CC Minutes - 11/23/09 Work Session

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MINUTES Eugene City Council McNutt Room City Hall 777 Pearl Street Eugene, Oregon November 23, 2009 5:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Alan Zelenka, Mike Clark, Andrea Ortiz, Jennifer Solomon, Chris Pryor, George Poling, George Brown, Betty Taylor. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the work session of the Eugene City Council to order. A., COMMITTEE REPORTS AND ITEMS OF INTEREST FROM MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL, AND CITY MANAGER Ms. Piercy reported that over 300 people attended the recent Economic Development Sununit and thanked all of the individuals and agencies that worked together to make the event a success. She circulated gifts that had been received by Kelly Middle School from their sister school in Kakegawa, Japan, and read a letter from the new mayor of Kakegawa. Mr. Clark attended a meeting of the Save Civic Stadium organization and also found the Economic Development Summit very interesting and useful. He thanked those who worked on the event. He congratulated the University of-Oregon Ducks on their trip to the Rose Bowl. Ms. Taylor attended the Economic Development Summit and the Arts and Business Alliance breakfast. She recently participated in a National League of Cities (NLC) conference and felt that the voices of cities were being heard by the new administration. She said sustainability was the prevailing theme of the conference. She said the Human Development Committee, of which she was vice chair, had been working on issues related to teenage pregnancy, employment and veterans' health care and its recommendations were adopted by the NLC. Ms. Ortiz said the City's congressional lobbyist had advised keeping any funding requests simple and straightforward. She hosted an outreach event for Lane Transit District (LTD) at Plaza Latina and hoped that more business owners would take advantage of opportunities to provide input on transit issues. She said the Joint Elected officials EMS Subcommittee would be forwarding recommendations to the council. She attended the Governor's Summit on Disproportionate Minority Contact, which was well attended and provided interesting information from other communities. Mr. Brown said he attended the LTD business outreach at Plaza Latina. He. hoped that more information about the "no build" option for the West Eugene EmX would be made available. He also attended meetings of the Human Rights Commission and Police Commission Use of Force Subcommittee. He found a discussion of homelessness at a recent City Club meeting interesting and useful, but noted that the basic problem was lack of money. He was disappointed at a recent meeting about downtown solutions, which appeared to be focused on the needs of television and unlikely to provide the council with useful tools for making decisions. MINUTES Eugene City Council November 23, 2009 Page I Work Session