CC Minutes - 09/09/09 Work Session

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hoped to get that effort back on track, and suggested it was important both to plan for what one wanted and what one did not want. She did not think the area around Highway 99 had been given enough attention. Ms. Ortiz asked Ms. Gardner the status of the Rasor Park Mixed Use Center Project. Ms. Gardner said the project had concluded. She anticipated the Strategic Neighborhood Action Plan would continue the dialogue begun through that project. She suggested that the action plans could also help to involve the outlying neighborhoods in planning processes, particularly if they lacked the resources of other neighborhood groups. However, due to a lack of resources, no second phase of the Rasor Park Mixed Use Center Project was planned at this time. Ms. Ortiz asked that any outreach to neighborhood groups in the Highway 99 area include outreach to businesses. Mayor Piercy maintained that the community still believed in the growth management policies, but there were tensions between them and she thought that would always be the case. She did not think the policies needed to be changed as much as people needed to understand the intrinsic tensions between them. The community had to figure out the tradeoffs between the policies and reach the best possible decisions. Mayor Piercy noted the City’s climate work plan called for a reduction of the community’s carbon footprints, which required mixed use and that people worked closer to home, and all the pieces fit together and did not stand alone. She thought all the items on the work plan were part of a larger picture and the council needed to keep the connections between them in mind. Speaking to Ms. Ortiz’s comments about paying attention to the community’s edges, Mayor Piercy pointed out the West Eugene Collaborative process, which she thought was evidence that some attention was being paid to those areas. She commended Ms. Ortiz for keeping those issues at the forefront and agreed the council needed to “grow the whole” in the direction the community wanted to be. Mr. Brown also questioned the resources proposed to dedicated to mixed use centers and recalled a commission discussion of the Walnut Mixed Use Center during which commissioners acknowledged the need for a basic plan to meet State mandates but questioned how much more time they should spend given that development itself was out of their control. He believed the same was true for the projects associated with interdepartmental collaboration, including the Eugene Water & Electric Board project and the West th Eugene Collaborative recommendations for West 11 Avenue. He thought that Public Works could address th the immediate traffic improvement strategies needed on West 11 Avenue, but he questioned how much time City staff should spend on the multi-way boulevard concept given that it was dependent on private development and would take years to realize. Mr. Brown questioned the allocation of nine percent for strategic neighborhood action plans and expressed concern the project would result in a new level of neighborhood bureaucracy in the form of a planning committee apart from the elected neighborhood board. He asked why the City would want to do that. He envisioned another level of complexity with no concrete on-the-ground results. He also questioned its inclusion under planning and suggested it should be included in the City Manager’s Office under Neighbor- hood Resources. In response to Mr. Brown’s concerns, Ms. Gardner clarified that the Strategic Neighborhood Action Plans was a program under development and it was unclear what the eventual structure would be. She said there was no attempt to create a separate neighborhood structure. The City’s goal was to ensure that the action plans had the broadest base of community representation possible. The division was working closely with MINUTES—City Council September 9, 2009 Page 4