Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey meets with several Springfield council members prior to delivering his fifth state-of-the-city speech before a crowd of 300 at the Eugene Hilton.
Mayor Jim Torrey said today in his fifth state-of-the-city address that the city will work with the University on developing an economic strategy to bring quality jobs to Eugene, revitalize the downtown mall and help struggling businesses.
The announcement came just days after the Symantec Corp. downtown customer service center declared it will move its operation and 550 employees into Springfield, and just less than a week after the Eugene Water and Electric Board decided to hike electric rates.
Both events could hurt Eugene businesses and set back the city’s efforts to promote a thriving downtown business area.
“Our region needs a new economic strategy to replace the jobs we will be losing,” Torrey said during his speech Wednesday afternoon before a crowd of more than 300 people in the Eugene Hilton.
“The University of Oregon and its president have agreed to work together with us on this,” he said. “We’re fortunate to have this facility in our community, and we’re going to call on them to help develop a new strategy.”
Dan Williams, vice president for University administration, said the partnership will not likely be a formal one, but will signify increased cooperation between University researchers and the city.
“It’s been an ongoing relationship between the University and the city, but this is a more pressing issue to the mayor,” Williams said. “Exactly what form it takes is still unknown.”
Torrey described downtown Eugene as a connect-the-dots drawing, with the dots being successful but isolated business areas that must be connected to each other to create a unified, prosperous downtown.
“We have these independent, successful areas that need to be connected, and we don’t have a lot of time to do this,” he said. “We need to do this now.”
He repeated his call to reopen West Broadway Avenue to traffic, reiterated his desire to attract the new federal courthouse to Eugene, supported a Lane Transit District plan to build shuttle routes from outlying areas into downtown and suggested the city aggressively move to attract businesses to occupy the 162,230-square-foot building Symantec will vacate early next year.
Other goals include completing the city’s embattled transportation plan, reconsidering the West Eugene Parkway and creating an independent citizen committee to redistrict Eugene City Council wards, a task that’s completed every ten years.
Before discussing his goals for the next year, Torrey outlined the accomplishments and disappointments of his past five years, including his failure to convince Eugene voters to fund new police and fire stations. Voters shot down the proposal in the May election and again, even more emphatically, in the November general election. In November, 61.7 percent of voters opposed funding the facilities while 38.2 percent supported it.
“I will not support any effort to bring this back to voters,” he said. “Though I believe the suggestions were good ones, I see now we need a new one.”
Torrey suggested using existing city funds to move police patrol cars out from under City Hall, where they currently park, to a parking lot south of the building. That way, in the event of an earthquake, which Torrey said the police station isn’t engineered to withstand, the patrol cars wouldn’t be trapped beneath a pancaked building, he said.
Torrey also addressed the other city ballot measure that was in the November election — the passed levy to fund after-school programs for students — and urged the city to fund the program beyond the two years provided by the levy.
“We must do this for our children,” he said.
He also congratulated city staff for pushing ahead with the construction of the new central downtown library and gave the Eugene Public Library Foundation a service award for meeting its three-year, $4.8 million fundraising goal in only 18 months.
The award was accepted by foundation president Nancy Oft Rose, who said that all donors to the project will have their names etched into portions of the library.
“We still have stacks for sale, benches for sale. … we’ll find more things to name,” she said.
Before the speech, newly elected Councilor Bonny Bettman was sworn in along with re-elected Councilors Betty Taylor, Scott Meisner, Nancy Nathanson and re-elected Mayor Torrey.
Other recognition and service awards were given to Jan Royalty, of the Administrative Services Department; Raudel Perezchica, of the Public Works Department; Budget Committee member Alan Zelenka; Planning Commission member Ellen Wojahn; and former Mayor Ruth Bascom. Torrey also offered Youth Leadership Awards to Churchill High School student Ashley Alvarado and Sheldon High School student Evan Rutter.