CC Minutes - 11/25/98 Work Session

Home Browse Search

Ms. Nathanson did not favor the term "input," preferring instead "communication and information sharing." Another neighborhood program purpose was problem-solving, she suggested. Beth Bridges of the Service Improvement Team, staff to the redesign process, pointed out that the leaders' mission statement included the statements "Providing a forum to identify, discuss, and resolve neighborhood issues," and "Establishing two-way communication between neighborhoods and the City and/or other external agencies." Mr. Bowers said that resolution of neighborhood issues helped to build communities and was a growing emphasis reflected in the mission statement. Ms. Nathanson said the cross-departmental approach was key to neighborhood improvement as many issues overlapped different department responsibilities. Ms. Swanson Gribskov said that for her, the issue boiled down to "what is a neighborhood." She said the process appeared to be "tweaking" what existed, and she did not think the City had a functioning neighborhood system throughout the community. She attributed the lack of a functioning system to geography, neighborhood size, and citizens' ability to attend and interest in attending meetings. Ms. Swanson Gribskov said that both the original staff presentation and the presentation today "felt sort of like same old same old." She was looking for something to engage the citizens differently. Ms. Swanson Gribskov noted that her ward contained three different neighborhood groups and she believed the Laurel Hill Neighbors Association worked best because of geographic constraints and a series of issues and activities that reinforced citizens' interest in participation. She noted the area used to contain an elementary school and suggested there was a connection between a successful neighborhood organization and an elementary-school sized jurisdiction. She said that the Harlow Neighbors had recently done some outreach to the defunct Cai Young Neighbors in the belief the two groups could merge to represent the Ferry Street Bridge area. She said that some members of the Harlow Neighbors had begun to feel the organization had been too involved in citywide issues at the expense of neighborhood issues, and had done some outreach to a larger population. However, Ms. Swanson Gribskov was unsure that organization represented what she considered a neighborhood. Ms. Swanson Gribskov said the Fairmount Neighbors was the most special-interest oriented group, and it had some strongly opinionated members but she doubted they represented the neighborhood. She added that, to its credit, the organization had done different things to attempt to generate more participation, but the same people continued to be involved. She feared having the council place a lot of credibility into what those few people said without a broader neighborhood discussion. She reiterated that the system did not work, and she thought the council needed to seek answers "outside the box." Mr. Fart said that while he had some criticisms of the neighborhood organizations in the past, he saw positive things happening with those groups both in Bethel-Danebo and in other areas. He believed the program could be made to work more effectively. At the current time, there was little decision-making happening at the neighborhood organization level. The organizations should be given an incentive for decision-making that ties a certain level of effort to an outcome. Mr. Fart liked the idea of the matching grant program as another means of giving the organizations leverage in the neighborhood and encouraging residents' participation. He believed the reason that many groups did not work was because there were no tangible results. Mr. Farr endorsed the mission statement developed by the Neighborhood Leaders Council (NLC) Neighborhood Redesign Subcommittee. MINUTES--Eugene City Council November 25, 1998 Page 5 11:30 a.m.