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M I N U T E S City Council Council Chamber—Eugene City Hall 777 Pearl Street—Eugene, Oregon June 14, 2010 7:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Mike Clark, Betty Taylor, Jennifer Solomon, George Poling, Andrea Ortiz, Chris Pryor, Alan Zelenka, George Brown, members. Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. 1. PUBLIC FORUM Mayor Piercy reviewed the rules for the public forum. Judith Van, 89326 Old Coburg Road, discussed her experience with the City’s assessment policies. She said when the City improved her street it had changed the character of the street, resulted in the removal of trees, and forced her to move foundation plants at personal cost. She was also required to annex to the City and to unnecessarily connect to City sewers at a very high cost. She had suffered from a high-handed, dictatorial, and rude City engineer. Subcontractors broke her water pipe, leaving her with an extremely high water bill for which she was never reimbursed, and no one at the City would talk to her about it. City staff had made mistakes in the assessment of her property and she was told to anticipate additional assessments and threatened with a lien. When her mother became ill, Ms. Van had wished to construct a small dwelling to house her and had applied to partition the property. She had learned the cost would be so high that she could not afford it, and lost another $7,700. She considered it money thrown away. Ms. Van told the council it was not doing a good job. Mary Salinas , General Delivery, 97401, identified herself as a spokesperson for the homeless. She objected to a City task force recommendation that those with small offenses clean up downtown as part of their community service because she believed the crews would include sex offenders and violent criminals who could harm the homeless. She asserted that the City had “sent sex offenders to the Eugene Mission,” which had homeless women and children, for years. She asked how the City could fail to care about homeless women and children. She further asserted that Mayor Piercy had visited downtown Eugene without seeing the homeless youth. Daniel Cooper discussed his positive and negative experiences with the City’s emergency services personnel. Planet Glassberg , PO Box 11011, Eugene, asked the council to place a measure limiting taser use on the ballot. She said tasers could kill people even when used correctly. Those most likely to be tasered were also those most likely to die or be disabled. There was no way to tell who would be permanently affected by tasers. She averred that some officers found the taser too convenient to use in controlling difficult situations. She reviewed the parameters of a ballot measure, which would define tasers as a deadly weapon MINUTES—Eugene City Council June 14, 2010 Page 1 Regular Meeting