Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Councilor Taylor thanked everyone for speaking. She averred that they had heard things that were “inspirational, intelligent, courageous, and … with integrity.” She congratulated Mr. Oaks for his success in helping to see the resolution come forward. She felt that everyone who spoke had said something wonderful, but she wanted to call out Ms. Berg-Caldwell and Ms. Pincus Merwin for “working for what’s right.” She thought everyone had spoken well and convincingly. She agreed with people who felt that the City was in danger of negating the efficiency of the CRB. Councilor Ortiz thanked everyone for coming down to the meeting and for all of the emails she had received on the issues that were discussed during the evening. She underscored that her main objective was to maintain the integrity of the office of the Police Auditor and the CRB. She believed it was critical to get the right mix of people to serve on the board. She did not consider it to be “rocket science,” rather they should look at the community as a whole and try to achieve balance. She encouraged people to participate in government because it was necessary. It perturbed her to hear people question the integrity of the council and her own integrity. She noted that the only pressure she had experienced had been from people on the “progressive side.” She stressed that she took her job very seriously. She represented a mix of seven different neighborhoods in Ward 7 and she tried to consider everyone when she made any decision. She also felt that when people commented that if the council did not do one thing or another it would bring into question the work that would continue to be done on the CRB, it was disrespectful of the people who were there working. She believed they had good people working on the CRB who put a lot of hours into the work. Councilor Clark thanked everyone who came to speak to the council. He wanted to underscore how much he appreciated and respected Mr. Bonnett’s tone and manner. He said he could really respect someone who disagreed with him but did so from a position of integrity. He echoed the comments made by Councilor Ortiz. He had found it offensive to hear that if he did not agree with some of the people who testified, they could then define his motives and claim that he was “somehow ruining the system or putting it into question.” He found accusations that the council was not committed to police oversight to be harmful to the community moving forward together. He perceived the job as coming to a place of balance. He stressed that the council received a lot of input from a lot of different places in the community. He received many emails, some from the people who had testified and many from north Eugene, the ward for which he served as representative. He said the opinions he fielded were “wildly in disagreement.” He encouraged everyone to have the kind of conversation that left everyone’s integrity intact in the process of disagreeing about how they would “get there.” He also observed that a number of untrue statements had been provided as fact, particularly in regard to tasering incidents. He noted that there were cameras on the tasers that had been deployed at the May, 2008, incident. Regarding the incident, he underscored that everyone had a right to free speech and everyone had the right to be heard, but no one had the right to force people to hear them. Councilor Brown thanked everybody who had come to the meeting. He read a statement into the record. He opined that while the council wanted an independent police auditor, it sought to diminish the auditor’s authority by “a hundred small cuts” in ordinance amendments and it transferred parts of that authority to the police chief, the City Manager, and the municipal court judge. He averred that though the council said it would support the auditor, the council questioned the personal integrity and competence of the first two auditors. He asserted that though it was said that capable, experienced people were wanted to serve on the CRB, people who would conduct rigorous and thorough analysis, broaden the discussion, provoke thought, and speak “inconvenient truths,” were discarded when the council was “lucky enough” to get them. He alleged that they were doing everything they could to diminish the credibility and to ensure the failure of the civilian oversight process. He opined that their hypocrisy was subliminal, unspoken, and subconscious. 2. CONSENT CALENDAR A. Approval of City Council Minutes - September 9, 2009, Work Session B. Approval to Tentative Working Agenda MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 26, 2009 Page 6 Regular Meeting