Item B: Ordinance on Downtown Public Safety Zone

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Ms. Miller observed that the statistics indicated that adults over 24 years of age represented 71 percent of those excluded, although people often complained about the youth downtown. Ms. Miller reported a civil lawsuit had been filed regarding the constitutionality of the ordinance and expressed disappointment no one asked a question about the ordinance’s constitutionality at the DPSZ forum while the City Attorney was present. Speaking to the issue of funding social services and jail beds, Ms. Miller acknowledged a lack of funding for services in general. She reviewed some comparative data for Portland, Salem, Eugene, and Multnomah County related to those jurisdictions’ expenditures for public safety and social services that demonstrated Eugene’s lack of officers, district attorneys, and jail beds. She did not know how other communities were able to fund their services to a greater degree than Eugene-Springfield. Ms. Miller recalled Ms. Syrett’s comments at the forum that those concerned about public services should vote for public service funding measures. She agreed with those comments, but said in the meantime, the City must find other ways to deal with crime in the community. Mr. Mueller said the list of stakeholders appeared to lack representation from social service agencies and he was curious as to why they were not considered stakeholders. Lt. Mozan said they were considered stakeholders. He pointed out there were different interests in downtown and the list referred to by Mr. Mueller included security stakeholders. There was also a Downtown Safety Committee that included several human services agency representatives. Mr. Mueller preferred that people be put into treatment as needed rather than be incarcerated, suggesting that it could be done at less cost. He pointed out the large number of alcohol-related offenses and suggested that rather than displacing them into other neighborhoods, people be put into treatment so they could change their ways and have a better life. He said research indicated people who had encounters with law enforcement had reduced participation in democracy because they felt abused and overwhelmed by authority figures. He said that was not a good thing for society and recommended the commission look beyond “its corner of the world” and consider the “bigger picture.” Although kicking people who needed help out of downtown might help the businesses of Mr. Clark and Mr. Brown, Mr. Mueller did not think it was the best thing for the community. He wanted to look more carefully at the bigger issues rather than merely accept that “things are better this summer.” Responding to a question from Mr. Laue, Ms. Phelps said a key difference between the DPSZ and the City’s former exclusion zone was that the former ordinance gave officers more discretion. In the case of the DPSZ, City staff worked with Municipal Court to develop an ordinance that included show cause hearings. Officers could not grant exclusions on their own, although she acknowledged there were questions about how the temporary five-day exclusion worked. She said 90-day exclusions and one-year exclusions could only be imposed by a judge. That included a show-cause hearing and the individual must appear in court. It was a civil process, so no representation was involved. Mr. Laue asked if Eugene continued to have a prostitution-free zone. Chief Kerns clarified that the City had a prostitution-free ordinance but no identified zone, which was determined by the number of arrests in a given area. Mr. Laue asked about existing court tests for similar ordinances and zones. He suggested that such a zone might be legal but was not necessarily constitutional, as laws were passed by legislative bodies and constitutionality was determined by the courts. Speaking to earlier comments about funding levels for social services and jail beds, Mr. Laue noted that Lane County had one of the lowest property tax bases in Oregon and lacked funding for basic county responsibilities, which led to the current crisis conditions in corrections and social services. Mr. Laue said he heard that the DPSZ was an effective tool in an area where problems had grown to crisis proportions. He suggested that the logical question was whether DPSZ would be an effective tool if adopted citywide, and if adopted citywide, would the DPSZ be constitutional. He recommended the commission focus on th the issues raised by the ACLU related to the 13 Amendment and due process. While he agreed that there were