The recall would not have been filed if City Councilor Bonny Bettman had acknowledged even slightly the adamant opposition of so many voices local and from far away. Even people who lived here years ago wrote letters, pleading for common sense. From day one she characterized the six block condemnation goal as a way to revitalize downtown. That type of thinking reminds one of action reports from Vietnam: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Her plan to enlarge the PeaceHealth Hilyard campus was stopped by grassroots networking between tenants and property owners. It has become completely clear that there is zero representation for us downtown. The neighborhood would have been better off with no city councilor at all than with one who was willing to side with PeaceHealth in a plan that would devastate the area.
During her campaign for election, one of Bettman’s key goals was to focus on increasing the abundance of single-family homes, which was going to improve and preserve livability in the area. A far cry from the Draconian plan proposed by her less than a year later.
Councilor Bettman has also not acknowledged her direct responsibility in traumatizing a large number of her voters and leaving them with no confidence in her representation of them. Downplaying the origin of the recall as a difference of opinion reveals the huge disconnect in her logic between her hospital plans or options and the reality of implementing them.
PeaceHealth walked away from Councilor Bettman’s offers when it realized her options were not really going to be easy to accept. They could tell that even though she was offering them up she couldn’t possibly deliver without a drawn out battle.
The only way a councilor could safely, aggressively push for large scale condemnation of their own voters’ houses would be if their own home was in the “blast zone.” And a city councilor person representing Ward 3 in any decent way would have acted to delay this proceeding until affected parties could be included in a free and open process. By narrowing her focus to four blocks she had hoped to get the Hilyard expansion agreed upon this summer. I know at least one city councilor warned her against taking votes on things which would affect so many while they were on vacation.
Imagine the people who voted for Councilor Bettman then left for the summer and could come home to find out that she cut a deal with their house and signed it before they came home.
Councilor Bettman’s position that the recall is not justified demonstrates her desire to continue in her current course of action. Once the petition signatures are certified, I don’t want to tell one how to vote. I just ask that the residents of Eugene look at the facts and vote for what is fair to their neighbors and friends.
While in the middle of this unfortunate and tedious undertaking I have seen one positive result. For some it will have been enlightening and will cause them to understand how much politics really does affect them. They may also see that when the public fails to follow their leaders closely their lives can be changed in profound ways.