CC Minutes - 02/09/09 Work Session

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Mr. Zelenka expressed concern with fracturing the community if the council placed a police patrol facility as the highest priority. He hoped to gain community support for efforts to address problems with the City Hall building and felt the staff recommendation was premature and reflected the wrong priorities. He suggested slowing down, investigating what should be done with the current building and developing a comprehensive plan that would address a potential move to the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) facility, renovation of the current building, a police patrol facility and Municipal Court needs. He said the plan should also identify options and costs for renovating the current City Hall building, the possibility and potential cost of moving to the EWEB building, cost and location of a patrol facility, cost and space needs of Municipal Court and options for shifting various administrative functions if patrol officers were moved to another location. Mr. Clark pointed out that New Orleans knew in advance of Hurricane Katrina that systems would not hold in a catastrophic event. The council was fully aware that if there was an earthquake of any size, leadership of the City would be incapacitated by the collapse of City Hall and emergency response capability would be impaired at a time when it was most desperately needed. He said council discussions had not educated the public about the safety aspects involved in the need for a new City Hall and police facility. He was interested in investigating the EWEB building as a site for City Hall on a parallel track with discussions of a patrol facility. He noted that master planning for the EWEB site was underway and asked that any motion include an official inquiry to EWEB about the potential of including use of its administrative building as a potential City Hall site in the master planning process. Ms. Taylor felt it was too soon to make decisions. She was interested in knowing the cost of a seismic retrofit of the current building to the life/safety level before proceeding. She agreed that another police facility was needed, but did not understand why the Police Chief could not be located with patrol officers. She said a new police facility should be located downtown. She also wanted to know how much money would be left for a basic seismic retrofit and maintenance of City Hall if a new patrol facility was built. She suggested relocating Human Resources to a rental facility, such as the Beam development. She said services the public needed to access should be located close together and a police facility should be nearby. Mr. Poling pointed out that the council had been planning for a new City Hall for ten years and it was a previous City Council that wanted to separate the patrol facility from the City Hall complex because of concerns that the presence of officers might deter some citizens from coming in. He asked if it would be appropriate to build a complete police facility that included administration and patrol if there was sufficient money in the Facility Reserve and a site available close enough to the downtown area. Mr. Ruiz said a complete police facility was the best outcome, but he understood that would double or triple the cost of just a patrol facility and there was not enough money for that. Mr. Poling stated it was important to take action swiftly as the current patrol facility was inadequate and there were seismic concerns. He said the problem with retrofitting the current building was that the cost would be much greater if the police function was included because the code would require retrofitting to the central facility level. He said sites for a patrol facility had been discussed, including the LTD property and sites that were already owned by the City. He agreed that any funds remaining after construction of a patrol facility should be invested in retrofitting City Hall to make it safe for the remaining employees. He encouraged consolidating as many City functions as possible into City Hall once patrol was relocated and the building retrofitted. MINUTES—Eugene City Council February 9, 2009 Page 6 Work Session