CC Minutes - 11/10/08 Work Session

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He said he would leave that open to suggestion. He thought the first person to be appointed to the committee should be Ms. Bettman. Mr. Zelenka opposed Mr. Clark’s motion. He called Ms. Bettman’s original motion a “straw proposal put on the table that we get to whack at.” He did not believe it would change anything at this point. He averred that there would be ample opportunity to include the public’s comments on this, as well as comments from the EPD staff and the auditor. He opined that these were not new issues; they were thoughtful solutions to some of the things that had been “stumbling blocks” in front of the work the auditor needed to do. Mr. Pryor opposed both motions. He thought they could get more council support if they “just took the time” to get more support. He found it unfortunate that they ended up with four to four votes because the council wanted to get something done “now” rather than taking the time to garner more support for something. Mayor Piercy asked what it would take to “get people to a place where they had something they could agree on.” She asked if they should have another meeting. Ms. Bettman opined that tie votes were a “reality in the community.” She asserted that the community had divergent opinions, but a majority had supported the charter amendment. She felt they had taken bold steps and had made progress but now they needed to make updates and refinements to it. She declared that none of the components of her motion were far-reaching. She believed the timeline was adequate as was the notice for the public hearing. She said she had discussed the changes she was proposing “extensively” with the former Police Auditor and Ms. Reynolds, and had received “a little feedback” from the City Manager. Mr. Clark did not want to characterize the issue as support or lack of support for the Police Auditor’s office. He reiterated that he had been a consistent voice in support of effective oversight and had never voted otherwise. He observed that it was said that “half of the community thought the other half was crazy and they were right.” He wanted to have more voices at the table to go through the points of the motion because he wanted to have buy-in from “many other people.” Ms. Taylor considered Ms. Bettman’s motion to be routine. She felt it reinforced what the public wanted. City Attorney Glenn Klein stated that in order to have a public hearing on December 8 the ordinance had to be final by November 21 and the title of the ordinance had to be final by November 19. He said they could have the work session on November 17, but if the council made significant changes it would be difficult for thst them to get an ordinance ready by the 19 and the 21. He added that if they had the public hearing on December 8 and then made significant changes it would be very unlikely that legal counsel would be able to turn the ordinance around so that the council could take action on it on December 10. He underscored that while it seemed like there was a lot of time, because of the charter requirement for a ten-day notice there really was not that much time. He stated that the council would need to give the attorneys and staff final direction by November 17. Ms. Bettman alleged that she had seen the council make major changes to ordinances after public hearings. She asked Mr. Klein to define ‘significant.’ Mr. Klein said if there was a lot of time to make the changes to the ordinance it was not a problem. He explained that if they needed to rewrite much of the ordinance between Monday night and Wednesday at noon, the council did not like to receive final ordinance language Wednesday at noon and would want it no MINUTES—Eugene City Council November 10, 2008 Page 11 Work Session