Recent & Upcoming City Council Items

by David Kelly for LHVC - 11/16/06

To the reader: These notes are very brief. If you want more information, don’t hesitate to contact me by email at david.s.kelly@ci.eugene.or.us or by phone at 686-3343.

And, as this is my last update: thank you for the privilege of serving the Laurel Hill Valley residents for the past eight years on City Council!

• November election: Needless to say, the Council was very pleased by the passage of both the parks and open space bond measure and the library levy at the November 7th election. The library measure continues current service levels for another four years. The parks measure will lead to a wide variety of acquisition and other projects, as described in the flyer that went out to Eugene voters prior to the election. Staff will now begin work on those projects.



• Mayor’s Sustainable Business Initiative: Council took several initial steps to implement the recommendations from the task force appointed by Mayor Piercy. Most notably, we directed the creation of an Office of Sustainable Development in the city government and directed that its main staff member be hired as soon as possible. We also asked for an ordinance to be drafted that will create a Sustainability Commission as a standing committee to the Council (we currently have the Budget Committee, Planning Commission, Police Commission, and Human Rights Commission as standing committees). Recruitment of residents to serve on this commission will likely begin early next year.



• Transportation in West and North Eugene: The Council has discussed transportation in the wake of the cancellation of the West Eugene Parkway. In October, a unanimous Council (almost unanimous for one of the items) directed staff to pursue a number of transportation priorities:
  For state funding, our first priority is Beltline improvements from Coburg to River Road, our second priority is West 11th improvements from Terry to Greenhill, and our third priority is to study potential improvement of Beltline from Roosevelt to West 11th.
  West 11th will be given an in-depth “corridor study” to assess the current situation and potential improvements. This will be integrated with a study by LTD of West 11th as the potential next EmX (BRT) route in Eugene.
  We’ll initiate city code changes to implement access management for major Eugene streets (this could mean – for new construction or redevelopment – ideas like consolidating driveways to adjacent businesses, requiring one parking lot to connect to an adjacent one, etc).
  We’ll have a work session in December to discuss how to fund the improvement of Roosevelt as a more effective east-west corridor.



• 10th & Charnelton site: We reviewed developer proposals for the former Sears site downtown. We preferred the proposal from TK Partners of Portland for a 106-unit condominium development, and have entered a 90-day exclusive negotiation period with them.



• Farmer’s Market site improvements: Based on the recommendations of the recently released Park Blocks Master Plan, Council voted to have site improvements constructed on the northwest park block that will help the Farmer’s Market. The improvements will be completed prior to the start of the 2007 market season, and will include such things as removing raised areas of concrete and other barriers that hamper booth layout and accessibility, improved water and electrical service, etc.



• External Police Review Implementation: We met with our new police auditor, Cris Beamud, to consider the framework of an ordinance that will lay out in detail her powers/duties and those of the Civilian Review Board (within the bounds of the 2005 charter amendment). We directed Ms. Beamud to draft the ordinance and hold a public hearing on December 11th.



• Future City Hall Complex: After considering a wide variety of sites, Council voted in September to do a rough conceptual design for only two sites: the block that houses the current city hall, and the ½ block on the south side of 7th Avenue between Oak and Willamette. (That parcel currently contains the county “butterfly” parking lot, Rock’n’Rodeo, and another small commercial building.) Council reviewed conceptual designs on October 18th, and will decide on next steps on November 20th after reviewing feedback from the last public workshop.



• Transportation System Maintenance Fee: A public hearing was held about this potential funding mechanism for our street and bike-path maintenance/preservation backlog. Testimony was overwhelmingly negative. Though I think the proposal is acceptable, I suspect it will be strongly defeated when we consider it November 27. No other proposal has come any closer to getting a Council majority, so I fear the backlog (currently more than $100 million) will continue to grow. (Note that the 5 cent/gal local gas tax is going entirely to street maintenance/preservation, but it only provides enough funds to slow the rate of growth of the backlog.)

Note that dates are tentative.

• 11/27: Discussion of what to do – if anything – with city-obtained purchase options for some West Broadway downtown properties.



• 12/13: Update on a commercial and industrial land supply/demand study. (Could ultimately affect our urban growth boundary.)