CC Minutes - 08/13/07 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Regular Meeting Council Chamber—Eugene City Hall August 13, 2007 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Andrea Ortiz, Chris Pryor, Betty Taylor, Bonny Bettman, Jennifer Solomon, George Poling, Mike Clark, Alan Zelenka. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. 1. PUBLIC FORUM Mayor Piercy reviewed the rules of the public forum. Mayor Piercy recognized Galena Groza of the Sister City Foundation and Natalia Sverdlova, visiting from the City’s sister city of Irkutsk. Galena Groza , 1778 Sullivan Street, thanked the council for providing additional funding for the Sister City Program. She introduced Ms. Sverdlova of the Irkutsk Linguistics University, and expressed gratitude for her visit, which was underwritten by two grants. Natalia Sverdlova discussed her involvement in a project being done in conjunction with the University of Oregon (UO) to deliver classes in Russian in an online format for students. She appreciated the interest expressed in the project by Eugene citizens and their support of the sister city relationship. She thanked the Eugene Irkutsk Sister City Committee and said it was good to see members present. Mayor Piercy noted that Ms. Sverdlova was leaving the next day after a two-week visit and invited her to come back anytime. th Deborah Frisch , 3003 West 11 Avenue, H168, addressed the code provisions that allowed for drinking at the University of Oregon before, during, and after home games, suggesting it was discriminatory to exempt a subsection of the population from the law. She believed the issue was a public safety issue and provided a handout about the members of the symphony who were killed in a drunken driving accident the previous year. She asserted that the code created liability for the City, University, and County and cited two cases from other states in support of her remarks. Ms. Frisch said that she was going to demand that President Dave Frohnmayer take a stand on the issue and asserted that he would be sure to oppose the extension of the ordinance to other areas, forcing the council to “fall in line.” nd Bob Cassidy , 1401 East 22 Avenue, concurred with using urban renewal money to renew the downtown, which had been effective with the library. He quoted the saying “build it and they will come” and suggested it was a huge examined myth in the case of downtown. He did not think a Cineplex would draw students. He was not surprised that Whole Foods did not move downtown and questioned how the City could continue to throw money at an idea that had proved to be a failure. He said the free market was not a reality in this MINUTES—Eugene City Council August 13, 2007 Page 1 Work Session