05/28/1991 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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e e e Ms. Childs said that because the commission was told that the council wished to proceed as quickly as possible with Part 4 recommendations, and the Cham- ber of Commerce wanted to have time during the summer to review the Commer- cial lands Study, it felt that this was an opportunity to do two things. First, to establish a task force which would include representation from the Chamber of Commerce, the league of Women Voters, and other interested groups which testified before the commission during the course of the study. Second, Ms. Childs said the Planning Commission felt that some of the Part 4 recommendations could be addressed in other ongoing planning work. She said downtown parking was being reviewed as part of the Central Area Transporta- tion Study (CATS) Update. She said the Planning Commission is interested in reviewing a majority of the Part 4 recommendations in the context of the Commercial lands Study. Mayor Miller said the Chamber of Commerce wants to become more proactive and to represent a broader spectrum of people. He said the City needs to find ways to deal with controversial issues and should involve as many people as possible in decision-making processes. Mr. Boles said random selection would create the most broadly based community group. However, he said this kind of selection process was not needed be- cause the Commercial lands Study inc1uds a long and comprehensive citizen involvement process. Mr. Boles said that although the Chamber of Commerce is an important part of the community, it is only one component. He said the community has worked long and hard to develop a citizen-involvement process, and that it seemed this process was being circumvented in this instance by the call for the creation of a task force. He said he found this offensive. Mr. Rutan said the Planning Commission seemed to want to move ahead with a task force and that the commission could usually be relied upon to provide independent thinking. Mr. Boles said that of 4,500 businesses in Eugene, 1,100 are members of the Chamber of Commerce. He said the officers represent a small group of very large developers. He said these few people were using the chamber to repre- sent their own interests, in the guise of representing the interests of many. Mr. Rutan said that as a former member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, he felt that Mr. Boles was wrong. Mr. Farkas said the purpose of the Commercial lands Study was to solicit input. He said one type of input was the call for more deliberation, which was one of the reasons for the creation of a task force. He said the council could consider the questions it had raised about the Commercial lands Study in greater detail at a June 10 work session. MINUTES--Eugene City Council May 28, 1991 Page 6