CC Minutes - 06/13/01 Work Session

Home Browse Search

Ms. Nathanson said that many of the complaints the council received regarded unequal representation. That would be addressed, but the issue was how it would be addressed. With regard to anticipating growth, Ms. Nathanson said that during the last decade three influences complicated that issue: topography (hills), water, and trees. There were also wetland and waterway issues that affected where growth occurred. She said there may be other geographic and environmental issues as well, and hoped to hear from staff if there was anything new on the horizon that might have a similar influence over the next decade. Ms. Nathanson said that many citizens appeared to feel disenfranchised because of the current ward boundaries, noting that her own ward reached to an area past Roosevelt Boulevard, which was quite a distance from the remainder of the ward. She thought it was important for the council to pay attention to that sentiment. She quoted from a citizen offering input, who called for aggressive change to address current inequities between ward populations, and said that suggested to her that incremental change was unlikely to be enough, and that the residences of current councilors were not evenly scattered across the city. Mr. Farr said that the most important criterion to him was that regarding anticipated growth. He did not want to see the same kind of inequity that had arisen over the past ten years to occur again, and since the City knew where growth would occur he thought that could be addressed adequately. He said that geographic features were important in dividing wards. Currently, citizens felt disenfranchised because of the way the community had grown. He said that the current situation was just not equitable. Mr. Pap8 concurred with the majority of Ms. Nathanson's remarks regarding the criteria. Regarding equity of population and anticipated growth, he agreed with Ms. Taylor about the three percent differential but questioned whether the City would do better at predicting where growth occurred in the future. Mr. Croteau responded that staff had undersized the faster-growing wards at the time of the last redistricting and did not use the full five percent, plus/minus range. He said that in spite of that, the future wards could still end up "out of sync," but having some play in the plus or minus range could help to minimize the impact of disparate growth that occurred in the community Mr. Kelly thanked staff for using "Samoan Circles" at the public forum and said he hoped the approach would be used in the future at other forums. He was comfortable with the staff- suggested criteria, although he had some changes to propose. Referring to Criterion 4, he said that the phrase "use where practicable" was not clear. Staff had indicated to him that it meant "feasible." He wanted to have alternate wording regarding the criteria to ensure it was not considered an absolute mandate. Mr. Kelly addressed the issue of incumbency, saying his only concern with the proposed criterion was that it did not address incumbents, and he wondered if, by omission, it forbid the staff from thinking about it. Mr. Croteau did not think staff were precluded from considering incumbency. He added staff selected the text carefully because the issue was of high concern to citizens. Staff was recommending incremental change, but acknowledged that because of community growth, redistricting could result in fairly drastic changes by the time the process was complete. He said that staff did not want citizens to think the criterion was a placeholder to be used to protect incumbents. It was not meant to move incumbents out of their wards or to keep incumbents in place. MINUTES--Eugene City Council June 13, 2001 Page 3 Work Session