CC Minutes - 02/27/12 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

MINUTES Eugene City Council Council Chamber —City Hall 777 Pearl Street—Eugene, Oregon February 27, 2012 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: George Brown, Pat Farr, Betty Taylor, Andrea Ortiz, George Poling, Mike Clark (via speakerphone), Chris Pryor, Alan Zelenka. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the February 27, 2012, regular meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. 1. PUBLIC FORUM Mayor Piercy reviewed the rules of the Public Forum. Carol Berg Caldwell, Ward 3, read a poem in opposition to the Downtown Public Safety Zone (DPSZ), asserting it was unequally enforced against the poor, could not be fixed by amendments, and would be challenged in court if extended. Bill Bezyk, Ward 1, Backyard Farmers, advocated for code changes that gave residents greater opportunities to keep micro livestock and engage in urban farming. He believed his business's chicken sales demonstrated the strength of the local urban farming movement. He suggested that his store might be able to initiate a mobile processing unit (MPU) for on -site butchering in the urban environment as another business endeavor. Genie Harden, a Lane County resident, responded to comments and questions at the earlier council work session. She reported that the Oregon Department of Agriculture had strict rules about slaughtering inside and outside the city limits. Mobile units were an option. She suggested that people were less likely to keep pygmy goats for urban agriculture as opposed to Nigerian dwarf goats and recommended the council employ the term "miniature goats" to describe the size of goats. She said her type of goats did not smell when neutered and she doubted they had any more fleas than a typical cat. Claire Syrett, representing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), asked the council to end the DPSZ, which she termed an "end run" against due process protections, or at minimum to suspend it until improvements were implemented. She called for details about the offenses being targeted by police and the reasons cases were denied or dismissed by judges. She questioned the zone's effectiveness in keeping repeat offenders from downtown given that offenders violated their exclusion orders an average of four times each. She objected that the advocacy program had not been mentioned during the zone's review. She questioned the nature of the proposed program enhancements and how the council would know they were effective. Joe Tyndall, Ward 1, opposed the exclusion zone because he believed it was being used to exclude homeless people and nonviolent individuals from downtown. He said that Occupy Eugene sought police reports regarding the zone and had received three different reports that the organization found to be incomplete. He shared some statistics from the reports in support of his contention about how who was MINUTES— Eugene City Council February 27, 2012 Page 1 Regular Meeting