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MINUTES Eugene City Council Regular Session Council Chamber--City Hall August 9, 2004 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Bonny Bettman, George Poling, Nancy Nathanson, David Kelly, Betty Taylor, Jennifer Solomon, Gary Pap~. COUNCILORS ABSENT: Scott Meisner. His Honor Mayor James D. Torrey called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. 1. PUBLIC FORUM Mayor Torrey reviewed the rules of the Public Forum. Ron Farmer, 3330 Bardale Avenue, 2004 Chair of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, urged the council to fund a regional commercial/industrial lands study. He anticipated the local economy would continue to grow, helping the community to underwrite the costs of its quality of life. He suggested ~right-sizing" the land supply was crucial, as a tilt too far to one extreme or another would threaten the local quality of life. Mr. Farmer called for smart and reasonable planning as a solution to achieving the needed balance. He said that planning must be based on facts with current and correct information, which was currently missing with regard to the land supply. Mr. Farmer asked the council to avoid politicizing the process and to hire an outside expert acceptable to all parties. He asked it not to qualify the process and not to burden it with criteria. He said there would be time to argue about how the information was used when the inventory was complete. Mayor Torrey noted that eight more people had signed up to speak for the Public Forum, and called on the Council President for a motion to extend the time for the item. Councilor Bettman, seconded by Councilor Poling, moved to extend the time for the Public Forum to 45 minutes and to encourage speakers to be brief. The motion passed, 6:1, Councilor Solomon voting no. Ed Weeks, no address given, Chair of the Research and Evaluation Committee for United Way of Lane County, discussed the results of United Way's recent biennial survey. The survey indicated clear evidence that typical, hard-working local families with median household incomes were facing a challenge meeting ordinary living expenses. He cited statistics from the survey in support of his remarks, and noted that families with children were even more heavily impacted. He suggested something was deeply wrong with a society that allowed such families to approach insolvency, and urged the council to always keep in mind the need to have a healthy economy. MINUTES--Eugene City Council August 9, 2004 Page 1 Regular Session