green
Roadmap to
UO’s sustainability program bypasses Eugene
by Ted Taylor
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
P H OTO BY T ED TAY LO R
CHRIS JONES
ROBERT LIBERTY
Jones says Eugene was well positioned to apply this
year “because Eugene has a number of plans that are
either recently passed or soon to be completed: the Eugene
Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan, Envision Eugene,
Climate and Energy Action Plan — plans that have been in
the works for a couple of years now.” Jones says the next
crucial step for cities is trying to fi gure out how to implement
these plans, “and that’s where the students can fi t in best.
They are poised to do great things if they chose to.”
Robert Liberty, executive director of SCI, says he’s
impressed with the multiple and diverse ways the UO and
city of Eugene have collaborated over the years to their
mutual benefi t. “The city’s been very supportive,” he says.
But is the city doing enough and planning enough to
be truly sustainable? “I applaud the positive moves toward
sustainability planning in Eugene,” says Kevin Matthews
of Friends of Eugene (FoE). “When we drill down to the
details, however, I’m not sure that we’re really living up to
our community’s potential.”
Matthews, who is also editor of ArchitectureWeek,
says the Climate and Energy Action Plan “fails to address
whether its actions, even if fully accomplished, would add
up to meet our stated targets. In fact, calculations done for
FoE suggest that the concrete actions listed in the plan are
barely enough to get us halfway there, even at 2030.”
“There are many other areas where our aspirations
and our actions may not be matching up,” says Matthews,
“from a lack of substantive grappling with climate factors
in Envision Eugene and other current planning projects to a
failure of the city to enforce its own green building standards
when signing long-term leases for new offi ce space.”
Matthews says the city has accomplished “a lot of
largely aspirational and qualitative sustainability planning
work so far. It is time now, if not earlier, to bear down and
start balancing the real numbers — on things like growth
in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) over time — in order
to actually achieve real community outcomes. If that’s
something the SCYP would help Eugene deal with, then at
$250,000 it would be a bargain.”
Shawn Boles of the Sustainability Commission is also
skeptical of the idea that the city is already doing plenty
of sustainability work and cannot afford to do more. “This
rationale sounded thin to me,” he says, “and I asked for a
list of city/UO projects. Have not heard back about this.”
The decision process
The decision on whether to apply for SCYP was made
by city staff, rather than through the Eugene Sustainability
Commission (ESC) or the City Council. But councilors,
commissioners and Mayor Kitty Piercy were aware of the
opportunity, even if not included directly in the decision.
“The SCY proposal was not vetted through the
Sustainability Commission this year or any of the last
three years,” says Jan Bohman, city community relations
director. “The commission did not identify it as a priority
in their annual work planning and it has not been discussed
between the commission and City Council in work plan
discussions.” Bohman did say at least one member of
the ESC encouraged the staff to apply, and city staff told
commissioners about the decision at the ESC meeting Jan.
18. “Some commissioners expressed an interest in seeing
reconsideration in the future when resources are available
to support city participation,” says Bohman.
Mayor Piercy defends the decision, saying “We love
the SCYP at UO and have supported and encouraged it
from the get-go. ... We have been partnering with them
across many disciplines for years and all the more so in my
tenure — with LCC as well. We are most fortunate to have
EUGENE WEEKLY FEBRUARY 2, 2012
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P H OTO BY T RA SK B E D O RT H A
T
he city of Eugene has yet to participate in
the UO’s ultimate “town and gown” col-
laboration on sustainability, but Springfi eld
has jumped on it with enthusiasm.
The UO’s Sustainable City Year Program
(SCYP) is getting positive attention from
The New York Times and Forbes magazine. Numerous
universities around the country, and as far away as China
and New Zealand, are interested in replicating what the
UO has created, and the program is attracting both students
and faculty to UO.
In a nutshell, the SCYP contracts with one Oregon
city each school year and hundreds of UO students, grad
students and faculty descend upon that city to work with
city staff on a dozen or more specifi c projects involving
sustainability.
Springfi eld cobbled together the $230,000 cost for the
2011-12 school year, using a mix of public and nonprofi t
funding sources. Salem did it the year before, and Gresham
did the inaugural program in 2009-10.
The Jan. 31 deadline for applications passed with
Eugene not applying for the second year in a row. Why
would Eugene, with a national reputation for sustainability
initiatives, not take advantage of an award-winning local
program touted in Forbes as “addressing and catalyzing
change across all issues that impinge on sustainability”?
“We’ve decided not to apply this year,” says Babe
O’Sullivan, sustainability liaison in the city manager’s
offi ce, citing the city’s long-established, broad-based
working relationship with the UO, the high cost of the
program ($250,000 this year), the city’s list of sustainability
projects already completed or under way, and the extra
burden on city staff. “It didn’t seem to fi t with the way
we are doing our work, the time frames and the pace with
which we are doing our work,” she says. “We don’t have
a lot of stored-up projects that we’ve been waiting to do.”
O’Sullivan says the city is talking to Chris Jones, program
manager of the UO’s Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI),
which oversees SCYP, about Eugene possibly participating
in a scaled-down version of the program, this year or next.