• What will Eugene area residents get out of the visit this week with The Osprey
Group consultants John Huyler and Dennis Donald? Just about everything we are
telling the transportation experts about the West Eugene Parkway will be fed back
to us, with some trend analysis. They called it a “conflict assessment” at their
frank, lively and good-natured sit-down with the public April 10. They plan to
return in May to hold another meeting. Ideally, out of all this information gathering
and analysis should come some sense of whether this deadlock can be resolved as
a community, which will have an impact on whether the WEP is built, killed or
altered. Everyone who has submitted testimony and provided an e-mail address
will get a report. It’s not too late to weigh in on the big questions they are asking:
How did the WEP situation evolve in the way it has? And what will it take to move
ahead? Contact them by e-mail or snail mail via www.TheOspreyGroup.com
• We’re going to look carefully for national articles by Benoit Denizet-Lewis after
hearing him speak on the campus last week. His topic: “Hot Type: Writing about
Sex and Sexuality in America.” A few of his observations: He writes about sex and
sexuality in part because so many people write about it so badly; sexual predators
are the big story now; the Internet has transformed sexuality, probably not for the
better; the Internet was supposed to bring us together, but it has hurt us in
romance and intimacy; this is probably the first generation of gay kids to have nor-
mal adolescence and sexuality; in other countries kids are not on the Internet so
much. Only in his 30s, Denizet-Lewis is the youngest contributing writer in the his-
tory of The New York Times Magazine. He already has published broadly.
• This week Eugene will bid farewell to one of
the city’s most exuberant and committed
patrons of the arts, Carolezoom Patterson. Last
summer she and her husband used their life
savings to buy a commercial building across
from Triomphe and Bel Ami on Willamette
Street that will house local performing groups
including the Eugene Ballet and the Eugene
Concert Choir among others. Patterson moved
to Eugene in 1994 and got involved in the arts
scene in 2000. Patterson is in a wheelchair and
due to complications, is no longer able to drive.
In February, she and her husband sold their
Eugene home in the Friendly neighborhood and
moved to Portland where it’s easier for her to
get around unassisted. “In my own printmaking
These Stairs, a recent print by
and in becoming involved in arts advocacy, I’ve
Carolezoom Patterson
found new strength and meaning,” Patterson
said. “I will miss the rich and vibrant arts com-
munity we have in Eugene, but I’ll stay involved
from Portland. I won’t be far away.” DIVA on Broadway is hosting a going-away
party for Patterson Friday, starting with the showing of a documentary about
Patterson made by her cousin, Independent Little Cuss, at 6:30 pm and a recep-
tion at 7:30 pm.
• Eugene Councilor Bonny Bettman is fed up with what she calls a “hostile environ-
ment” at City Hall, and she went public with it this week. Bettman has been fuming
over a sarcastic e-mail sent to her last month by accident by Assistant City
Manager Jim Carlson. The message, intended to go to Johnny Medlin, director of
Parks and Open Space, said simply, “She’s baaack,” referring to Bettman’s return
from a United Front trip to Washington, D.C.. We’re not sure what “She’s baaack”
was intended to mean, but it does conjure up scenes from the horror film
Poltergeist. Bettman says the snide comment is typical of how she and other
assertive councilors are treated by city staff. In her letter to City Manager Dennis
Taylor this week, Bettman says “the disparaging e-mail reveals a bias and lack of
professionalism within the city organization that is more than just tolerated by the
those at the top; it is explicitly condoned, generated, and modeled by city leader-
ship.” Taylor’s response was short: “Bonny — You are correct. That is an offensive
email. Thank you for bringing it to my attention for appropriate action.” Carlson is
out of town and has not returned EW’s request for comment. Meanwhile, we are
seeing copies of e-mails from the mayor and progressive councilors in strong sup-
port of Bettman’s concerns. In the end, this flare-up is not about personalities, but
reflects deeper problems that need to be addressed in city management.
• Five years after selling its students to the Coke and Pepsi corporations, School
District 4J has finally opened its eyes to the obesity and other damage the corpo-
rate products inflict on kids. The district is considering a recommendation from a
wellness committee and the superintendent to get the pop machines out of high
schools. But despite ample evidence of harm and public outcry in 2000, the dis-
trict signed a contract with the corporations to indenture student health to corpo-
rate profits for the next eight years. The $300,000 4J got for selling its students
didn’t go to education, or health or fitness, it went to build some grandstands for
football stadiums. The district shouldn’t sit on this immoral contract for another
three years while students rot. They should cancel or buy it out now. If the corpo-
rations really are good citizens and want to avoid a public backlash, they won’t
extort a high buy-out price.
8 APRIL 13, 2006
news
briefs
FAKE GRASS
TOPS PARK
PRIORITIES
What’s a higher priority, making a pond
that has drowned at least four kids safer, a
new teen center downtown to keep kids out of
trouble, paving over school fields and laying
AstroTurf, acquiring threatened riverfront
and ridgeline land for more bike and hiking
trails, a downtown square, park tables for
chess, building a big skateboard bowl at
Washington-Jefferson Park, building a white-
water park for kayakers, building a course for
mountain bike stunts, or restoring Amazon
Creek for a natural park in back of the fair-
grounds?
After hours of testimony pleading differ-
ent projects, the Eugene City Council went
for the AstroTurf April 10, adding $5 million
to a November bond measure for covering
four grass fields at 4J middle schools and one
field at Bethel High School with the synthetic
surface.
It’s unclear why the council chose the fake
grass over the other projects, which had far
more support at the hearing. AstroTurf advo-
cates, including officials from local organ-
ized sports leagues and former Mayor Jim
Torrey, had lobbied the council behind the
scenes for the last month to put their project
in the bond.
Charles Warren, a major donor for the
Chamber of Commerce’s conservative politi-
cal action committee, testified that the syn-
thetic fields would be less muddy and allow
more playing time. He said a planned $20
million bond for acquiring parkland threat-
ened by development and rising costs might
not pass without support from AstroTurf sup-
porters.
But David Monk worried that adding the
$5 million in hard AstroTurf, which he said
many people don’t like to play on, could hurt
chances of the acquisition bond measure
passing by increasing the voter sticker shock.
Warren and a couple other artificial grass
boosters were far outnumbered at the hearing
by the two dozen Bethel residents who came
with yellow ribbons to plead for safety im-
provements to a dangerous park in their
neighborhood.
Shauna Davis brought pictures of her
teenage son and nephew who drowned in the
steep old gravel pit at Golden Gardens Park
last year. She choked when describing how
they died at the park with inadequate safety
access and where at least two other children
had also drowned in recent years. “Nothing
has been done at Golden Gardens Park after
12 years and four lives,” the mother said. “It
has to stop.”
City councilors later said they would look
for some limited money for safety improve-
ments in the park but didn’t include anything
in the November bond measure for major im-
provements. One leader from the Friends of
Golden Gardens Park said it would cost about
$400,000 to buy land and re-grade the steep
slopes of the pits.
By comparison, each AstroTurf field
paving included in the measure will cost
about $1 million and will require about
$500,000 in resurfacing work every decade.
Use of the AstroTurf fields will be tightly re-
stricted and limited largely to organized
sports leagues. — Alan Pittman
WHAT’S WRONG
WITH EUGENE?
The impact of land use planning on neigh-
borhoods, the urban core and the economy is
being examined in a two-part series at City
Club of Eugene. The first in the series was