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ATTACHMENT C MINUTES Eugene City Council Regular Meeting Council Chamber--City Hall February 23, 2004 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Gary Pap6, Nancy Nathanson, David Kelly, Betty Taylor, Bonny Bettman, George Poling, Jennifer Solomon, Scott Meisner Mayor James D. Torrey called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. 1. PUBLIC FORUM Mayor Torrey explained the rules for the Public Forum. Bruce Miller, P O Box 50968, Eugene, thought the University of Oregon should urge students to attend Lane Transit District (LTD) hearings. He repeated his previous recommendation that Mayor Torrey apply to be Dean of the University of Oregon's School of Business. Mary Jo Roberts, 475 Lindale Drive, #106, Springfield, stated that she was a former City of Eugene employee and had also been an employee of Lane County at one time. She said it was no surprise that the State was facing a crisis of catastrophic proportion. She commented that, with the cuts already made to the budget, the area was seeing its best efforts to put a good medical plan in place through the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) all but disappear. She underscored the "horrible cuts" that mental health services had endured, noting that the County had formerly been able to aid the medically indigent people suffering from mental illness but now could not, and that Lane County Mental Hospital was slated to close on March 1, 2004. She stressed the importance of people helping one another. She conveyed her anger and frustration with people who bemoan the fact that there are not adequate public services nor an adequate investment in public safety and yet refuse to invest in the future through taxes or any other means. She alleged that the present system had "bankrupted our children and future generations." She expressed her sadness at the loss of at-risk services for juveniles. Ms. Roberts related that she was now a medically indigent, uninsured, unemployed Oregonian through no fault of her own. She said she had experienced six job losses in as many years, all due to downsizing. She attributed it to greed, stating that the populace had lost sight of what was truly important: taking care of our senior and disabled citizens and taking care of our children and educating them. Ben Fry, 1460 West 17th Avenue, spoke as a representative of the Eugene Citizens for Housing Standards (ECFHS), an organization that was asking the City Council to establish local enforcement of basic habitability standards already based on State law, such as the standards that address structural integrity, heating, plumbing and roofing. He asked the City Council to establish local enforcement of MINUTES--Eugene City Council February 23, 2004 Page 1 Regular Meeting