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City Manager Taylor asked for clarification on the “toolbox” strategies needed to support businesses that <br />produced sustainable products and utilized sustainable practices. <br /> <br />Mr. Zelenka said the sustainability commission could determine in detail what strategies and incentives to <br />employ. <br /> <br />Mr. Clark hoped to see Eugene become the capital for sustainable business. He wanted expert advice on <br />how to achieve that and the sustainability commission would provide that level of opinion. <br /> <br />Mr. Pryor preferred the sustainability initiative focus on providing incentives, encouragement and barrier <br />removal instead of taking a regulatory approach. <br /> <br />Mr. Poling cautioned that the sustainability initiative should not cause undue disadvantages to any particular <br />business. He stressed the need to be fair and equitable and benefit the entire community. <br /> <br />Ms. Solomon was also pleased with the focus on incentives instead of regulations. She said an inventory of <br />current businesses that produced sustainable products should be done to establish a baseline for measuring <br />success in promoting more businesses to become more sustainable. <br /> <br />Mayor Piercy noted that the SBI round tables included a series of recommendations for tools to encourage <br />sustainability. <br /> <br />Ms. Bettman wanted to see a detailed approach to exploring very specific ways to influence businesses to <br />create more sustainable products or support businesses that did produce those products and apply that <br />universally to the City’s decision-making regarding land use and transportation. She said ways to become a <br />less auto-dominated community had been going on for years with no progress. She said unless the City was <br />willing to provide incentives or subsidize mass transit and efficient alternative modes there would not be <br />progress toward sustainability. She wanted to see the same benchmarks applied to the environment. <br /> <br />Mr. Zelenka pointed out that one of the 11 SBI recommendations was to adopt sustainability indicators and <br />measurement systems to assess internal City operations as well as community-wide progress towards <br />sustainability. He agreed with Ms. Bettman’s comments and hoped they would be part of the indicators and <br />measures. <br /> <br />Ms. Taylor hoped that the sustainability commission would monitor whether the City was actually <br />practicing sustainability. She agreed that protecting the environment was a part of that. <br /> <br />Downtown Initiative <br /> <br />Mr. Clark appreciated staff’s initiative with regard to the downtown area and said he would appreciate the <br />same type of leadership on future direction. <br /> <br />Mr. Pryor liked the brevity of the goal, which invited much discussion. He said the most important word in <br />the goal was “significant.” He said that downtown revitalization had been a topic for years and there had <br />been many efforts to accomplish that; what made this different was the acknowledgement that significant <br />effort was necessary to achieve success. He said a piecemeal approach would not bring the results <br />envisioned by the goal and the key was to recognize what it would take to be “significant” in terms of <br /> <br /> <br />MINUTES—Eugene City Council January 31, 2007 Page 2 <br /> Work Session <br /> <br /> <br />