05/14/1980 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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e everyone else and it will depend upon what's going on at the state level and the national level. We need to find the best balance for a vital, viable community. There are areas that have too much tourism. We cannot blind ourselves and think that we cannot overpromote in our area because it can happen. This must be talked about. Additionally, there are different aspects of IIhigh-techll industry, such as research, which might not be as offensive to our community. In his opinion, it is not as important to search and solicit industry as it is to decide what it is that will make up a healthy community for the good of all. He is proud that the council has chosen to make this a high-priority item and much hard work has been done but it is going to take a lot more work. Mr. Lieua11en stated that generally he is pleased with this report. He feels it is necessary to get an infra-structure in place to ensure good communication and process for conductinq activities. We need to get our act together locally before going allover the country to solicit some-_ thing new. One of the comments from the goal-setting session a few months ago was that it is inevitable that industry will be coming here and it is necessary to determine what we will expect from them. He stated that he feel s it's good that Eugene will be bui It as an lIend-trip destination pointll rather than as a stopover between Seattle and San Francisco. He stated that as we deal with capital improvement projects it has been noted that these should be judged as to their relationship with economic development activities and he can't think of any that don't have a relationship to economic development and asked for an example. Mr. Farah responded that perhaps a major sewer line that served only residences would not take as high a priority as an improvement for industry. e Ms. Miller responded that a lot of the potential problems are bogged down in the overall community debate. Some citizens say they should be able to do whatever they want with the land, i.e., subdivide, and others say they do not want any new industry in the community and there needs to be a process to resolve this. Mr. Obie stated agreement with Ms. Miller's comments and continued that we do not help the situation by not providing leadership. He still feels that there is a lot of ground work to be done. Mayor Keller stated that he would be delighted to accept the challenge of still being involved and to help provide more detailed information. Mr. Farah stated that th~ Planning Commission had stated that another staff person from the Planning Department would be needed for dealing with situations like this. Mr. Barkman also wanted to know what the relationship of small businesses going out of business was and what the multiplier factor is of small businesses versus large businesses. e Mr. Lieuallen stated that in regard to the strategy for facilitating expansion of local firms by institution of a revolving loan fund to focus on existing local firms and administering this through a set of criteria that focuses the assistance on firms that provide a predetermined public benefit, he doesn't like the language and feels that whether firms would hire at all would be a benefit to the public and is afraid that this is too spec ific. 5/14/80--9