02/08/1988 Meeting (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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e at hearings. He said he spoke for a number of people he knew who had contributed several years to cable access and who were extremely upset about the low priority given to that project. He said it was difficult, but appropriate, to have a sense of humor when comparing that to some of the items given priority, such as the destruction of the rest rooms on the mall and replacing them, at great expense, with a remodelled design. e Mr. Zupan said he thought some of the actions proposed in Eugene would be laughable to people in other parts of the country. "It seems that we take vast sums of money and shuffle them back and forth on different projects as if it were to solve some problem." For example, he said that in order to solve the problem of "vagrants" in the mall, the rest rooms there had been destroyed, creating other problems for customers of the mall. In the same category, Mr. Zupan said he would place the "vast sums" of money allocated for the fountain demolition and replacement with a street. Mr. Zupan said councilors had heard comments on that issue, and he hoped they were aware that the majority of the community did not want that kind of change to take place and would rather see their money put into more appropriate areas. "0bviously the library is a major concern in the community--I'm glad that some of you are picking up on that," he said, but "in general, it would behoove the council to take another look at the whole budget and to take into account the human needs in the community, not just the more short-sighted, superficial changes that one could make, such as supposedly to deal with the problem of what to do with vagrants.1I Mr. Zupan said that was like blaming the victim and resulted in short-sighted actions. He said he appealed to the council's better sense to address serious problems such as providing for the hungry and the homeless and the illiterate in the community. Mr. Zupan said the community needed fewer roads through the mall and less destruction of existing services that already so much time and energy had gone into. Mr. Zupan said he felt that a different group of people could come to vastly different conclusions than those in the document, and he feared that some of the decisions being made were being done purely for political or economic reasons or for self-interest, which he did not think was appropriate for the offices held. He said the council had an obligation to represent the entire community's needs, and Mayor Obie had expressed the concern that "every person counts." He wondered about the people in wheelchairs, and those who have put a lot of their lives into cable access, and so on. Mr. Zupan said he thought the council could reconsider any of the issues in the budget that involved the human element, and he hoped the result would be the finding that human services were much more important than carrying out the self-interest or economic interest of anyone person. Mayor Obie closed the public hearing. Assistant City Manager Dave Whitlow responded to Mr. Andresen's question about airport financing. He said State funding for the airport project amounted to about $770,000, which was from lottery funds and which e MINUTES--Eugene City Council February 8, 1988 Page 19