Laserfiche WebLink
boundaries. Staff also planned to provide data on the Web site that allowed people to compare different <br />ward scenarios. That information would be available soon. <br />While several councilors expressed an inclination for Scenario 1, they expressed general support for <br />forwarding both scenarios to the public. <br />Ms. Taylor suggested that the entire downtown area should be included in Ward 1. She also thought <br />moving the boundaries of Ward 3 across the Willamette River to include the students living in Ward 4 <br />would be appropriate. <br />Mr. Zelenka expressed concern that both scenarios exacerbated the impact of the fact that students did not <br />generally vote in local elections. Scenario 2 exacerbated that problem by removing a portion of the <br />Amazon neighborhood with high voter turnout from Ward 3. The number of people would be the same, <br />but the number of voters would be lower. He suggested one way to address the issue would be to retain <br />the Amazon neighborhood in Ward 3, and add the area between Hilyard and Oak streets to Ward 2. <br />Mr. Zelenka suggested the ward boundaries for wards 4 and 5 should be established with consideration of <br />the new neighborhood association boundaries, which could also require adjustments to the boundaries for <br />Ward 7. <br />Mr. Clark expressed interest in further discussion of Ms. Taylor's suggestion about downtown and Mr. <br />Zelenka's comments about the boundaries for wards 4 and 5. <br />Mr. Poling wanted a scenario that affected as few people as possible. He shared Mr. Zelenka's concerns <br />about the number of student voters in Ward 3. He noted that while Ward 4 contained many students, that <br />area of the ward also included some single - family and multi - family development and speculated that the <br />number of people who lived in that area did not turn over as often as the number of people in Ward 3. <br />Mr. Pryor supported the scenario that presented the least change. He indicated he would resist <br />segregating a particular population in any one ward and thought there was a benefit to having two <br />councilors who needed to think about the needs of the university student population. The same was true <br />for downtown; a downtown divided into two wards meant there were two councilors specifically <br />concerned with downtown issues, although Mr. Pryor believed downtown was of concern to all <br />councilors. He perceived the same advantage in having the River Road/Santa Clara area in two different <br />wards. <br />Ms. Ortiz supported Mr. Pryor's comments. She liked the use of significant geographic features, such as <br />the river, for ward boundaries, and did not want to see ward boundaries cross such features if that could <br />be avoided. <br />Mr. Farr expressed interest in Ms. Taylor's suggestion about downtown as he did not see it as segregating <br />any particular population. He preferred to retain the airport in Ward 6 because of the likelihood the urban <br />growth boundary could be expanded in that area to accommodate industrial development. He thought it <br />made sense to retain the airport in Ward 6 for that reason, and pointed out the lack of voters in the area <br />would make that easy to accomplish. <br />Mr. Clark emphasized the importance of creating boundaries that did not divide communities of common <br />interest. He believed that to the degree the University of Oregon campus area was an area of common <br />interest, it was best not to divide it. <br />MINUTES— Eugene City Council July 25, 2011 Page 4 <br />Work Session <br />