Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

Home Browse Search

was leading the charge for a downtown renaissance. He asked where the leadership was. He submitted his testimony in writing. rd Ronald Goldfarb , 466 West 23 Avenue, said he used to be the owner of Ronnie’s Stereo, but had moved to New Orleans to help his parents. He said that Hurricane Katrina was both an act of nature and an act of a government that had not properly taken care of its citizenry. He did not believe leaders there had done what was necessary to protect the citizenry. He thought the rest of the country looked at New Orleans and thought it “would never happen to us.” He said it could happen anywhere. He averred that a misuse of the public money would result in failure. He opposed giving undue favors, regardless of how positively they were presented, as it led to unfair competition. He also felt it was important to get competitive bids on contracts. Floyd Prozanski , PO Box 11511, State Senator, said he was speaking on behalf of all of the small businesses and constituents had had contacted him to convey their opposition. He thought it was premature for the City to build a parking garage at this time, given that the current $1.2 million study on the City Hall needs assessment had not been completed and there could be a better use for that land, current parking structures met the current needs for parking, and the current proposal was limited by its vertical design. He pointed to the Salem Capitol Mall with its underground parking and above-ground greenway as an example of building a multi-use structure within a dense community. He asked the council what position the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) had taken on the ingress/egress on a State highway. He did not th believe that ODOT agreed to any access from the 6 Avenue area. Speaking on his own behalf, he averred that bigger was not always better. He called the parking garage a “boondoggle” for a large business that would give a “very large corporation an unfair advantage” over existing Eugene businesses. Mark Rabinowitz , PO Box 51222, wanted to know the value of the land swap that had been proposed. He felt building a parking garage made it clear that the City would not “deal with peak oil and climate change.” He opined that this meant the City clearly did not “give a damn about sustainability.” He asserted that building a parking garage would be tantamount to subsidizing food shipments from Mexico and all over the world. He equated Whole Foods Grocery with sprawl. He thought the fact that it needed the parking showed that its customer base was regional and not just people in the downtown area. He suggested that a farmers’ market would be a better alternative. Mr. Rabinowitz opined that the site of the former Sears building indicated that City planning was incompe- tent. Doug Black , 4645 West Hillside Drive, said he was part of the group from the Eugene Permaculture Guild that organized the Richard Heinberg event. He related that Professor Heinberg predicted a phenomenally constrained economy of necessary food supply and manufacturing within the decade. He asserted that Whole Foods Grocery’s expensive, contracted interstate-reliant form of product transport would have to be overtaken by local systems of food transport. He referred to a study by Robert Hirsch that suggested that the United States needed 20 years to plan for upcoming impacts of an “energy-constrained economy.” He averred that the country had less than five years to do so. He said his household shopped at Sundance Natural Foods store and Growers Market Food Co-op and had no shortage of “specially ordered supplies.” He alleged that these locally owned stores ordered from locally owned food growers and grocery suppliers as a point of business ethics. He noted that the members of the Permaculture Guild gathered “several hundred signatures” on petitions that asked the City of Eugene to address “peak oil.” He asked where the response was and who was setting the agenda relative to that topic. MINUTES—Eugene City Council -- March 13, 2006 Page 13 City Council Meeting