Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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making the City a "premier city dedicated to enhancing the lives of all of its community members." She wished to discuss sustainability, which was at the center of the City's Climate Action Plan. She said the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights called for the right to food, shelter, education, health care, work, and an adequate standard of living. From her perspective, access to food was paramount to making all of the other things happen. She encouraged the council to suspend the limit on chickens and to increase the limit for backyard chickens. She did not have any at present but planned to build a coop and have chickens. She brought forward a chicken to represent the chickens in the community. She also wanted them to work to enhance bicycle amenities. Kevin Matthews , P.O. Box 1588, had appreciated the testimony of the Public Forum. He thought councilors might think the EmX was an LTD project and that the City should sit back and let LTD do its job. He said there were some things the City was involved in, such as a Planning Director's decision that he opined was "pretty farfetched," as it suggested the transportation plans supported the Amazon Canal option. He related that this decision was appealed by "a private party" and was turned down on appeal. He asserted that the City was working "behind the scenes" to facilitate the project. He alleged that the City was involved in detailed site design. His perception was that the City was not involved in "holding LTD's feet to the fire" around the West Eugene Collaborative's consensus- approach to West 11th Avenue, which was to use a multi-way boulevard. He thought the LTD approach for EmX would be hard on businesses on West 11th Avenue without finishing the job and giving them access streets and rising property values that he believed would compensate them in the long run. He believed that the multi-way boulevard would be a win-win solution. Carlis Nixon , 1556 Wilson Court, said she did not own a car and used the bus for a major part of her transportation. She was a fervent supporter of public transit and believed it was an important component of urban health. She was present to ask the council to oppose the Amazon option for a new EmX route. She averred that the City, true to its slogan, valued the outdoors and the bike path that ran by the Amazon Canal, which ran all the way to Fern Ridge Reservoir. She believed the bike path had the potential to be a national treasure. She said bike commuters deserved quiet and to be encouraged. She did not think it would encourage commuting to ask them to compete with large buses that went each direction every 12 minutes. She predicted that the bike path would be increasingly used for recreational purposes. She stated that it was a natural phenomenon as well; one could see great blue herons in the City. She questioned the need for the West Eugene EmX in the first place. She had grown up in Vancouver, British Columbia, which had a great public rapid transit system that she used and appreciated. She had recently read a book, Green Metropolis, which posited that cities needed to stop having a "kneejerk" reflex to rapid transit; not all rapid transit was good. The author suggested that when rapid transit was brought to underdeveloped areas it encouraged sprawl. She thought this was something they would not want to do. Majeska Seese-Green , Ward 7, agreed with the proponents of opening the Ribbon Trail to mountain bikers and of increasing the limit on backyard chickens. She thought it would be nice to have goats allowed in the City as well. She wanted to provide comments in regard to the recent dismissal of Dawn Reynolds, former deputy police auditor. She and her colleague, Carol Berg-Caldwell, had enjoyed working with her. She appreciated the way Ms. Reynolds worked with the community. She understood that the police auditor had a right to decide who would work in the office with him. She read in the newspaper that the auditor had stated that they were restructuring the office and would be moving in a different direction. This brought to mind the question for her of what was important to the community. She said the auditor intended to conduct a nationwide search for a new deputy auditor and wondered what the criteria would be, especially since the deputy auditor could conceivably become the police auditor at some future point. She also wished to mention the lines on the sidewalk that Ms. Berg-Caldwell had read the poem about. She thought they were "uglifying" the downtown area. She averred that there had been some confusion about enforcement and she and Ms. Berg-Caldwell had asked questions about the ordinance and the police officers there were not able to cite the ordinance. MINUTES—Eugene City Council May 24, 2010 Page 8 Regular Meeting