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Mr. Brown said he would like to see the division of the tax impact on overlapping tax districts over the <br />course of a plan. He commented that the projects did not seem compelling. He predicted that if they asked <br />the citizens, they would wonder why the City would choose to use urban renewal money for the Park <br />Blocks. He also believed that the City was doing a fine job of providing business assistance with its other <br />programs. He was not convinced that this was an appropriate expenditure of urban renewal funds. <br />Mayor Piercy agreed that the council would have to find compelling projects. She remarked that they also <br />could not talk about losing money until they had it. She pointed out that if something was not built, it never <br />generated tax revenue. She hoped the council would have a real discussion on how it would tie whatever it <br />decided to pursue with the Council Goals. <br />Ms. Ortiz observed that the council had often engaged in the conversation on whether an urban renewal <br />district was valuable or not. She stressed that at the state level, the schools received their money. <br />Ms. Ortiz expressed her appreciation for the staff work that had gone into the presentation. She considered <br />the Park Blocks improvement to be a good project. She also supported business assistance to improve <br />energy efficiency. She said the older buildings in the downtown needed to be upgraded. She opined that <br />increasing their energy efficiency was better than "letting them rot" or tearing them down. <br />Regarding concern over discussing this in the summer, Ms. Ortiz felt the timeline would give adequate time <br />for anyone who had an interest in participating to provide input. <br />Mr. Pryor said the question was what outcome did they want to see occur and what would it look like. He <br />was certain that if the council did not participate at all there would still be an outcome, but he was not sure <br />what it would look like. He added his feeling that the timeline was "fine." He hoped the input and <br />deliberation would help guide the council in its decision on what way to go in its financial planning. He <br />wanted the process to say not only that the City had these mechanisms and what did people think of them, <br />but also what the people wanted to have downtown. He wanted to make sure the City received the <br />maximum outcome for money spent. <br />Mr. Clark echoed Mr. Pryor's points. He wanted to gain more specificity about the longer term outcome <br />and goal. He wanted to explore what the City wanted to achieve and whether urban renewal was the best <br />way to achieve it. He added his appreciation for the staff work that had gone into the presentation. <br />Mr. Clark was interested in the answer to the question that Mr. Brown had raised regarding whether urban <br />renewal had worked. He was, in general terms, in favor of the Multiple -Unit Property Tax Exemption <br />(MUPTE) because if the applicant received a tax break for a period of years then the City received more <br />money from a long -term increase to the tax base. His understanding of urban renewal was that the City <br />would essentially be borrowing on the future increase in taxes in order to build now what the City would <br />like to have, with the assumption that those taxes would increase. He was challenged in that the projects <br />they ended up building did not seem to increase the tax base. He did not want it to be construed that he did <br />not consider what had been built to be good – urban renewal projects included the Hult Center for the <br />Performing Arts and the Eugene Public Library – but he did not have a clear sense of whether tax <br />increment financing had been a successful tool in Eugene for increasing tax revenue. <br />Mayor Piercy noted that the packet materials included a list of tax paying projects. <br />MINUTES— Eugene City Council July 8, 2009 Page 3 <br />Work Session <br />