Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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He speculated the remainder of those excluded were low-income and lacked education. Mr. Zelenka continued to be concerned that the DPSZ would move crime out of downtown and into other areas. Mr. Zelenka believed the extension of the ordinance had majority support and he preferred to change the ordinance for the better rather than be a symbolic ‘no’ vote. He acknowledged he preferred not to have such a zone. Mr. Zelenka supported the advocacy services contract arrangement outlined by Chief Kerns. Ms. Taylor noted her initial opposition to the ordinance and said she continued to oppose it. She preferred the DPSZ be morally defensible as well as legally defensible, and she did not find it morally defensible. Ms. Taylor asked Chief Kerns if he had an example of a case involving a person who was excluded from downtown but would not be punished in any other way. In other words, exclusion was the only punishment available. Chief Kerns said a person could not be excluded unless there was reason to believe they committed a crime and criminal action against them was moving forward. Such individuals could be excluded from downtown for 90 days pending a trail. The one-year exclusion could only be imposed upon someone upon conviction. Ms. Taylor believed that the effect of the ordinance was to shift criminals around the community, in many cases before they were convicted of crimes. She asked Chief Kerns questions clarifying the nature of some of the crimes mentioned in the ordinance. Ms. Taylor pointed out that all the crimes on the list for which one could be excluded from downtown were already crimes. Chief Kerns acknowledged that they were crimes, but pointed out the City lacked jail capacity to keep such people who committed such crimes confined in jail until their trial date. When the City put people in jail for minor offenses such as theft and disorderly conduct they were released immediately and went back where they came from to commit more crimes. When people were arrested for violating the exclusion order, they did not come back downtown. Ms. Taylor was concerned about the ‘rightness’ of excluding people from an area and about dissipating criminal behavior to other parts of the community. She believed the best approach to dealing with undesirable people was to dilute their presence and have everybody together. Mayor Piercy observed that whenever the City interrupted such behavior it did tend to move elsewhere but it also seemed to lose intensity. One did not solve the problem, but it improved the situation. Chief Kerns concurred. He said that was particularly true with street and behavior crimes, and he believed the council’s action to fund a new downtown police team would allow the department to place those officers where the crime was happening, and over time behavior crimes would be reduced. Mayor Piercy said she knew that police officers were deeply concerned about young women downtown and the predatory situations they frequently found themselves in, and suggested that was the reason sex crimes had been added to the ordinance. Chief Kerns concurred. Mr. Clark, seconded by Ms. Taylor, moved to extend the Downtown Public Safety Zone for 18 months to April 2012, adding the sexual violations and crimes portion, adding the re- vised statutes portion, adding a new section 4.875 on the issuance of notice to show cause, and deleting Section 4.876 with regard to the temporary exclusion by adopting Council Bill 5042, the Option B ordinance concerning the Downtown Public Safety Zone. The motion passed, 5:3; Ms. Taylor, Ms. Solomon, and Mr. Brown voting no. MINUTES—Eugene City Council December 8, 2010 Page 5 Work Session