Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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observed that the real challenge would be to create something sustainable from this as the City continued to change and grow. Mayor Piercy thanked the community members for attending and participating. She wished to underscore that she was not interested in giving platitudes. She wanted to take in the words of the council’s guests and spend some time digesting them. She felt the challenge was to move past the talk. She reiterated her gratitude for the time people took from their busy lives to come to the council work session and speak. Mr. Poling, seconded by Ms. Solomon, moved to direct staff to hire a facilitator experi- enced in diversity and race issues to facilitate a meeting between the council and representa- tives of the communities of color. Mayor Piercy stressed that this motion did not mean “just a meeting.” The motion passed unanimously, 8:0. B. WORK SESSION: City Council Priority Issue – Update on Homeless Strategy for Eugene Executive Director of the Library, Recreation, and Cultural Services Department (LRCS), Angel Jones, thanked the council for the opportunity to bring back the revised plan on the priority issue of homelessness. She also thanked the staff that served on the committee and the service providers and homelessness representatives. She felt proud to be part of a dedicated staff team working on this priority. She said the document before the council was a result of committee members’ creativity, energy, and passion. She also thanked the council for recognizing homelessness as a priority issue and directing staff to look at it. She opined that there was no better example of the role of government than to give voice to those most vulnerable citizens of the community. Mike Magee, LRCS Administrative Manager and staff lead on the issue, stated that the major changes to the plan lay in more specificity in the recommendations than those contained in the plan submitted to the council in July. He pointed out that the plan was Attachment A to the Agenda Item Summary, and the major changes had been pulled out and graphed in Attachment C. He said Attachment B was the timeline of things that had happened to date in the community and Attachment D encompassed the gaps that had been identified, knowing that they had not all been prioritized at this time. In response to a question from Mr. Kelly, Mr. Magee said “all or most of the major players” in the service provider community that tried to meet the needs of homeless singles, families, and youths had been contacted in the process, including Whitebird. Mr. Kelly said it was important to him to see a balance between serving and preventing homelessness. He thought good things had been done with people “at risk” in the past, but not as much was being done with people at risk of being homeless in the present. Mr. Kelly recalled that he asked for a memorandum at the meeting in July with details on exactly what the County had done in terms of the application to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) about the 10-year plan. He reiterated his request. MINUTES—Eugene City Council November 30, 2005 Page 6 Work Session