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Mr. Papd solicited council comments and questions. <br /> <br />Mr. Meisner found the data presented to the council interesting and said he was pleased to see it <br />involved both property and services. He was not prepared to place another bond measure on the <br />ballot without a plan for how the resulting operations and services would be paid for. <br /> <br />Mr. Meisner said the public involvement process was valuable to him; he commended the use of the <br />stakeholder groups, but emphasized the need to involve community members who were not <br />advocates of any particular group. He said that the City should also consider the needs of renters as <br />well as homeowners and solicit their input. Mr. Meisner referred to the most frequently used <br />facilities and expressed surprise at the high number of visits to neighborhood parks. He said the <br />council needed to keep those figures in mind when it considered its priorities for funding. Mr. <br />Meisner noted that senior centers were the least-visited facilities, and acknowledged that could be <br />because the City had closed some facilities. <br /> <br />Mr. Meisner said that it was difficult to evaluate the results of a survey without knowing if those <br />participating in the survey were cognizant of things like cost. He said that could dramatically alter <br />the results of a survey. <br /> <br />Mr. Kelly concurred with Mr. Meisner's comments regarding the need to know the cost of operating <br />and maintaining new facilities. He thanked the committee and Ms. Nathanson for their work. He <br />said that he was very proud of the programs and facilities the City offered its citizens, particularly <br />given the difficult financial times local governments faced since the passage of Ballot Measure <br />47/50. <br /> <br />Mr. Kelly requested more quantitative data on sport fields use (basketball courts, indoor sports <br />facilities), asking if they were underscribed or overscribed, and about their geographic distribution. <br />He looked forward to the committee's assessment of the geographic distribution of parks and <br />recreation services. He believed the geographic distribution of neighborhood parks was particularly <br />important. He cited the West University Neighborhood area and north Eugene as lacking <br />neighborhood parks. Mr. Kelly believed that the City would have to spend considerable money to <br />provide neighborhood parks in certain areas of the community because it would have to buy houses <br />and tear them down. <br /> <br />Mr. Kelly noted that the AlS stated that the Parks and Open Space Comprehensive Plan Web page <br />had been recently updated, but that did not appear to be the case. <br /> <br />Ms. Taylor said that she was struck by the community's interest in recreation centers, and regretted <br />the City did not use the ones it had. She indicated interest in seeing a list of all the services that had <br />been eliminated over the last six or seven years. Ms. Taylor believed the community would support <br />new parks facilities before they supported a new city hall. <br /> <br />Ms. Taylor said that land acquisition was very important to her, regardless of whether the City knew <br />how it could be maintained, because if the City did not acquire the land it would be developed. She <br />did not support tearing down existing houses to provide a park. <br /> <br />MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 29, 2003 Page 8 <br /> Work Session <br /> <br /> <br />