Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

Home Browse Search

City Manager Taylor said staff was working to implement the council’s plan for a chosen site. He asked if there were other results the council anticipated from the goal. Mr. Poling observed that the February 14, 2007, work session would be the next major step in the process. He recently spoke to one of the property owners who would potentially be affected by the plan and had no idea it was still possible to participate in the community discussion. He said the City needed to expand its efforts to contact those owners and get them more involved in the process. He said there was still an opportunity to get involved in the community forums and emphasized that no final decisions had yet been made. Arts and Outdoors City Manager Taylor said the cultural policy review process would be presenting recommendations over the next two years. Ms. Bettman questioned how well the available recreational activities were promoted. She said the recent Oregon Truffle Festival attracted participants from around the country and the world and more than half of the 300 participants at the fundraising dinner were from outside of Lane County. She said that many of the out-of-town participants were unaware of recreational opportunities in the area. She said that conferences and events should be tracked and used as marketing opportunities for the areas cultural and recreational activities; it was a mistake to only focus efforts on a few larger events like the Olympic Trials. Mr. Poling said the Convention and Visitors Association of Lane County (CVALCO) conducted those types of marketing activities countywide. He noted that Mr. Clark, as the council’s representative on the CVALCO board, would have an opportunity to encourage CVALCO’s active participation in highlighting the best of Eugene. Ms. Taylor said she was more interested in having substance to talk about than in marketing to others. She said the City should be supporting the arts and protecting the outdoor assets. She said that did not mean just sports; it meant protecting the Amazon headwaters from pollutants. She said that environmental degrada- tion of the headwaters could subject the City to a lawsuit. She preferred to see the City add to its outdoor assets and protect the ones it already had instead of marketing them. She said more should be done to support the arts and hoped there would be a focus on substance instead of bragging about what the City had. Mr. Clark mentioned that there was a rich discussion at a recent CVALCO board meeting around the idea of what would happen at the County level if funding changes affected CVALCO. He said the City should think about what a commitment to the arts and outdoors meant if one of the means for promoting those activities was in jeopardy. Hospital City Manager Taylor cautioned that legal counsel advised that there should be no discussion of a hospital because there was a land use application pending with the City. Ms. Bettman commented that the council made a statement by adopting a goal publicly endorsed by a majority of members, and it seemed highly unusual that it could not be discussed. City Manager Taylor referred to a legal opinion indicating it was acceptable for the council to adopt a goal, but to modify the goal MINUTES—Eugene City Council January 31, 2007 Page 8 Work Session