Urban sprawl and migrating business policies are leaving the heart and culture of Eugene on the cutting room floor, according to Friends of Eugene and Citizens for Public Accountability.
FOE and CPA met at Harris Hall in the Lane County Building on Friday to focus on what Mayor Jim Torey called a needed “cultural shift” in Eugene’s business policies.
The meeting was titled the “Citizens’ State of the City Address” and focused on maintaining Eugene’s uniqueness. For FOE and CPA, this means developing the urban area rather than bringing in large corporations and placing them on the outskirts of town with a no-tax incentive.
Jan Wilson, a local environmental attorney and main speaker of the event, discussed some of the opportunities and choices that may affect the small-town atmosphere and outstanding environment Eugene is known for.
“Clearly, Eugene citizens recognize that continuing to finance infrastructure development at the edge of the urban growth boundary, while abandoning existing investments in urban form is fiscally irresponsible, destructive of our sense of community and unsustainable,” Wilson said.
CPA Secretary Bob O’Brien said, “We ought to be subsidizing things downtown. I think we ought to be subsidizing small business.”
Although Wilson and CPA agree with the mayor on projects such as the building of a new library and federal courthouse downtown, they disagree with business recruitment strategies used in the past and present.
Wilson said inner-city projects such as the library and federal building would “go a long way toward maintaining economic vitality by keeping employees downtown and by providing daytime customers for the numerous small businesses that rely on those employees.”
The general consensus at the meeting was that subsidizing large companies such as Hyundai and giving tax-free incentives to businesses such as Symantec are not only futile tactics in sustaining economic growth, but actually contribute to the lack of government funds needed to sustain other sectors, including education.
Sociology professor Greg McLauchlan said Hyundai, also known as Hynix, is an example of urban sprawl development. Hyundai is a subsidized company built on Eugene wetlands that was supposedly going to bring money to the area, he said. Instead, Hyundai didn’t hire as many people as expected, then later laid off a portion of the workforce, while developing a $5 billion debt, he said.
Wilson calls this type of economic recruitment a “race to the bottom.”
“Our government needs to find ways to support public-minded private developers who creatively take on the challenges of downtown new development with commitment to the community as a forefront,” Wilson said.
Jan Spencer, a member of CPA, is concerned that the mayor is not going to learn from the past. But Spencer and other CPA members are hopeful that with a large community voice and a small-town spirit, the uniqueness of Eugene will flourish.
On a similar note, one of the new ideas Mayor Torey brought up last Wednesday was the possible widening of the Autzen Foot Bridge. The bridge would be wide enough to create a lane for a Breeze shuttle route, which the city hopes would decongest traffic to and from Autzen Stadium.
City Councilor David Kelly said Friday, “I think there is some potential in a shuttle.” To get the idea rolling, the council will have to seek feedback from the Lane Transit District.
He added that using an existing bridge to cure a transit problem would be wiser than building a new one. He added that from an engineering standpoint, the bridge could be widened without spending a lot of money. The project is an idea that he is willing to look at, he said.