Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

Home Browse Search

ATTACHMENT A M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Public Hearing Council Chamber 777 Pearl Street—Eugene, Oregon August 11, 2008 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Chris Pryor, Bonny Bettman, Andrea Ortiz, Mike Clark, Alan Zelenka, Betty Taylor, Jennifer Solomon, George Poling. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. She announced that action on Item 4 on the agenda would be postponed as further work was required. 1. PUBLIC FORUM Mayor Piercy reviewed procedures for providing comments. Mary S. Leighton , Normandy Way, Eugene, thanked councilors for their consideration of ways to address downtown public safety issues. She said that over 100 teenagers would be attending Network Charter School in the fall and she was concerned about the negative influence on those students of people in the downtown area who modeled behavior inimical to public interests. She suggested three changes that could improve life downtown temporarily while long-term solutions were identified: pass Mayor Piercy’s modified exclusion zone and implement it as soon as possible, improve patrolling of downtown by guides and police officers, and restore cleaning of sidewalks and alleys. th Rene Kane , West 14 Avenue, Eugene, Jefferson-Westside Neighbors’ chair, stated that neighbors joined with City staff and members of the Opportunity Siting Task Team to conduct neighborhood workshops to test ways that neighborhood character could be preserved while identifying the appropriate locations and processes for siting and design of denser housing development. She stressed that neighbors did not oppose all infill; they simply wanted it to be compatible. Pauline Hutson , Taylor Street, Eugene, founding member of Residents for Responsible Rapid Transit (3RT), expressed concern that Lane Transit District (LTD) might not be considering factual issues that 3RT had raised during the process to identify a West Eugene EmX route. She was concerned that planning was based on outdated data and did not factor in either peak oil or peak traffic counts. She urged the council to question recommendations from LTD regarding the West Eugene EmX alignment. th Ilona Kolezar , West 11 Avenue, Eugene, a member of 3RT and the West Eugene EmX Extension Corridor Committee, said that eight percent of the project design had been completed even though no locally preferred alternative had been chosen. She was concerned with the lack of coordination between the EmX and West Eugene Collaborative (WEC) projects. She distributed a copy of the intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between LTD and the City, and related materials, and urged that the council keep the provisions of the agreement in mind, particularly those related to the design issues on which LTD must defer to the City during the design phase of planning. She cited several provisions from the IGA and asked that the council inform LTD which alternatives it would consider and which it would not.