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