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Ms. Ortiz had also not been able to attend all three days, but had attended the first day. She agreed that it <br />had been a good exercise, though the cost for the consultant gave her pause. She observed that she had been <br />the only person of color present on the day she was there. She also had not seen anyone present who could <br />not afford to take time off work to be there. She had heard Mr. Chadwick remark that the people who were <br />interested and counted were there and she took offense at this. She averred that there were a number of <br />people in the community who could not afford to participate in this type of process. She was looking <br />forward to receiving the information from the workshop. She did believe that any time people could spend <br />time talking with one another, they could not go too far wrong. <br />Mr. Pryor felt that Ms. Ortiz had a valid point. He commented that finding out how to reach everyone they <br />wanted to reach had plagued researchers "forever." For him what was significant was whether the future <br />would be like a car where the driver would take hands off the wheel and it would just go where it would go <br />or they would put their hands on the wheel and steer it. He was concerned that people were trying to take <br />the future in two different directions and this could lead to the wrong result and each side blaming the other <br />for it. He said everyone needed to work together and the workshop was one way to gain this kind of unity. <br />He averred that Mr. Chadwick had done a good job with the people who had been at the workshop, but they <br />needed to be able to explain to the rest of the population why the community should be deliberate about its <br />planning for growth and the future so there was more consensus. <br />Mayor Piercy remarked that this was an iterative process because there would be people who had been "on <br />part of the journey and had not been with it all along." <br />Ms. Gardner said they wanted to leverage the synergy from the workshop. She related that the people who <br />were present had come away with their stereotypes about certain people dispelled and some had even <br />indicated that they would actively work to refute those stereotypes. She averred that there had been <br />considerable knowledge, expertise, and leadership at the workshop. She commented that at the end of the <br />workshop there had been stated commitments by participants to being part of the solution and to working <br />toward the best outcomes. She stated that staff thought the summer would provide a good opportunity to <br />work intensively with the group and subsets of the group. She said they might need to expand the group for <br />representation and invited the councilors to provide recommendations. <br />Carolyn Weiss, planning staff, related that the community group was excited to work together and had <br />shown a commitment to the project. She said staff believed that over the next few months they could work <br />with this group to refine the data and hone in on a draft scenario for how Eugene might grow in the future. <br />She stated that this was good timing as they could start back -up with public workshops and broader <br />community engagement to garner feedback on the work that had been done over the summer. She reviewed <br />three elements of the approach they were taking: community consensus, technical analysis, and continued <br />work with the consultant Eco- Northwest. She acknowledged the concern expressed at the table that they <br />might pinpoint a certain time 20 years from the present and believe that would be where the community <br />would end up. She called this the "jaws of uncertainty discussion." She explained that staff had been in <br />conversation with the State about how much flexibility they could build into the plan. She said if this <br />approach did not move the process forward, they could revert to a more conventional approach. She added <br />that they wanted to include regional partners, such as the county, in the process and they believed this would <br />lead to an expedited adoption process once they had reached that point. <br />Mayor Piercy understood that they had joint meetings with the Planning Commission and members of the <br />Sustainability and Human Rights commissions participating, but she wanted to ensure that they were <br />utilizing them as commissions to make use of what they could do to help move the process along. She knew <br />that 1,000 Friends of Oregon was becoming more "active in this area" and had participated in the Portland <br />planning process. She thought it might be better to "invite them in early" as full participants and encouraged <br />MINUTES— Eugene City Council June 16, 2010 Page 2 <br />Work Session <br />