CC Minutes - 07/10/06 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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many narrow votes, too many games decided by the referee, too little action, too much kicking the same thing back and forth all over the field. He was persuaded that the City needed a City Council “for all of the City.” He maintained that the Mayor’s tie vote would never constitute consensus and would never make the community one team. He believed the rules should be changed so the City was divided into five wards with two council representatives from each ward and a Mayor that voted on every issue. He thought there should be two committees of five councilors and the Mayor, one councilor from each ward, to divide up the affairs of the City. He suggested that issues should be decided by a four-vote majority in the committees and only difficult issues should come before the full council. Zachary Vishanoff , Patterson Street, questioned the legality of getting rid of a public park without a public hearing. Mr. Vishanoff had been pleased to read an article tying in mixed-use development, the basketball arena, and the alumni center with the sale of the Westmoreland Student Housing. He felt those projects would be public-private partnerships. He thought sustainability could be a “Pandora’s box” as it could preclude open bidding on contracts. He suggested the councilors were being silent on the issue of the Westmoreland sale because they felt they had to be quiet and let things happen for the sake of Bus Rapid Transit and other projects as they were interconnected. He said the City could recommit to public process around eminent domain in the Fairmount neighborhood or it could continue its “crazy new urbanist plan” to tear up his old neighborhood. D. H. Andrews , 2362 Shields Avenue, stated that his warehouse on Bertelson Road was underleased because it was undervalued. He attributed this to the WEP decision. He decided to close the business, put 16 employees out of work, and move from Eugene and “leave it all behind.” He reiterated that the issue had been voted on three times and the council “fought us and fought us and fought us.” He commented that if a dictator were going to run the City there did not need to be any more votes of the public. He alleged that the property was not worth as much today as it was 20 years ago because of the traffic congestion in the area. Mats White , 1424 Washington Street, said he was a member of the Jefferson-Westside Residents for Healthy Neighborhoods (J-WRHN), an independent group that formed earlier in the year because of residents’ concerns for the negative impacts that incompatible infill was having on their neighborhood. He stated that while J-WRHN was independent of the Jefferson-Westside Neighbors, it intended to work cooperatively with it. He related that J-WRHN had been conducting outreach to involve residents for the past month and the tremendous participation in the petition they submitted demonstrated the success of their efforts. J-WRHN had been educating residents about land use policies, zoning rules and processes, and the essential elements of effective development standards. He conveyed J-WRHN’s commitment to constructive approaches to change. He said it was doing the necessary legwork to make sure that, when submitting recommendations to the council, facts had been thoroughly researched and that J-WRHN had done its best to work with the City and its staff and officials. He stated that the larger goal was for the council to adopt flexible effective zoning standards and processes that allowed additional dwellings to be built in neighborhoods while ensuring those developments were compatible with the character of the neighborhood. He said J-WRHN intended to come to the council and the Planning Commission to present ongoing research on the essential characteristics that defined their neighborhood and specific proposals for development standards. He reported that a portion of their neighborhood had recently been redesignated and this was cause for a great deal of concern. MINUTES—Eugene City Council July 10, 2006 Page 2 Regular Meeting