CC Minutes - 11/30/05 Work Session

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M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Work Session McNutt Room—Eugene City Hall November 30, 2005 Noon COUNCILORS PRESENT: George Poling, Jennifer Solomon, Gary Papé, Betty Taylor, Andrea Ortiz, Chris Pryor, David Kelly, Bonny Bettman. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the November 30, 2005, work session of the Eugene City Council to order. Mayor Piercy welcomed the students from Kelly Middle School who were present to observe council proceedings. Mayor Piercy introduced Paul Carlson, regional coordinator of Pacific Northwest and Alaska United States Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness, who was in the City of Eugene for several days reviewing local efforts related to housing and homelessness. She read a proclamation in support of Mr. Carlson’s work into the record. Mr. P. Carlson thanked everyone. He said he enjoyed the tours of homeless providers. He stated that his agency was a small one charged with “knitting together” the efforts of all of the federal agencies. He noted that he was in Oregon with the Housing and Urban Development Department Community Planning Division Director for Oregon and Idaho, Doug Carlson. He related that he and Mr. D. Carlson met with Mayor Piercy to discuss some of the specific issues of developing a ten-year plan to end homelessness. He wanted to underscore that homelessness was ubiquitous throughout the country at unprecedented levels. He said many times progressive areas, such as the City of Eugene, did work toward ending homelessness leading to an impression among elected leaders that providing too many services for homeless people would draw them from other areas. He noted that many mayors and county commissioners shared this impression, a perception that was both real and perceived. He stated that among federal, state, and local governments, local government was a key partner to develop local movements to address homelessness. Mr. Papé arrived. Mr. P. Carlson reported that when he began this work, 12 communities were working on plans to end homelessness and now, three years later, over 200 were working on such plans. He stated that four or five plans had been completed in the past year and he hoped the rest would be completed in the coming year. He said he would meet with Governor Kulongoski’s staff to start crafting a way to plan at the State level that would help local agencies with this work. He thanked everyone for allowing him to speak and particularly the Mayor for her proclamation. He declared that efforts in the past had not been successful as evidenced by the unrelenting growth in the numbers of homeless people and attributed this to thinking too small. He averred that the nature of the 10-year planning requirement was not to satisfy a HUD requirement but to garner broad community will to do such planning work. MINUTES—Eugene City Council November 30, 2005 Page 1 Work Session