CC Minutes - 04/28/99 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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meaningful. Mr. Meisner said he did not want to build up community expectations given the City may have to cut that money in the future as it faced budget pressures in future years. Mr. Fart commended the staff recommendation. He said that he had assumed the boundary redesign would be inevitable. He was comfortable with the level of newsletter funding. He asked if the program budget would cover the cost of an additional 25 percent of the staffing that might be needed if more neighborhood groups began to meet. Mr. Weinman said yes. Mr. Johnson observed that the difficulty with program success was that it would mean the need for more staff and more money. Mr. Fart agreed, and said he hoped the program was successful because he felt there was no better way for the City to spend its money than at the grassroots level. He said that the staff recommendation was a move in the right direction. He endorsed the matching grants program, terming it the heart of the program redesign. Although he felt the amount of money involved was too little, Mr. Fart said it would empower neighborhoods to make decisions and represented a beginning. Ms. Taylor asked if there would be a public hearing on the staff recommendations. Mr. Johnson said that was a council decision. Ms. Taylor said that the council's decision to change the Wednesday meeting time meant the council's meetings will conflict with more neighborhood meetings. She expressed the hope that all City newsletters provided notice of neighborhood meetings. Ms. Taylor said that it would be nice if the local newspapers carried articles about neighborhood activities on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Ms. Taylor said that some neighborhood associations do not want to be split. She asked who would make the decision to break up a large neighborhood association into smaller associations. Mr. Johnson said the council would likely be involved in those decisions as the policy board directing the expenditure of funding for the associations. He said that staff raised the issue of boundaries because it believed the program should be a neighborhood-based, not regionally based, program. A neighborhood with one-eighth the city's population was probably not actually a neighborhood. He acknowledged that would be a difficult shift for some larger groups. Mr. Johnson said that he hoped the redesigned program, focused on smaller, more neighborhood- oriented boundaries, would attract more participants. In his opinion, such smaller associations would work better. Mr. Farmer noted that there was a variety of approaches to the boundary issue; in some cities the council made the decisions about neighborhood boundaries, while in other cases councils delegated that authority or established criteria on which staff would make such decisions. Regarding size, Mr. Farmer said that size of neighborhoods in other cities varied. Some communities had very large neighborhoods that established subsections with associations that met independently of the larger association. Mr. Rayor indicated general support for the staff recommendation. He confirmed the budget figures related to the newsletter postage and staffing. Ms. Nathanson expressed disappointment that a suggestion she had made previously regarding hand delivery of newsletters was not included in the recommendation. She said she felt strongly that community came from people knowing people in their neighborhood. Ms. Nathanson did not think communication exclusively by mail was a good substitute for individual communications. She said that some associations hand-deliver newsletters while others lack the resources to do so. She said she would like council discussion of how neighborhoods could get newsletters delivered personally. Ms. Nathanson acknowledged that such an approach was challenging in steep areas of the hills but there were many areas where hand delivery would be feasible. She suggested that youth groups such as Boy Scouts seeking community service credits or other volunteers could help. MINUTES--Eugene City Council April 28, 1999 Page 8 5:30 p.m.