The Eugene City Council took the first step in creating its two-year goals and strategic planning Saturday, spending about seven hours generating ideas and debating.
At adjournment time, the City Council narrowly decided to send four broad goals to the city staff to be “fleshed out” before a final decision is made on whether to adopt them.
But clear City Council divisions were visible at the meeting, as each councilor had different perspectives on issues facing the city, leading to hours of disagreement about University relations, upkeep of essential services, jobs, growth and major projects.
Although the meeting was officially called to order and subject to parliamentary rules, facilitator Sue Diciple tried to keep the councilors from resorting to a vote on the goals.
“Goal-setting isn’t vote-counting,” she said. “Goal-setting is the process of acknowledging that everybody sitting at the table represents different values.”
After negotiations had broken down and two motions to accept different combinations of goals were defeated, Diciple eventually called for councilors to put a sticker next to the set of goals they liked most. The majority chose the third option, which was to send all four goals to the city for evaluation.
The goals being sent to the city staff include:
* Strengthen the relationship between the city and the University, with the guarantee that the relationship be kept at a high-level policy stage and both positive and negative effects be analyzed. Councilors also agreed the relationship would require clarification of community values.
* Address the needs of the city’s most vulnerable people. The city staff will likely analyze what constitutes “most vulnerable” and come up with possible solutions.
* Address out-of-school recreational and educational opportunities for regional youth.
* Ensure effective, efficient and cost-effective government. Possible sub-issues to this may be the hiring of a performance auditor for the city, exploring regionalization opportunities and exploring whether city services are running with private-sector efficiency.

— Jan Montry