Laserfiche WebLink
the chief had responded with his best effort to the manager's direction to cut his budget, and it <br />was the council's purview, in its review of the budget, to determine if it wished to support that level <br />of service as opposed to another level of service. She said that the council needed to determine <br />whether it wanted to fund the additional FTEs to serve the expanded service area. Ms. Bettman <br />said the council recently decided to give a tax break to Hynix for jobs, without documentation that <br />the jobs would be provided. In this case, the jobs in question provided direct services to the City <br />of Eugene and she thought they should be given a high priority. <br /> <br />Ms. Bettman said it appeared from the data supplied by command staff that there was higher fire <br />danger in the Valley River area than the Santa Clara area. Chief Tallon responded that the City <br />received more than 2,000 fire calls the previous year, and Engine 9 had 269 calls for service, the <br />lowest call volume of any of the ten engines in the community. He said he could not comment on <br />the statistics provided for Santa Clara. Because of new construction in the area, the risk factor <br />was lower, and the call volume was lower. In contrast, the fairgrounds neighborhood, which <br />lacked a four-minute response, had older structures with no notification systems, and the call <br />volume is higher. <br /> <br />Mr. Carlson pointed out that there was no emergency medical response equipment in Santa Clara, <br />and the highest call volume was in EMS services; the City proposed to keep a medic unit at Fire <br />Station 9. <br /> <br />Chief Tallon expressed concern about what appeared to be mistrust of command staff. Mr. Kelly <br />responded that it was not a "good guys" or "bad guys" situation. The expertise of management <br />staff was not questioned, nor were the interests of the firefighters or their experience in day-to-day <br />fire fighting. He said that the council had two very different sets of data, and he was unprepared <br />to say one was right or wrong. Chief Tallon responded that the City hired its fire chief to manage <br />those resources; the union was not responsible for directing the department's resources. <br /> <br /> Mr. Meisner, seconded by Mr. Pap~, moved to extend the meeting by ten <br /> minutes. The motion passed unanimously, 8:0. <br /> <br />Mr. Meisner was not prepared to support the motion at this time. He said that the City hired <br />managers for specific purposes. While he did not discount the information that the union <br />provided, he was not prepared to superimpose a citizens committee that might end up acting as a <br />bridge between the union and management. That was the responsibility of management. At <br />some point, when the council made a policy decision regarding the level of service or acceptable <br />level of risk, perhaps then the council could invite citizen input on how to implement its decision. <br /> <br />Speaking to Ms. Bettman's comments, Mr. Fart said the council did not give anything to Hynix; it <br />merely took less from it. <br /> <br />Mr. Fart said he was prepared to wait for the outcome of the consultant's study. <br /> <br />Mr. Pap8 said he could only support the formation of a citizen committee if it was not intended to <br />help run the organization. He preferred to form a policy committee to analyze the consultant's <br />report. <br /> <br />Ms. Taylor was concerned about forming a committee as she preferred that the council spend <br />more time studying the issue. Regarding the issue of trust, she did not think there was distrust of <br />management staff; she thought rather there was trust of the people who "actually do the fire <br /> <br /> MINUTES--Eugene City Council February 27, 2002 Page 6 <br /> Work Session <br /> <br /> <br />