04/17/08 City Council Newsletter

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Turnoff Week is supported by more than 70 national organizations including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Education Association, and the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. For more information, contact Eugene Public Library, 682-8316. FireMed Campaign Underway This year's campaign to sign up new and returning FireMed ambulance members has now begun. At the end of this week, Fire & EMS staff will mail more than 17,000 renewal notices to current members, and begin registering participants for the upcoming fiscal year. As in the past, Eugene is contracting with Springfield Fire & Life Safety for advertising and telephone information. The popular program provides medically necessary emergency transport for an entire household at no out-of-pocket cost for a full year. This not only protects families against the expense of ambulance service (at a basic rate of $1,150 per transport), but also provides an important revenue stream for the service, which has struggled with severe Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement reductions over the past few years. The price of FireMed membership remains the same as last year, $52 for basic membership, which covers ground transport, or $84 for FireMed Plus, which adds air ambulance coverage. The cost of a single trip by air ambulance can easily run into five figures, and this year FireMed Plus is an even better bargain than before with the announcement by Life Flight Network that it will base emergency medical aircraft at the Eugene Airport. The telephone number for FireMed is 726-3636, and the website is www.firemed.com. For more information, please contact Gail Draper, Ambulance Billing Manager, at 682-7108. th Infill and Opportunity Siting Tour Planned for April 28 The Planning Division is coordinating a joint Infill and Opportunity Siting Task Team tour scheduled for April th 28. The tour will be the first chance for the Infill Compatibility Standards (ICS) and Opportunity Siting (OS) Task Teams to talk with each other about their common goal – finding compatible places and ways to accommodate more housing within the urban growth boundary. The Task Team members will ride an LTD bus to view a sampling of infill and multiple family development projects in 11 of the city’s 19 residential neighborhoods. The tour highlights infill development at all points on the density scale and in different kinds of neighborhoods, from Jefferson-Westside to River Road to Amazon Neighbors (and eight others). A map and information about the tour will be posted on the project OS Task Team members test a siting exercise. web pages so that interested members of the community can replicate it on their own. The ICS Task Team is meeting on the second Monday of every month. The team unanimously approved its charter in January, set up subcommittees in February, and appointed committee members in March. Detailed work is underway at the committee level on issues under the broad categories of single-dwelling infill, multi-dwelling infill, and subdivisions. Included in this work is the council-directed “test-case” of infill th compatibility standards along 19 Avenue in the South University neighborhood. The OS Task Team meets every three weeks on Wednesday afternoons. Winter achievements include approving a charter and work plan, drafting the “10 tenets” of Opportunity Siting, and completing a series of educational discussions on topics such as financial tools, development process, and form and density. Work is underway designing a process to solicit neighborhood input in the identification of potential opportunity sites. A volunteer neighborhood group is being sought to help refine the public outreach process. EUGENE CITY COUNCIL NEWSLETTER PAGE 3 April 17, 2008