Council hears plan to amend village mixed-use tables; attorney warns against blanket bans on lotteries and adult uses

City planner Alex Lopez told the council Jan. 15 that staff and the planning commission had worked to modernize and streamline permitted and conditional use tables for the village commercial and mixed-use zoning districts.

Lopez said the planning commission discussed adding explicit prohibitions on video lottery terminals, off-track betting and adult-entertainment uses, but the city attorney advised that “some of those prohibitions would be unconstitutional due to free speech provisions within the Oregon constitution,” and that Oregon statutes bar local regulation of the state lottery.

“[T]he city attorney directed us that if the city was concerned about the negative impacts of those uses, we could regulate businesses based on effects of the business that aren’t directly tied to the fact they are adult or lottery businesses, such as traffic impacts or hours of operation that we could neutrally apply to all business types,” Lopez said.

Lopez said the planning commission recommended pursuing business-regulation changes in the municipal code (Title 5) rather than through the development code. If the council wishes to pursue additional business regulations, staff said that would be done later through a separate municipal-code process and not as part of the current development-code amendments.

As part of the current package, staff proposed formatting changes to the use tables so the town center commercial, corridor commercial, light industrial and general industrial districts adopt a consistent layout. Lopez said if the council directs staff to proceed, staff will finalize the draft code amendments, publish legal notice, hold a planning commission hearing (tentatively in February) and then return to the council for two readings.

Why it matters

The changes are primarily design and formatting updates to the use tables but could lead to a separate business-regulation project that would target specific operational impacts (for example, hours of operation or noise limits) rather than broad categorical bans. The distinction matters because the council’s legal authority to regulate particular business types is constrained by state law and constitutional protections.

Next steps

Staff asked the council if it wanted to finalize the draft development-code amendments for legal noticing and a planning commission hearing. The planning commission and staff recommended pursuing any targeted business-regulation work through Title 5 in a separate process.

No formal council action was recorded on the amendments at the Jan. 15 meeting.