A MUZZLE ON
LCAS COMMENTS?
Animal advocates almost didn’t get a chance to tell the
Board of Lane County Commissioners what they think of
the plans to make major changes to the way the county
deals with its stray pets. The public was allowed to
comment April 5 at a commissioners’ meeting, but only
after Commissioners Rob Handy and Pete Sorenson made
repeated requests to have the animal control issue added to
the agenda.
Both Handy and Sorenson requested that the public be
able to comment on the proposal that would change the
way Lane County Animal Services (LCAS) is run.
Proposed changes to LCAS include turning the running of
the shelter over to a private contractor instead of having it
as a public agency and moving the two remaining animal
services employees to the public works department.
County Administrator Liane Richardson said she devised
the changes to LCAS in response to city and county budget
cuts.
Members of the No Kill Community Coalition have
expressed concern that the county process is moving too
quickly and has lacked opportunity for community input.
They also question why a member of the LCAS Advisory
Board has not been included in the process. At the April 5
meeting Commissioners Sid Leikin, Jay Bozievich and
Faye Stewart voted against Handy’s proposal to review the
request for proposals that is being sent out to private
agencies wishing to take over the shelter.
Prior to the meeting, Richardson balked at the
commissioners’ request for public input on the proposed
changes to LCAS, writing in an email to the board that the
public work session that was requested would “violate
budget law.”
Richardson wrote that she copied County Counsel Alex
Gardner on her reply, because “a budget violation is a
serious matter.”
Under Oregon law it is “probably not” permissible “for
the commissioners to discuss services and imminent
budget reductions,” according to Gardner, who is also the
county district attorney. However, commissioners can
discuss issues such as changing LCAS in ways that are
unrelated to the budget.
Sorenson responded to Richardson’s email by pointing
out the need for the board to hold public discussions of
topics that affect the county: “The board has held many
work sessions on many topics, most of which eventually
get around to money, and I’m not aware that these work
sessions are anything other than informational.” He wrote,
“No one wants to do business in secret and no one wants
to violate budget law.”
Handy concurred, “This is why I asked for this issue to
be put on our agenda for next week — so that we can
consider, in public view, what is best.” He added, “This
email conversation should happen at the board meeting:
Addressing, in public, why a public hearing is inadvisable
now but that a work session may make sense.”
The county budget itself will not be discussed until
May. According to Gardner, Budget Committee members
(which include the commissioners) cannot discuss the
county budget “until several things have taken place,”
including the reading of the budget message, which
Gardner said, kicks off the public budget process. The
reading of the budget message is scheduled for May 1.
Richardson will release her proposed budget April 24. The
full budget timeline is at wkly.ws/18t
— Camilla Mortensen
environmentally friendly items that let lovers be “green
between the sheets,” including Eugene-based Good Clean
Love’s organic personal lubricants and sex toys that are
phthalate-free.
Marks says, “As You Like It will be open to talk about
body-safe products” at the sidewalk sex clinic. She says
the clinic, “gives us safer place for people to ask questions
about sex that they rarely get the opportunity to ask.”
And if the environment turns you on, then the ecosexy
walk will teach how to find your “e-spot,” and “25 ways to
make love to the Earth and stimulate your senses,”
according to information from Sprinkle. If you miss the
Eugene walk, then you can head up to Portland on April 15
for a full-on ecosexy hike along the Clackamas River. Go
to wkly.ws/18s for more info.
Once the ecosexual activities get students and other
Eugeneans in the mood for Earth Day, they can check out
the UO’s Sustainability Center’s “Earth Week 2012” with
six days of events leading up to Earth Day, kicking off on
Monday, April 16. The theme is “activating collective
energy” and events include a zero-waste fair on April 18
and talks on coal trains, bikes and sustainable businesses.
Go to wkly.ws/18r for a full schedule.
— Camilla Mortensen
RACISM IN
THE KITCHEN
TALK DIRTY
TO THE EARTH
Former prostitute and porn star Annie Sprinkle has
come out of the closet as an ecosexual. Sprinkle, a leader
in the sex-positive feminist movement, will be coming to
Eugene and leading an “ecosexy walking tour” from 3 to
4:30 pm Thursday, April 12, outside the EMU at UO.
To be an ecosexual is to blend ecology with
environmentalism; it’s less about Earth as your mother and
more about planet as your lover. Sprinkle and her partner
Elizabeth Stephens have “married” the Earth, the sky and
the sea in performance art weddings, and Sprinkle says she
is out to make “the environmental movement more sexy,
fun and diverse.”
Hardcore sex-positivism will meet hardcore
environmentalism, also on April 12, when a group of
experts, including Earth First!er Kim Marks, will be
available from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm outside the UO’s
EMU Fishbowl to answer your sex questions as part of a
free sidewalk sex clinic. Marks recently launched an
ecologically oriented online pleasure shop, As You Like It.
The shop (asyoulikeitpdx.com) sells gender-inclusive,
“If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a speculum
— it sucks,” Breeze Harper said to a predominantly
twenty-something audience at the UO on April 7. “But the
speculum is this commodity that came out of the suffering
of African American slavery.”
The UC-Davis doctoral candidate, author, vegan and
self-described black feminist scholar came to give the
keynote address about food justice à la decolonial vegan
politics and revolutionary black feminism for the 17th
Annual Grassroots Environmental Justice Conference
sponsored by the Coalition Against Environmental Racism
(CAER).
Harper is the author of Sistah Vegan: Black Female
Vegans Speak on Food, Health, Identity & Society,
published in 2010. In her doctoral work she asks, “How is
veganism as food justice affected by the lived experience
of being a black, racialized, sexualized subject in the
USA?”
Harper discussed the commodification of the black
female body 200 years ago by Dr. J. Marion Sims
(considered the father of American gynecology) who
POLL EYES COMMISH POPULARITY
COURTSEY LINDHOLM COMPANY
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
Not only do Lane County residents know who most of their county
commissioners are, they like the ones they know, according to a survey done by
the Lindholm Company. Commissioners Rob Handy and Pete Sorenson, who are
up for re-election, both scored well in the survey.
Sid Leiken, a former Springfield mayor and now county commissioner for
Springfield, topped the list both in name recognition, 70 percent, and in
favorability ratings, 36 percent favorable, 12 percent unfavorable. Leiken is not up
for re-election this cycle and is the current chair of the board.
Sorenson also had a high score with a 68 percent approval rating and the
second highest approval rating of 30 percent favorable and 17 percent unfavorable.
Faye Stewart, who represents east Lane County, home to the controversial Parvin
Butte gravel mine, had the third highest percentage in favorability ratings — 21
percent, but he also had the highest negative rating at 22 percent.
Rob Handy had more name recognition than Stewart — 62 percent to Stewart’s
57 percent — and a 19 percent positive rating with 17 percent unfavorable.
West Lane Commissioner Jay Bozievich trailed the pack both in name
recognition, 45 percent, and in approval ratings, with a 16 percent favorable rating
and 12 percent unfavorable.
The survey consisted of 200 telephone interviews of a random sample of Lane
County residents likely to vote in the 2012 General Election. The survey was
conducted from Feb. 29 through March 2. The survey, and other surveys on local
topics, can be found on the Lindholm Company blog at wkly.ws/18u
— Camilla Mortensen
EUGENE WEEKLY APRIL 12, 2012 7