analysis to the council and suggested a two-phase approach to doing the revisions. The first-phase would be to reorganize the code and add illustrations to help explain the language. The second phase would be to make any changes to standards that would require more public input, such as reviewing code that was found to be conflicting or confusing or incorporating new issues into the code.

For example, city planners have recently become interested in enhancing sustainability standards.

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