Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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David Maloney , 30612 Butterfly Lane, a staff member at NCS, agreed with previous speakers about NCS and spoke of the caring attitude of teachers toward NCS students, which students responded to positively. He said they became something greater than they were before and did many community service projects that benefited the homeless and hungry. Andrea Gillespie , 3877 North Clary Street, manager of the Cascade Adult Center at the Trude Kaufman Center, was present to answer questions about the lease that would be part of the Consent Calendar. She asked the council to consider renewing the lease for three years to give the center a chance to find another location. Joe Canady , 84825 Territorial Road, thanked the council for its assistance in keeping the Trude Kaufman Center open. He supported the lease renewal request and hoped the council would contract with Cascade Adult Center directly for the building. Mark Robinowitz , no address provided, discussed the City’s Climate and Energy Action Plan. He noted the plan’s call for a decrease in energy consumption and maintained that people would be forced by nature to reduce their energy consumption and would have to make due with much less. He noted that the City planned to double the fee for a community garden plot and questioned how that implemented the community’s goals for increased production of local food. He maintained that when the oil was gone, Eugeneans were going to have to grow all their own food. He also questioned widening Beltline because of his beliefs in peak oil. He also objected to EWEB’s proposal to provide water to Veneta. Michael Peterson , no address provided, spoke in support of NCS. He said he had been home schooled for seven years without much success and because of a learning disability had not learned to read until his early teens. He did not know if he would have succeeded at all without NCS. Before he attended the school he had not had friends or community connections. The school helped him build those connections. He did not want to think about what would have happened to him without the school. He had faced homelessness and was offered resources and options by teachers and students that resulted in him securing a low-income apartment. LeRoy Parks , 28295 K. R. Neilson Road, opposed the renaming of Beltline Road as wasteful and arrogant and said it benefited no one but the Papé Corporation. It was divisive. He thought the council had more important things to think about, such as the NCS students. Cai Ky , 618 E Street, Springfield, attended NCS and said without the school he did not know what he would do. He had attended a public school and learned nothing because the teaching styles made no sense and teachers were unable to answer his questions because there were so many other students. He had followed two friends to NCS because of their positive reviews and had passed all his classes and learned a lot. He loved attending NCS and now had lots of friends and considered the teachers and staff to be his friends as well. Elliot Glaser-Flynn , 1690 Wilson Street, a freshman at NCS, said he had a very positive experience at his last school and could not imagine being happy at another. However, he had moved to Eugene and attended NCS and within two months felt accepted, comfortable, and made a lot of friends. Steve Wilson , 4549 Souza Street, questioned why the council did not give the cost of the name change of Beltline more consideration. He criticized the council for its support of the Beltline renaming, saying it was a rubber stamp effort. He suggested more consideration should be given to the Governor’s decision because he was a lame duck trying to repay his buddies. He asked the council to support the ballot measure his group was trying to get on the ballot. He found councilors Poling and Solomon’s support of the name change offensive. MINUTES—City Council April 14, 2010 Page 4