I'm leaning toward voting for this.  See some possible upside to this. 

Anyone out there have any observations about this?  Is there a downside I'm not seeing?

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An ascendant man, living in a degenerate age, MUST, by definition, live in contradistinction to his times.

There is some 'possible' upside, but the bottom line is the only way to make downtown Springfield appealing is to eliminate most of the bars, and replace them with people-friendly businesses. And the only thing government can do to businesses is get in the way.(at best)

redcity8:

... And the only thing government can do to businesses is get in the way.(at best)

I guess that explains the explosive growth in business and employment in Springfield immediately following the many incentives and collaborative, supportive policies the Springfield government put in Place...  Did you mean,  "The only thing Eugene government can do is get in the way."? If so, I'd have to agree.

My statement was an over-simplification, of course, but, in general, if local government has to basically bribe a business to locate in an area, then it is not a good location for that business. Which means it is not likely to stay there, or survive, very long.

I think that if Eugene's downtown was going to live, it wouldn't have died 30 years ago.  When I was a child in the sixties, I was allowed to wander from Jackson street clear to Johnnys' Toys on Charnelton (I think it was on Charnlton).  As soon as the Mall went in all I can remember is being intimidated by Mall Rats and people trying to sell me drugs.  No more going downtown for me...

Like all things, it's survival of the fittest.  If the people are not willing to go there or uncomfortable there, no amount of "renewal" is going to make people go there.  Bring in the bulldozers and try something else.  If you want to get people there, first; clean out the homeless, the tweakers and the "mentally challenged".  Then build a Wal-Mart there.  I can guarantee you a Wal-Mart will bring people just about anywhere.  And thats not a slam on Wal-Mart.  It's the truth!

It's not the loop in Chicago, or Broadway and 42nd in New York.  I think they should quit sniveling and let it die.  Build a new hospital there, or hows about a new city hall!

Sorry if I was too blunt...

I think they should put up their huge Golden Calf to go with the Aluminum Pork Barrel Federal Building.

The majority of the city counsel wants downtown Eugene populated by bums, non-profit organizations, transients, homeless people, bums, head-shops, transients, tie-dye shops, candle-makers, tottoo studios and bums. And transients. Eugene attracts bums like flies to poo.

That ridiculous new federal building is an eyesore, and the pricetag was appalling. Nobody even works there. That HUGE bazillion dollar building houses a whopping three or four federal judges who collectively process the volume of about 1 state jude -- and there are at least ten of the state judges packed in to the old, leaking dump of a courthouse building downtown. That place was an embarassment twenty years ago when the county had buckets placed all over the place to catch the leaks when it rained. That was back when the county was only a few years into staff reductions and layoffs.

They ought to just write off Eugene and move the county seat to Springfield where the city and it's people actually want order, construction, business, public safety, clean water -- you know, all the stuff that citizens in a healthy community want.

I'm out of the area now. That really does produce clarity. Eugene is a festering disaster downtown, with a dozen serious problems, including a marginal an weakening economy and a terrible crime rate that is now among the worst in the country in several categories. But fear not, I understand Eugene will host transgender recovery night -- whatever that is.... Kitty fiddled while Eugene burned...

Halo:

They ought to just write off Eugene and move the county seat to Springfield where the city and it's people actually want order, construction, business, public safety, clean water -- you know, all the stuff that citizens in a healthy community want.

What I cannot figure out is how is it that Springfield is able to do such a great job in maintaining their city roads, while Eugene ( which already has a higher gas tax ) has its backlog of road repairs continue to mushroom in size??   I heard on the news recently that it has now grown to over $170 Million.   That is A LOT of money.  And the Eugene City Council seems to be adament that the only way that they will address the growing crisis is by passing new, additional taxes and fees.

I honestly don't think that Eugene taxpayers will accept such a solution.  Especially if the economy enters a significant recession next year, as many claim that it already has.

I drive in both cities, and the difference in the quality of the roads is significant and very noticeable.  My car does not have that much ground clearance, either, to protect me from potholes.  I might start having to avoid Eugene.

But if Springfield can do it, why can't Eugene?????   This is something that Major Piercy and members of the Council do not seem to want to discuss.

Lance

"If Springfield can do it, why can't Eugene?"

That's a good question, I think, and I suspect the answer lies with the Eugene City Counsel. Do you remember the "Eugene Decisions" process about twenty years ago? The city spent about $400,000 asking the citizens what they wanted -- and then did the opposite. The city insists on funding all kinds of B.S. the citizens who actually PAY the taxes don't want.

The city also wastes TONS of money on unnecessary over-staffing. For example, Eugene and Lane County are organizations of about the same size, but Eugene has MORE THAN TWICE the number of employees in the Human Resources Department. The accepted optimum number of line workers per supervisor is ten to one. Eugene is between five and six to one, while the county is between eleven and twelve to one.

I'm not suggesting that the City should be completely gutted and dismantled the way the county has been, as they wouldn't be able to get the job done, but I don't see why they couldn't be required to lean out closer to recommended averages. That would save several MILLION per year in an organization of that size.

How about the new "Police Auditor" job... It's been in place a couple years, and the budget for that department is projected to clime over $600,000 per year next year. Rack your brains and tell me what it has accomplished over the last two years. Why do they need an "auditor" anyway? After all, the worst corruption in the department, like the awful cops Lara and Magana, have consistently been uncovered by their own internal affairs department. In fact, the Eugene Police Department recommended against hiring Magana AND Lara in the first place, but the Human Resources department and City Council policy forced the hires for "diversity". (Both failed the background investigation as BOTH had prior criminal records. If they had just let the police department police themselves those two A$$holes would never have been cops in the first place!)

Then there's the Eugene Human Rights Commission. It doesn't actually DO anything, but there are more paid personnel associated with that effort than the county has supporting the county commissioners and administration!!

The city spends in excess of $1.5 million annually on advertising and marketing AND has at least five public information officers. The county has only one public information officer, and the one time it spent $250K on public information the public wanted everybody at the county fired! Maybe the city could pair their public information effort down to three PR people and $1 MILLION in advertising?

Again, I'm not suggesting that the city should be slashed to the point where it can't function, like Lane County has been, but the city could easily cut 20% from everything but police and fire and then cut the Human rights commission and other frivolous programs that don't provide direct service to the public. The money saved there could be applied to repair roads and hire cops.

Frankly, to return to the the comparative financial proportions of the late seventies, the city of Eugene would have to lose about 50% of it's budget, but that says more about how badly the county has been hurt than how fat the city is.

One this is for sure: The federal timber money is going away this year or over the next three four years, so the county is going belly-up and there will be no more road-fund revenue to share with the city. That will be a HUGE hit.

"Eugene Decisions" is back in different sheep's clothing. Apparently, a consultant has been hired to do a budget re-alignment, which involves finding out what the public wants to spend money on. I wonder how this will turn out...

Well, twenty years ago the public wanted police, fire & medic services, education and other essential infrastructure, like roads, and NOTHING else. What we got was little of the above,  and several tons of unnecessary trivia nobody wanted, like a bunch of commissions and advisory groups that do NOTHING, and provide NOTHING of substance for the citizens.

Things are different now. Eugene is more eugene than ever...

Now Lane County has the lowest per-capita police density in the USA, none of the other essential law enforcement personnel, and the roads are in awful shape.  The road fund is about to take another beating when the federal timber money finally goes away.

Now Eugene has imported thousands of the folk who like the sort of decisions the city made twenty years ago -- the sort that defined Eugene. They want even less of the traditional city services, and more "commissions".

I'd expect the next round of "decisions" to favor everything BUT police, fire and medical services, roads, and other essentials in favor of expanded "Human Rights Commissions", welfare programs, extended library hours, more park space, more free food, and so on. Who knows?

It will be interesting to see if Betty Taylor can make it to the end of the "decisions" process without falling asleep...

Last year about this time Lane County was whining about $20 million in federal money being lost, but you didn’t hear about the $20 million in forest projects that were also funded with the federal timber money. So Halo, would you use your vast contacts and post a detailed listing of how Lane County spent $20 million on “forest projects”.

Are these “forest projects” going to be funded in 2008?  What about the programs that were moved out of the general fund to a new category, what happens to them or do they get funded and they also ask for the $20 million. It might just be a dodge to get an increase of $20 million plus whatever they moved.

Did the “forest project” $20 million impact any of the foundation members? How about any Stewart properties?

What do you mean, "You didn't hear about..." I certainly did. It was in the Register Guard. It was on all three TV news networks. It was discussed at length, in detail in the county budget briefings and the briefings were reported in detail too. The Register Guard reporter was confused, but he got the division of money between general fund and road fund right. Which part didn't you understand?

The federal money under the Secure Rural Schools Act is "ear-marked" by the federal government. Congress decides how that money is going to be divided/apportioned/spent, not the county commissioners. I know you have had this explained repeatedly; it's almost like you're TRYING not to get it!

None of this requires "special contacts" or a degree in math. And, as MANY have told you repeatedly, none of this has anything to do with "foundations" or the Stewarts. You're going to have to get past this conspiracy obsession if you're ever going to make progress with your personal demons.

Okay, here we go AGAIN:

The SRS (Secure Rural Schools) money was intended to be a federal bridge, to make up for the fact that the federal government was no longer honoring it's 100 year old promise of support in exchange for the local authorities providing all the services in and through the 55% of Lane County land owned by the federal government, and therefore not subject to taxation by the state and local authorities. The SRS money has ALWAYS been partitioned and subject to the same spending/use limitations. Much of the money is used to build roads and bridges through all that land. Some is used to fight fires. Some is used to patrol millions of acres of federal land in Oregon and conduct the terribly expensive search and rescue operations you hear about several times per year.

Here is how the money splits across counties and purposes: http://www.lanecounty.org/CAO_GLA/documents/SRSCounties.pdf

Additional detail concerning the sorts of projects/limitations/expenditures can be found here: http://www.lanecounty.org/CAO_GLA/SecureRuralSchools.htm

Once again, this is all public record and ALL very old news, "foundation". It took me less than two minutes to find this stuff using only "Google".

Members of the Lane Board of County Commissioners have been frustrated by their inability to use road fund-dedicated money for other purposes, like law enforcement, for decades, as the road fund has been solvent and stable as the demands on the general fund have increased with the loss of all the other revenues. You'll be happy to hear that the road fund money is going away too, though I doubt it will happen this year. I think we'll all live to see the day, in one year or three, when the feds will do more than just reduce the support every year. The money is going away, and then Lane County residents will lose much of what remains of rural Sheriff support, DAs, POs and other critical public safety services. Frankly, Lane County citizens hate law enforcement, so they don't mind being last in the USA today, and I don't think they'll care about being even 20% or 30% worse than last place in three or five years. I'm appalled by the idea that it can take the Sheriff over an hour to respond to a murder scene (because only two deputies are working and they're both 90 miles away from the murder when it's reported.) I'm shocked when I hear that the Sheriff's detective division has shrunk from 18 detectives 27 years ago, to only 4 detectives today. I was in Lane County 27 years ago and there was NO CRIME. There were no gangs, there was no meth, and the State of California had yet to move north. The Oregon population and crime problem have exploded just as you slashed law enforcement at EVERY level. That seems DUMB to me, but none of the numbers will matter to folks in Eugene until something terrible happens and the public safety system is completely unable to respond. That could happen any day. To me it seems highly probable that such a thing will happen at some point. I hope I'm wrong.

Frankly, I think having the Eugene news filled with murder trials, torture and gang activity during the 2008 Olympic Trials may be enough to heighten public awareness everywhere else, but it will not be enough to awaken the Eugene literati. They'll just march ahead with their happy little mental picture of Eugene and ignore the news. The fifty-nine people who read the Eugene Weekly will decide that the stories in the Register Guard are all false and announce that there ARE no murders or murder trials. It will be interesting to watch all of this from a safe distance, but I'm sure you'll be doing what you can to confuse folks right there in the middle of it all, foundation. That's a shame.