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September 14, 2009 <br />Joint Elected Officials Meeting <br />City of Springfield <br />City of Eugene <br />Lane County <br /> <br />Page 12 of 14 <br /> <br /> <br />Chief Groves said both cities were already providing those services collectively for eight districts outside <br />the cities. He explained. An amendment to the Metro Plan would be dependent on the level of governance <br />selected for the new entity. <br /> <br />Chief Murphy said it would be a decision making process involving the effective governments if there <br />was to be a change, and there was no presumption of a change. <br /> <br />Councilor Clark appreciated the leadership trying to find better ways to provide service and save money. <br />He needed to know about service delivery. In Eugene, he asked if they would recommend changes to <br />service delivery for Zone 3 or changes outside city limits. <br /> <br />Chief Murphy said the presumption was stabilization of the current delivery system. Beyond that, <br />decision making would be done by the elected bodies. They would make change wherever it made sense, <br />but would have to go to the elected officials. This was just the beginning and the possibilities of further <br />savings were significant. They had a long way to go and would need public forums and decision making <br />by elected officials. <br /> <br />Chief Groves said their objective was to maintain or improve line level service of delivery. This looked at <br />administration and cost savings in that area. He noted the number of command officers that were eligible <br />or near eligible for retirement and that they were trying to capture those savings by doing away with <br />redundancies. He referred to the Zone 3 question, which was an ambulance transport system issue. They <br />would be addressing that issue at the next meeting. <br /> <br />Councilor Clark said he appreciated the work done by both departments. <br /> <br />Commissioner Handy said his work on this committee helped him understand there were short term <br />strategies and long term strategies. Before them today was a short term strategy. He appreciated the work <br />by his colleagues from the Eugene and Springfield City Councils. He noted the work of the other fire <br />districts across the county and their interest, as well as the Florence hospital district. It came to his <br />attention that the County had an immediate piece to deal with regarding deficiencies in Chapter 18 of the <br />Lane County Code that they were in the process of addressing. Long term, they had to address the <br />taxation issue, boundary change issue, special district or a service district issue, and the governance issues <br />involved in those options. Looking at the service effectiveness and ambulance transport were also issues <br />to discuss. In the short term, they were also looking at how to maximize FireMed, and show the public <br />where the shortfalls were. Councilor Ortiz was correct that the feedback from the community was <br />important. <br /> <br />Councilor Ortiz said when they started this conversation, her main question was what the City of Eugene <br />needed to do to stabilize the Ambulance Transport System. She wanted to make sure that hadn’t been lost. <br />When she talked about that, she also meant she didn’t want the quality of service to get lost. Quality <br />needed to be there. Chief Groves agreed. Councilor Ortiz thanked Councilor Clark for bringing up Zone 3 <br />as it needed to be discussed. <br /> <br />Mayor Piercy said she appreciated the work done on this topic. She said she would like to try this out <br />slowly to see how it worked before getting too far. She would like to think of other small ways to move <br /> <br />