Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Mayor Piercy distinguished between the City’s costs related to the Occupy Eugene protest marches and the City’s costs related to the encampment. She said the pressures of homelessness had been building prior to the Occupy movement and suggested there was a synergy in their coming together as had occurred all across the country. She believed the Occupy Eugene participants wanted to do more than talk about societal inequities in country. She suggested that the City could use Occupy Eugene as an opportunity to build more capacity in the system. While she liked the concepts behind Mr. Zelenka’s modification, Ms. Ortiz wanted to ensure that it incorporated the concept of accountability on the part of Occupy Eugene organizers. She invited Occupy Eugene to contribute to the costs of maintaining the encampment and wanted to know what Occupy Eugene was doing to make it a safer place. She did not support continuing the current situation indefinitely. Mr. Poling believed the encampment had reached the threshold mentioned by Mr. Clark. He suggested that City Manager Ruiz would have been criticized by many councilors if he closed the encampment without council consultation. He agreed with Ms. Taylor about the importance of free speech but did not think that was what the discussion was about. He believed the City needed to continue to work on homeless issue. However, he also believed it was time for the camp to end. Mr. Poling did not think the City’s past experiments in operating a homeless camp were successful and did not think another homeless camp would be successful. Mr. Brown thought the Occupy Eugene encampment represented an unusual unique situation. He did not think that Occupy Eugene had envisioned that it would be joined by hundreds of homeless people. He thought that Occupy Eugene had done a good job taking care of the homeless and helping them take care of themselves. He acknowledged the encampment did not look good and many residents were angry. He did not think they should be angry at the homeless, who were the victims, or their rescuers, who were highlighting the system flaws that enabled homelessness. Mr. Brown suggested the City had an opportunity to move to “Square 3”; evicting the campers would take the community back to “Square 1” because people’s hopes would be shattered. He advocated for an extension while the human service agencies figured out the problem. Mr. Pryor suggested that both the manager and Mr. Zelenka’s proposals could help the council identify the next steps and preserve what had worked well with the Occupy Eugene encampment, particularly its work with homeless youth. He did not think the current encampment location worked for the long-term. Mr. Pryor believed Eugene was ready to work with Occupy Eugene on solutions in company with the service providers. Mr. Clark indicated his opposition to the further expenditure of public funds to subsidize a protest. He believed continuing the encampment could lead to catastrophic outcomes, and he did not think it was responsible for the City to enable that. Mr. Clark asked that those offering solutions that cost money be prepared to identify a corresponding offset in the budget. Mr. Poling suggested that if the City had to close the camp, the council be prepared to stand behind the Police Department for the actions it would have to take because everyone in the community would want to second-guess those actions. Ms. Ortiz concurred. She would support all actions the EPD took that were within department policy. B. WORK SESSION: Boards and Commissions MINUTES—Eugene City Council December 12, 2011 Page 5 Work Session