W. Bruce Mulligan is one of the three candidates seeking to replace David Kelly as City Councilor for Ward 3, which encompasses the University. The following interview is a transcript of an interview that was conducted Thursday.
Q: What was the reason, or were some of the reasons, that made you decide to run for City Council?
A: Initially, the principle reason was to complete some unfinished work. I spent six years on the Budget Committee and five years on the Human Services Commission. In 2004 we opened the RiverStone Clinic, which is a heathcare center over in Springfield, while I was on the Human Services Commission, because we have a huge number of people who are uninsured and have no primary care services or anything other than the emergency room. I want to finish that. I want to see us build, and have funded by the federal government, a second community health center here in Eugene. Since then, I have been encouraged by the response from numerous quarters, including here at the University, a desire to end the polarization and the gridlock that exists on the City Council.
Q: What do you think the key issues facing Ward 3?
A: In Ward 3, we have a number of opportunities and challenges as a community. I think the number one issue that faces Ward 3 and the city overall is our ability as a community to work together to achieve consensus on solutions to some of the more complex problems. It goes back to this whole issue of polarization and paralysis that grips City Council. And to do that, it’s going to require thoughtful consensus-building leadership, which I feel we need. And I’ve demonstrated in my time on the Budget Committee and the Human Services Commission, and my 20-plus years of municipal experience, which is that working together we can solve our problems, but it requires us to step out of our normal boxes and reconnect with one another as a community. The last two budgets from the Budget Committee were adopted unanimously as I was chair on that Budget Committee. So I have a track record of consensus-building. I think that the city is tired of the bickering and polarization that has existed on the City Council. I’ve heard that over and over again from people in the community. They want to get on with solving some of our more perplexing and troublesome problems.
As to what those are, I’ve put them into three categories that I think are critical. Heathcare is a real pressing issue because it’s affecting everybody. It’s a third of our population that’s a risk without care or at risk of losing care. The environment is another big issue. Our natural resources and preserving those natural resources. Finally, creating a livable community and city. As we grow from a small town to a city, we’re right in the threshhold of that. So those are the biggest issues, and within those issues there’s quite a bit of complexity when it comes to building a livable city. We’ve got major transportation challenges. We have major public safety challenges. We have the challenge of engaging the community in problem solving in what we want the Eugene of tomorrow to look like.
Q: Have you worked with the University before?
A: Yes, and actually it’s a bright spot. I worked with the Fairmount Neighbors subcommittee that’s working on all of the stuff that you all see along Franklin Boulevard related to the Walnut Node project. It was a group of neighbors, including some business owners like Hirons, and Mark Gillem from the University and some of his students from the design studio. And we came up with an alternative to the options presented by the city that would both preserve the neighborhood as well as create a livable dynamic, more urban scale environment that would include mixed retail and housing along Franklin Boulevard and reconnect us back to the river. The next step is going to be working through implementation, and I was very pleased to see that Professor Gillem and his students will be doing a design studio on implementation. We have so much of a resource here at the University that we haven’t tapped in to and I just sense, particularly among the architectural department faculty, a desire to reach out and reconnect with the community. It’s pretty much been a separate path situation, I don’t think by anybody’s intent, it’s just that the University just hasn’t been as engaged in the community as it could be. There are some forward-thinking people here that are willing to step up and do that, and I’m encouraged by that. I’m also encouraged by the student participation, because more and more of the activities and energy and the dynamic nature of this city is dependent on a vibrant student community. I’m encouraged to see students involved in this design studio. I’ve also gotten a lot of support from people at this University who have encouraged me to continue to run.
Q: How do you feel about representing a ward with such a large student population?
A: It is a challenge in that the population tends to be more transient than other residents in the community. But I like the new ideas and the energy and enthusiasm that it brings to the process. But if students are disengaged in the community, it doesn’t work. The only way we can do it is to engage in community action in creating a community that we all want to live in. It’s exciting but it’s challenging because not everyone wants to participate.
Q: What are some of the things that City Council has done well? What are some things they can do better?
A: In trying to articulate a vision for downtown, it has started the process. Unfortunately we haven’t made that real enough so that people understand what the plans look like. I applaud the initial steps at adopting a housing code for Eugene, which is something I know students are concerned about. I think we can do more, but that was a good step. Financial planning, keeping our house in fiscal order, I think has been good at city. We have a vibrant park system. We purchased some great parcels, with a few more we have yet to purchase. I think those are great. And we have some great community volunteers that are doing some wonderful things like up in Hendricks Park. We have a great bikeway system. But we don’t have the resources to maintain a lot of what we own, particularly if you look at the natural resources here. We have 2,300 acres of wild lands that we own in addition to the developed parkland. Yet we don’t have a place where we can decide what we need to devote resources to and maintain these critical habitats. We can do more, which is my proposal. If you look at the natural resources position paper I talk about the need for a natural resources commission. We’ve got a beautiful and very special place here, and I continue to be amazed at what we’re able to do with the limited resources we have.
I think we need to bring everybody together to say OK, this is 2,300 acres. What should the priorities be in terms of maintaining these habitats? What are things we need to be paying attention to? We’ve got a partial solution for our transportation system in that the city did adopt a gas tax, but it’s not enough to fund the maintenance backlog. We’ve got potholes, deferred maintenance of $100 million, and it’s growing at $6 million a year. We need to come up with another funding stream to make the streets passable because if we let them go further, pretty soon they’re going to really cost more to rebuild. We need to create a more vibrant vision for a downtown. We started that process, but more needs to be done. That would include the Federal Courthouse district, which affects the riverfront. We’ve got to find a regular funding source for our libraries. We need some higher density development downtown. We need to grow up, not out. Sprawl just eats up more gas and more farmland, and we need to push for more higher-density and create a new urban environment downtown. I think we have a great opportunity to do some innovative new approaches to studen
t housing on the north side of Franklin Boulevard. Mostly what we need to do is get together as a community around these issues and areas and create a consensus for what the best approaches will be.
Q: What are your thoughts on the current business climate in Eugene? If elected, what would you do to make it better?
A: It’s poor. We have fallen into labels and platitudes in describing ourselves and each other. And they’re old labels. All business is bad or conservative or wants growth. All environmentalists want to stop everything. The labels don’t work, and today’s problems can’t be solved by yesterday’s platitudes and dynamics. We see major polarization at the national level, yet we as a community are largely together. We talk to people one on one, and yet we go out and repeat the same drama that’s going on at the national level. Let’s show people how to do it differently. There are some great, environmentally friendly businesses in the community that want to contribute. I think we’ve got to get out of the labels and back to our role as citizens. I’m hoping that we can improve the business climate and get the labels out of here, because they don’t serve anybody. I know people on all sides of labels. We need to create a vibrant community for to live, to do business in, to work in, to go to school in, to shop in. It needs to be a city. (I would encourage) a lot more refinement planning that we’re doing now. A lot more engagement in the community to what those look like. One of the things Governor Kitzhaber used to say is there are two things Oregonians dislike, sprawl and density. They’re in conflict, and you’ve got to make a choice, one way or the other. We need to get together around the table and say how can we create a smart urban scale environment. The City Council can facilitate that.
Q: How would you have voted on the Whole Foods project?
A: I would have supported Whole Foods, as I would have supported any business going into the spot they were going into with the zoning they had. The question got intertwined with the separate issue of the parking garage, which was approved and on the books. It was not in any kind of visible place where people could see it in advance, so we got that discussion the same time that Whole Foods got involved in it. That’s where a lot of the controversy came. The fact of the matter is that Whole Foods is going to build its own parking in its own structure, and they do a nicer job of building parking garages than we’ve ever done. Most people think of parking garages as what the city has built in the past. I don’t know if anyone has ever seen what Whole Foods has built in the past like up in the Pearl District, but it doesn’t look like a parking garage, it looks like a building. I was disappointed, and I would have expressed my disappointment, in not having an earlier discussion about the underground parking that was raised by the students in Mark’s studio. We could have had a string of parks going all the way out to the river. Given the time constraints and what we had to work with, I think the Council made the right decision. My vote would have been the same if it had been Whole Foods or Market of Choice coming in here.
Q: What is your opinion on the current homeless situation in Eugene? If elected, what would you propose to deal with it?
A: I served for five years on the Human Services Commission, which works on human social service needs in our community. The challenge we got with homelessness is that we have multiple things that are affecting us, as they are every city. We’ve had a massive shift out of mental institutions, first to push people into community-based care, and then the Federal Government has pulled funding out from under that. We’re reaping the harvest that has been sown by massive federal disinvestments in mental health care in this country, coupled with a massive swing in drug and alcohol problems. It’s a multi-faceted issue. We had a brief recession, and we started seeing more families go into the streets. I would do more to create the core infrastructure that would deal with some of these issues, and lobby for federal funds for this, because it’s the federal disinvestments in a lot of our basic safety net that has resulted in what we are seeing today, and the cities, unfortunately, are left holding the damn bag. Everybody asks where these people come from. Well, you’re witnessing that federal disinvestment. It is a big problem.
Q: Do you think the crime rate is something voters in this ward should be concerned about?
A: I think they should be in terms of property crimes. Crimes against persons, actually, the numbers have been fairly stable, but we’ve seen an upscale swing in Ward 3 property crimes. I know we’ve seen it in West University neighborhood. I think we need to strengthen our community-based policing resources. We need to do a lot more to deal with the meth epidemic, drug court, things like that. The challenges we’ve got in Lane County in terms of prosecution is that they’re just not attacking some of those crimes. The city has allowed certain crimes that haven’t been prosecuted by Lane County because they don’t have the resources to be handled in city court. I think the recent code improvements the City Council did that stood on pawnshops on recovery of stolen property is good. We’ve got a property crime problem that I’m sure everyone has been touched by.
Q: Since you’re competing against two other candidates, is there something that distinguishes yourself from the other two?
A: My background is in healthcare, Alan’s background is in energy, and Jana works in a dry cleaners. My experience is the most recent of either of the candidates. Alan was on the Budget Committee when I started in 2000. Its been six years since he was on the Budget Committee, and he does not have recent experience with city budget issues. I also served for two years, while on the Budget Committee, on an advisory committee to recommend transportation-funding options. We made a set of detailed recommendations to the Council, which they’re using to form their next step on what we need to do in terms of transportation funding. So that’s experience that neither of the two candidates have. Coming into the Council, I know the issues and I’ve probably hit the ground running because I’m more current on all the budget aspects. We have an immediate need in terms of police funding that needs to be addressed, and I’m very familiar with the current status there. We have a couple of bond levies that were part of recommendations from the budget committee last year that are up. I think my experience is far more recent and relevant than my competitors’ experience.
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