City council moved forward with new rules for construction camps at their meeting last night, after debate about the role of the temporary housing in town.

The construction camp changes and other revisions to Title 8 have been in the works since January. This is the second time they’ve made it to council.

The new guidelines dictate where construction camps can go in town and how they should be set up. Camps would be able to go in certain industrial areas without special permission. And they’d be allowed as a conditional use in commercial zones.

But councilor Dennis Robinson was concerned that there wasn’t a clear enough time limit on how long a camp could be in place.

"To allow them to continue to have construction camps [for long periods], you may as well just bring a whole bunch of containers in here and start stacking them up and stuffing them full of people, and create a work camp," Robinson said. "That’s something that I just really don’t want to see here."

Robinson said he’d rather the city focus on building permanent housing for everyone -- residents and workers alike. But councilor Dave Gregory was concerned about the impact of restricting construction camps. He said he wouldn’t want to see construction companies buying up housing designed for permanent residents, either.

"Without construction camps, you get a lot of construction companies that come in for the summer, and they’ll pay big bucks to rent somebody’s house, and so you don’t then have that house on the market," Gregory said.

Planning director Erin Reinders said she’d work on language that would tie the life of a construction camp to a single project. Council sent the whole package of Title 8 changes forward to a second reading and public hearing July 22nd.

They also gave final approval to another package of code changes last night -- including one appointing the members of the planning commission to the historic preservation commission.

The mayor-appointed preservation commission has been defunct since about 2008. City staff say that’s due to a lack of interest -- and the city clerk has no digital records of applications to serve.

But some locals say they did apply to join the commission as its membership was dwindling, and never heard back from the city.

With last night’s change approved, the seven-seat preservation commission will merge with the planning commission. It’ll include the five seats of the planning commission, plus the planning director and city manager.

People who want to help with preservation work in town will now have to apply to be on the planning commission. The mayor also appoints those members.

During discussion last night, councilor Robinson said the city should have done more to encourage participation before the independent preservation commission lapsed. And he was concerned about letting permanent city employees sit on the board.

"We may not always have a [city] manager that has some thought in mind for historic preservation of various areas in the community," Robinson said. "And if that is the case, and it’s under the planning commission, then we could lose some things."

Robinson said he plans to follow up with the planning department to make sure the preservation commission will be inclusive.

Also last night, council awarded a one-year, $30,000 contract to Ron Moore to continue removing scrap metal from the landfill. Moore’s already been working on the project for two years. His new contract is renewable for up to a decade.

And among other routine business, council passed one other big change last night: They moved their regular meeting time up to 6 p.m., permanently. The next meeting is July 22.

Also last night: City Works Toward Pay Raises for Union Employees