Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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ATTACHMENT B M I N U T E S Eugene City Council McNutt Room—City Hall—777 Pearl Street Eugene, Oregon January 27, 2010 Noon COUNCILORS PRESENT: Mike Clark, Andrea Ortiz, Jennifer Solomon, Chris Pryor, George Poling, George Brown, Betty Taylor. Alan Zelenka participated by telephone. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the work session of the Eugene City Council to order. She thanked everyone for voting on the recent ballot measures. A. WORK SESSION: Downtown Public Safety Issues Mr. Ruiz stated that the Eugene Counts public input process had been undertaken and both downtown and downtown public safety had cropped up as recurring themes. He felt this pointed to the need to focus some resources “in that direction.” He thought improving the downtown would also increase the number of jobs in that area. He hoped that the council would move forward on the recommendations. Executive Director of the Planning and Development Department Susan Muir reviewed the first slide in a PowerPoint presentation on Downtown Public Safety, which highlighted the Core Strategies. Hard copies of the PowerPoint slides were provided to everyone present. She stated that the primary focus of the present discussion was on the strategy related to public safety. Eugene Police Department (EPD) Chief Pete Kerns listed some of the task team members. He said one of the first things the task team had done had been to identify the things that needed to be changed and what parts of the situation contributed to the present state of the downtown area. He related that a big component lay in the lack of accountability in that there were not enough police officers or jail beds or other services. He observed that the illegal and unpleasant behavior was upsetting people who would come downtown to conduct business or spend time there. He said the task team had come up with more than 40 strategies worthy of consideration. He noted that they had received input from a wide array of people. In calling other municipalities across the country for information on how they had handled similar situations, they had been repeatedly referred to the City of Portland. He related that they had contacted Portland and made a field trip there. Chief Kerns stated that the council packets included both short-term and long-term strategies. He said the short-term strategies were those that they were already working on. He explained that there were a number of existing resources they could coordinate better, such as improving the lines of communication with the Department of Youth Services. He noted that there already existed closed-circuit cameras, owned by private businesses for their own security purposes, and the EPD could take greater advantage of those. He said EPD was in the process of taking an inventory of these resources. MINUTES—Eugene City Council January 27, 2010 Page 1 Work Session