Limits placed on store hearing.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

COTTAGE GROVE - City officials have tightened the rules on testimony for Monday's City Council public hearing on Wal-Mart's proposal to super-size its store here. Among the strictures: a three-minute speaking limit for members of the public and a 20-minute time limit on the discount giant's opening presentation.

Even with such tweaks, the process may still frustrate newbies to Oregon's land use decision-making process.

"A lot of people don't understand the process," Mayor Gary Williams said Friday. "Sometimes it's not geared for friendliness. This is a land use issue and there are certain parameters. Some people who speak are looking for confirmation or validation of their comments by the deliberative body. But a public hearing is not the time for dialogue. It's the opportunity for the citizens to give their input."

Under state rules, a city council functions as a "quasi-judicial" body when considering land use matters. It is supposed to base its decision solely on evidence presented through a formal hearing process. But even elected officials sometimes disagree on what that means.

The Cottage Grove City Council, for example, chided fellow member Diane Conrad for attending a Jan. 31 planning commission hearing on the Wal-Mart proposal. The motion said Conrad "put at risk the impartiality of this Council."

Conrad replied that she had a duty to attend the hearing, given the level of community interest. And Williams acknowledged that nothing in state law precluded her attendance at the hearingl. But she broke with a long-standing council tradition, he said. "If you're a judge, you don't go to a lower court and observe an item on the docket that could eventually land in your court," he said.

The stricter rules for Monday's testimony are an attempt to avoid a replay of the planning commission hearing process, which consumed nearly nine hours over three nights. The length of those sessions - along with the city's format of having all proponents testify, followed by all opponents - caused visible frustration among community residents.

Many expansion opponents gave up and went home after standing for hours outside the overflowing City Council Chamber as Wal-Mart officials and other proponents spoke Jan. 17. By the time the first opponents spoke, shortly before 10 p.m., one complained that the evening more closely resembled a Wal-Mart "filibuster" than a public hearing.

When opponents got their turn during a continued hearing Jan. 31, some Wal-Mart supporters who hadn't attended the first session were miffed by the other side's dominance of the second hearing. Retired nurse Carol Wright, for example, showed up on Jan. 31, hoping to tell the planning commission how much low-income Cottage Grove residents need the lower grocery prices she thinks Wal-Mart would bring.

"The 'no's' had a line-up a mile long," she recalled. "The hearing was going to be over at 10, and they just filled up that whole time."

City Council members vowed to make their hearing more citizen-friendly. To try to give everyone a chance to be heard in a single night the council has moved its usual 7:30 p.m. start time up to 7 p.m. It has set time limits and will urge people not to repeat testimony already given to the planning commission. City Manager Richard Meyers said each council member has a complete record of all three planning commission sessions and all written testimony - an 18-inch stack of material.

"They've already read it - I know, because I've listened to them complain about how much there is," he said.

Across the country, applications for new or expanded Wal-Mart stores tend to spark large turnouts of citizens with passionate feelings on both sides of the issue.

"So it's common to have to put some extra sideboards on the testimony," said Gary Fish, a state Land Conservation and Development Commission staff representative who is not involved with the Cottage Grove case.

Among the ground rules: Members of the public can say pretty much whatever they want during their allotted time. For those who disagree, some of the testimony sounds like uncontested falsehoods.

"The 'no's' kept saying how Wal-Mart pays slave wages, how they don't pay benefits, and no one gets a chance to challenge them," said Wright, the nurse who wants to see the Cottage Grove store expand. "But when I go to the store and talk to the workers, not just managers but the everyday workers, it's far from the truth. They like their jobs and the benefits they have."

Conversely, some expansion opponents say testimony about Wal-Mart's average wage of $10.60 obscured the fact that many of its workers earn far less.

But the fact that claims go unchallenged doesn't mean the council or commission takes them at face value, Fish said.

"The adjudicating body has the entire record, and it's up to them to decide who's right and who's out to lunch," he said.

Williams said, however, that he will attempt to keep Monday night's testimony on point. "We don't want to stifle anyone's opportunity for public input," he said. "But sometimes issues get brought into the conversation that aren't germane."

Meyers agreed.

"So much of the testimony from the planning commission hearing was totally irrelevant," he said. "Wal-Mart's business practices are beside the point. The question is: does their application comply with our planning code and the conditions set out in the 1994 LUBA hearing. That would be the case even if 9,000 of our 9,275 population came and testified one way or another. It's not a majority rule thing."

Chris Foraker, a Wal-Mart expansion opponent who expressed frustration with Wal-Mart officials' domination of theJan. 16 hearing, praised city efforts to give more people a chance to testify Monday.

"I like the fact that they reflected on what happened at the planning commission hearings and are trying to see how we can do it better," Foraker said. He also praised the very process that sometimes frustrates others: the silence of the judicial body as they simply hear what people have to say.

"It's really good tool to get people to listen to what the other side has to say," said Foraker, who works for a Cottage Grove radio station. "When I stepped outside of the dialogue, I heard what the Wal-Mart supporters needed me to know: that there are a lot of poor people in our community who struggle to afford groceries. I may not agree with them that this is the best way to solve that problem, but I was able to understand their intent."

WAL-MART HEARING

The Cottage Grove City Council may begin deliberations as soon as testimony ends

What: Public hearing on proposed Wal-Mart expansion

When: 7 p.m. Monday

Where: Cottage Grove City Hall, 400 E. Main St.

Rules: 20-minute limit on company's presentation, three-minute limit on citizen testimony