West University neighborhood residents had the chance at the monthly neighborhood meeting Thursday night to ask questions and voice their concerns about felons living in the neighborhood, the state of the Eugene Police Department and how to properly throw parties in the neighborhood without warranting noise complaints.
About 40 people attended the meeting, including Eugene Police Chief Robert Lehner and four representatives from Sponsors, Inc., a non-profit organization looking to purchase property in the neighborhood to house parolees and ex-convicts. Sponsors provides treatment and rehabilitation programs as well as supervised living situations.
Richard Greene, chair of the Sponsors, Inc. board of directors, introduced the program at last month’s neighborhood meeting, and within weeks flyers were circulating in the neighborhood denouncing the program’s presence because of its involvement with sex offenders.
Sponsors, Inc. Executive Director Ron Chase, Greene, parole and probation officer Larry Wibbenmeyer, and a Sponsors employee fielded questions from attendees regarding the type of crimes committed by people in the program and the type of supervision they will have at the apartment quads the organization is looking to purchase. The men said no specific property has been identified.
No sex offenders who have been classified as being predatory or a risk to college-aged students will be living at the property, Greene said.
“I can’t promise there’ll be no sex offenders at all,” Greene said, adding that the amount of sex offenders within the prison system makes it almost a given that programs like Sponsors may be dealing with people who have been convicted of sex crimes.
Greene said between 75 and 100 parolees and ex-convicts currently live in the neighborhood, meaning that Sponsors is not bringing ex-convicts into the area but merely providing better supervision to those already there.
“We’re basically doing more than updating what we currently have,” Greene said.
“The concentration and density will be exactly the same as it was before,” Chase added.
Eugene police officer Randy Ellis spoke in support of Sponsors.
Ellis, who patrols the West University neighborhood, said he has received many phone calls from people concerned about the program but has spoken with parole and probation officers and understands that the people Sponsors supervises do not pose any sort of threat to the community.
“I’m finding myself caught here between the neighborhood who’s against it and Sponsors, the group I know the truth about from my co-workers,” Ellis said.
Greene said the people who will be living at the property will be those who have already completed the three-month Sponsors treatment and rehabilitation program and have been classified at a low or medium risk level.
Board member and University student Craig Laupheimer welcomed Sponsors to the neighborhood and said it is the community’s duty to give the people involved with programs like Sponsors a chance in the world.
“We owe them a chance,” Laupheimer said. “We have to assume they will not commit again.”
Police chief Lehner discussed the looming rise of neighborhood power in city politics and said community policing is a big part of some of the changes that will be happening. He also participated in a group discussion about parties in the neighborhood and talked about the role of the police in breaking up parties and what circumstances warrant what punishments.
Also at the meeting, the West University Neighbors elected neighborhood resident David Wallace as its 1st Vice Chair and University student and neighborhood resident Marie Valle as a board member.

[email protected]