City Club speakers from left are: David Hinkley,
Terry Connolly, Rob Handy and Dan Hill.
This Friday’s luncheon meeting, perhaps
providing answers to Poticha’s question, will
be broadcast on KLCC 89.7 FM at 6:30 pm
Monday, April 17. — Ted Taylor
TED TAYLOR
BAD JOBS GET
BIG BREAKS
last Friday, the second part will be at 11:50
am Friday, April 14 at the Downtown
Athletic Club. Admission is free for City
Club members and $3 for non-members.
The April 7 meeting focused on “Land-
Use Planning: What’s Wrong With Eugene?”
and this week’s meeting will look at solu-
tions. Speakers last week were David
Hinkley of Friends of Eugene, Terry
Connelly of the Eugene Area Chamber of
Commerce, architect Dan Hill of Lane
County Homebuilders, and Rob Handy of the
Eugene Neighborhood Leaders Council.
Handy said “neighborhoods are at the
core of our economic, social and family life.
…. It only makes sense that neighborhood
residents should have significant roles in the
planning process.” He said Eugene’s plan-
ning department is not neutral and favors de-
velopers over residents, and doesn’t deal ade-
quately with transportation and livability is-
sues. He said public input is either too early
or too late to affect development, and plan-
ning “too frequently benefits short-term pri-
vate economic gain over broader, long-term
community values.” One example, he said,
was approval for medical offices in the Chase
Gardens Mixed Use Center, an area where
residents spent years planning for neighbor-
hood retail and grocery.
Hill cited a lack of vision in the Eugene
planning process, and complained of short-
sighted restrictions on buildings that cause
more problems than they solve. For example,
he said Eugene’s excessive set-backs and
minimal lot coverage standards encourage
two-story buildings. He also said public input
can lead to problems and delays since “most
citizens are not planning experts,” and the
city has “gone too far in allowing individuals
and groups to stall out projects.”
Hinkley said Eugene has “no single super-
majority held community vision” on what it
wants to be as a city, other than the 19 coun-
cil-adopted Growth Management Policies
that are subject to interpretation or ignored.
He said development standards are “too
vague” or are applied arbitrarily, and devel-
opment projects can be either delayed exces-
sively, or rushed through quickly, as in the
Whole Foods project. Another example he
gave was the $1.3 million budgeted to pro-
mote and plan the new City Hall. “They are
asking what should have been the first ques-
tion last,” he said.
Connelly said planning is important, but
it’s “not an exact science, and cannot predict
the future,” particularly as the economy and
the housing marketing change. He said “If the
bar of perfection in planning is set too high,
the outcome may be unattainable, no matter
how much time, resources and citizen input
gets put into the planning process,” and “if
we want more land off the tax roles for parks
and open spaces, then the tradeoff is we need
to ensure sufficient land still available or
made available for people to live, work and
generate the tax revenue that pays for essen-
tial city services.”
From the audience, architect Otto Poticha
asked a tough question for the panel:
Eugene’s planning is focused on zoning, and
there’s no real big plans for Eugene, he said,
and the result is mediocrity. “So does com-
munity planning really matter?”
State and local officials showered the new
Royal Caribbean call center opening recently
near Gateway Mall with hoopla, handouts
and tax breaks.
Most of the 230 new jobs at the call center
will pay only $9.25 an hour. That’s only
$1.75 above minimum wage. At $9.25 a per-
son would earn $19,296 a year, well below
the average Lane County salary of about
$33,000.
It’s also far less than a family wage.
Economists estimate a family of two parents
with two kids here needs about $42,000 a
year to meet basic subsistence needs such as
food, shelter, clothes and transportation.
Call centers are widely seen as among the
least valuable industries to attract to a city.
The jobs are often low wage and high
turnover and can easily leave for places with
lower taxes and labor costs.
Despite the low-quality jobs, state and
local economic development officials gave
the Royal Caribbean corporation $1.3 million
in taxpayer money in grants. Officials also
gave the corporation an enterprise zone tax
break, worth about $1 million a year for at
least the next three to five years. The millions
in tax breaks will be diverted from funding
BY PAUL NEEVEL
ELLEN GABEHART
Artist, teacher and Bronx native Ellen Gabehart says she started drawing at age 3,
and joined the Student’s Art League at 14. But her parents disapproved of art and
forced her to take an office job. “They made me be a bookkeeper,” she says. “I left for
California at 17.” Soon married with three children, Gabehart completed a degree in
education with a minor in art. She taught grade school, took watercolor workshops,
and often traveled on her own to draw and paint in the Southwest. On a rare trip
north in the ’70s she fell in love with Oregon, sold everything and moved to Gold
Beach. “I started my art career at age 41,” she notes, “teaching at SWOCC.” Five
years later, Gabehart moved to Eugene, where she has been teaching ever since in
many settings. “I taught at Maude Kerns Art Center for 25 years,” she says. “I’ve just
quit — I want to spend more time on my own work.” Gabehart will still teach a few
classes for seniors and kids. She travels to Mexico nearly every summer to draw and
paint. See two recent works this month at the New Zone Gallery, 975 Oak Alley.
West Lane
Herbicide
• L an e C o un t y Pu b l i c Wo r k s plans to begin
spraying herbicides again (Orin
Schumacher, IVM Coordinator: 682-6908).
Check Commissioners’ Agendas to find out
when the hearing will occur to consider
changes to the Last Resort Herbicide Use
Policy, and to approve the list of herbicides
to be used, at
www.co.lane.or.us/BCC/AgendaHome.htm;
more information at
www.lanecounty.org/RoadMaint/LastResor
t.htm and
www.co.lane.or.us/RoadMaint/Vegprescript
ions.htm
• OD O T D is t r ic t 5 (within Lane County):
Roadside herbicide nighttime spraying
scheduled during the week of April 17 on
Highway 126 East, and on Highway 58,
weather permitting. ODOT District 5 IVM
Coordinator Dennis Joll: 686-7526; daily
spray information: (888) 996-8080.
— Compiled by Jan Wroncy.
Forestland Dwellers: 342-8332
for schools and local government services
such as cops and firefighters.
— Alan Pittman
PARTICLES,
BIG & SMALL
Proposed EPA air quality rule changes
would tighten regulations on particle pollu-
tion in 2013, but revoke national standards
for coarse particle pollution (PM-10) across
Oregon for the seven years until the EPA’s
new rules are enforced.
Large cities that have violated the 24-hour
coarse particle standard over the last three
years would be held to the current standard
through 2013. But because no Oregon cities
have recently violated the standard, coarse
particle pollution would go unchecked
throughout Oregon for the next seven years,
said EPA spokesman John Millet. “There
wasn’t as much reason to [retain the current
standard] in places that don’t already have a
problem,” Millet said. “It’s not like you’re
losing anything in reality.”
Oregon Toxics Alliance Communications
Chair Barbara Allen disagrees. “This rule is a
Bush administration gift to industry by open-
ing up the possibility of no emission control
rules for certain areas for seven or more
years,” she said.
The EPA’s proposed changes would lower
the 24-hour fine particle standard (PM-2.5)
from 65 to 35 micrograms per cubic meter
while leaving the annual standard at 15 mi-
crograms per cubic meter, despite an inde-
pendent advisory committee’s recommenda-
tion to lower it.
Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority
Director Merlyn Hough said that the new fine
particle standards might be difficult for Lane
County to meet, especially in Oakridge,
where high levels of fine particulates have
posed short-term air quality problems.
“EPA’s proposed timeframes are necessarily
long, but we and our partners are already well
on our way and we expect to meet EPA’s
schedules with much room to spare,” he said.
The proposed changes would also lower
the 24-hour coarse particle standard from 150
to 70 micrograms per cubic meter, but revoke
the annual standard nationwide. “Current sci-
APRIL 13, 2006 9