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February 26, 2010 <br />Joint Elected Officials Meeting <br />City of Springfield <br />City of Eugene <br />Lane County <br /> <br />Page 5 of 13 <br /> <br /> <br />the road to economic recovery, they needed to determine whether or not there was a way to reach a <br />collaborative agreement on the policies for economic strategies, such as whether the economy needed <br />an influx of dollars in and out, or if it could be self-sustaining by moving the same dollars around <br />within the area. That issue had not been agreed upon in the past. The policy makers needed to make <br />those decisions. <br /> <br />Councilor Poling arrived. (12:43pm) <br /> <br />Mayor Piercy reminded the group that one thing the joint elected officials could do was to leverage <br />their mutual abilities to move their communities forward. They had come to the conclusion that they <br />could continue to do things their own way or try to do better during these hard times by working <br />together. They had done well in that effort. Some homegrown businesses would grow so big they <br />would go out of town and others would come in. How those things were leveraged could be to the <br />community’s advantage as part of the discussion. Travel Lane County (TLC) had done a lot of work in <br />determining what made the community attractive so she felt that could be removed from this work <br />plan. TLC and Lane Community College (LCC) belonged to the community and it was poised to <br />become the green job center and a place to move the economy forward. As the body of joint elected <br />officials, they needed to look at what the region had and leverage it to their advantage. Those things <br />were already there in terms of what could be done together. She reiterated that her only concern was <br />that the group would rewrite what was already being done. Their work needed to be scaled in a way <br />that moved the community forward. <br /> <br />Commissioner Handy said he was happy to support the two cities moving forward with their plans. He <br />referred to the Metro Plan Work Plan which was in the agenda packet as Item IV a, and IV b. It <br />included Lane County’s proposal for economic development for small cities. He acknowledged Mike <br />McKenzie-Bahr for his work on this issue. The commissioners were looking for ways to move <br />forward. There were 14 or 15 economic development entities in Lane County. He questioned creating <br />another group when they could perhaps merge with an existing entity. He asked if they would be <br />looking for new funding for the new group. <br /> <br />Mr. Ruiz said they had not come up with a solution until they knew if the elected officials wanted to <br />move forward. If the joint elected officials supported moving forward, the administrators would put it <br />into action. They needed to define what that meant. <br /> <br />Commissioner Handy urged the elected officials to look at ways to do that. He agreed with Councilor <br />Ortiz about the education component. This document didn’t address educational issues. The <br />community needed healthy young people turning into taxpayers and contributing to the community. <br />The County was interested in the priority of how to protect farmlands and resource lands. A couple of <br />decades ago, the region was producing 50-60 percent of its own food and now was only producing <br />about three percent. The figure should be somewhere closer to 30 percent. He noted the amount of <br />money that was being spent that went out of the region for food that could be spent locally. He didn’t <br />see anything binding in this document, but a lot of aspirational things. He would be supporting this <br />with a couple of amendments. <br /> <br />Mayor Leiken said he agreed with Mayor Piercy about Travel Lane County. When he had the <br />opportunity to sit as interim director of Lane Metro Partnership, a consultant had said that every city <br /> <br />