10/21/1987 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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renewal plans containing provisions regarding tax allocation without prior approval of the voters. He said the second paragraph of the explanation e described Section 3 of the initiative, which required that the City Council change existing urban renewal plans containing tax allocation provisions. Mr. Arnold added that the City Attorneys felt those were the two most important elements of the initiative. He said City Attorneys also had submitted memoranda expressing their opinion that the descriptions in the explanation were as concise and impartial as possible. Mr. Arnold noted, however, that the question before the City Council was not whether a better ballot title could be written, but whether the ballot title that had been prepared met the standard under the code. If the council found that the title met the code, Mr. Arnold said the appeal would be denied. If the council found that the title did not meet the code, City Attorneys asked that it instruct them as to how the title did not constitute a concise and impartial statement, and they would redraft the title. He said additional statements from the City Attorney were contained in the memos submitted. B. Appellants' Presentations Dan Stotter, 1670 Alder Street, said he was a University of Oregon law student and was speaking on behalf of himself and three other appellants. He reminded the council that its duty and responsibility were to set aside any feelings about the merits of the measure and to look only at whether the ballot title prepared by the City was concise and impartial. Mr. Stotter said he differed with the City Attorneys over procedure for this hearing. He said appellants objected to several concerns, specifically to the City Attorneys' request for a consolidated appeal with one spokesperson (which e had been dropped); to not allowing other interested parties to speak; to allowing no opportunity for witnesses and cross-examination in response to Mr. Harms's statements; to the lack of an opportunity for an impartiality challenge because appellants had not had 48 hours to submit such a challenge; and to denial of appellants' requests for internal documents and staff notes. Mr. Stotter said the City Attorney's title was improper because it was filled with value-laden words, such as "limiting, prevent, and prohibit," which did not add anything to the title but unnecessary bias. Mr. Stotter suggested that councilors examine both the City Attorneys' title and the measure for comparison. Mr. Stotter said appellants objected to the sentence construction of the ba 11 ot title because it did not f 011 ow a simple subject-verb-object construction and was unclear or inaccurate about what was being limited, prevented, or prohibited. He said the caption, for example, made it appear that the City's authority to develop was being limited, which made the measure sound anti-development. Mr. Stotter said the question was phrased so that it appeared urban renewal plans were being prevented. In the explanation, he said the term prohibit also appeared to apply to urban renewal plans. He added that none of those descriptions were accurate representations of the measure. e MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 21, 1987 Page 5