CAPSTONE PLAN
GETS APPEALED
A land use appeal will put Capstone’s money where its
mouth is. Neighborhood advocate Paul Conte filed an
appeal May 23 that could test the time and architectural
constraints that Capstone, an Alabama-based student
housing developer, has claimed its downtown 1,200-student
housing project depends on.
The appeal contests the “vacation” of 12th Alley, which
would mean that the city would no longer claim ownership
of what is currently part of a bike route. Capstone has said
it plans to dedicate the former alley space to bike and
pedestrian through-traffic.
While Capstone has said that it will need to break
ground in June to make the project financially viable —
and the alley vacation permit also states that the alley
vacation is essential to the student housing project — the
appeal could extend beyond that date.
Conte says his appeal is based on the proper procedure
of land-use decisions under Oregon law. On May 1,
Capstone changed the alley vacation request to no longer
include a portion of the alley. “That was a pretty significant
change and it had some implications in terms of both the
benefits and the detriments,” Conte says.
Because May 1 was the day after the last public input
could be given on the project, he says, the record should
have been opened again to allow the public to comment.
“In my view, this was just another egregious action by staff
happening people
to ramrod the Capstone project through and prevent the
community from a fair opportunity to weigh in on the
decisions,” Conte says.
In addition to procedural issues, Conte says the proposed
alley vacation is poorly written because it lists all the
positive impacts of alley vacation as results of the Capstone
project, but it isn’t conditional on any aspects of the project,
and it doesn’t properly account for the pros and cons of the
alley vacation.
“If the sole benefits are coming from the development,
we have to weigh not only the benefits of vacating the alley,
which there are few, and the negative impacts of vacating
the alley, of which there are some, and we also have to
weigh the benefits of the proposed development if it’s built,
and the potential negative impacts of that,” Conte says.
— Shannon Finnell
COUNTY STYMIES
PUBLIC RECORDS
REQUEST?
While Lane County’s administrator and conservative
board majority moved quickly to release the public records
that may have contributed to progressive Commissioner
Rob Handy’s defeat in last week’s primary election, the
county is dragging its feet on releasing public records
relating to the “emergency meeting” it held as well other
information surrounding the case.
Handy’s attorney, Marianne Dugan, asked the county to
release the public records on May 8. The May 3 emergency
meeting was held with less than 24 hours’ notice and the
conservative commissioners voted to immediately release
public records related to the accusations against Handy.
However Dugan’s own request was denied by Stephen
BY PAUL NEEVEL
ELIMAN GIBBA & ALEXANDRA SIANIS-GIBBA
“I’m the black sheep,” says Eliman Gibba, eldest son of his family in the Gambian coastal fishing town of Gunjur. “My dad
wanted me to be a religious scholar.” Instead, he finished high school and got a job teaching local languages to Peace
Corps volunteers. He wrote a manual for the Mandinka language, married a volunteer, landed in Corvallis, and found
work with mentally challenged high school kids. Following a divorce, he worked at an alternative school in Portland and
fathered a daughter, named Nima after his recently departed sister. He was a single dad in 2001, teaching at Wellsprings
Friends School in Eugene, when he met Alex Sianis, who came to town with her Greek immigrant parents in 1977 to
open Original Joe’s Italian Restaurant. “Nima became the light of my life,” says Sianis, who became part of their family
a few months later. In 2005, Gibba joined the Sianis family business. Try his Mafé (West African peanut stew) at the
Sunset Hut food cart, 12th and Kincaid. In January 2009, 11-year-old Nima, a boy, and two moms were killed by a drunk
driver after a dance class. After a trip to Africa in December 2010, Gibba and Sianis launched Nima’s Wish Foundation,
aimed at bringing appropriate technologies and educational opportunities to Gambia. “We currently sponsor six children
and one adult,” says Sianis. Learn more at nimaswish.com
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
Dingle, the newly hired senior assistant county counsel. He
cited an Oregon statute that he says “conditionally exempts
the disclosure of criminal investigatory information if it is
likely to interfere with a criminal investigation.”
Dugan promptly appealed the denial to the Lane County
District Attorney Alex Gardner. Gardener is not only the
DA who makes decisions on such public records appeals,
but he is also the county counsel.
Dugan wrote in her May 15 appeal to Gardener, “The
documents I requested were not ‘compiled for criminal law
purposes.’ They were public records about a public meeting
and about a public official, which were compiled prior to
the criminal investigation being commenced.”
Gardener responded via email that he would have his
office research her request and asked “is it your position
that the documents in such a case are not protected from
disclosure under Oregon’s public records law because they
were not ORIGINALLY created in connection with a
criminal investigation?”
To which Dugan responded, “Do you have authority for
the proposition that a record, once public, can be taken out
of the public domain because it is touched by the hand of
law enforcement?”
Dugan says she has not yet heard back on whether her
records request would go through or how much obtaining
the records would cost. In the past, the county has
threatened to charge up to $200 per computer searched for
email-related public records requests. The city of Springfield
has performed similar searches for free.
Dugan says “it seems very weird to me” that the county
counsel is also the district attorney who makes decisions on
public records requests, “but the statute requires the DA to
be the one to address the appeal.”
— Camilla Mortensen
LANE COUNTY
STRIFE ABOUNDS
Lane County’s Board of Commissioners’ already
conservative majority will be strengthened by one more when
Pat Farr takes Commissioner Rob Handy’s seat in January,
but Farr and the commission might not be feeling so lucky to
be in control as they deal with not only massive budget
problems, but also internal strife.
The Secure Rural Schools act, which has helped to fund
counties such as Lane with large amounts of nontaxable
federal lands, has yet to be renewed and other state and
federal funds are shrinking, so Lane County is facing a budget
cut of more than $100 million. The budget committee voted
May 22 to approve a budget and send it to the board.
Commissioners Pete Sorenson and Rob Handy voted against
the budget, after the committee shifted money prevent some
of the deep public safety cuts, but still cut funding to programs
including youth and veterans services.
In his public comments to the budget committee, union
representative Jim Steiner questioned why the county’s
indirect costs are going up, asking why administrative
overhead has been increased by more than $1 million this
year.
County Administrator Liane Richardson orchestrated
many of the cost-saving measures, some of them unpopular
with county employees and county residents alike, such as
turning the Lane County Animal Services kennel over to a
nonprofit like Greenhill Humane Society, cutting and merging
other departments and laying off more than 200 employees.
Cutting the number of inmates the Lane County jail can
house and cutting county sheriffs patrols are also unpopular
proposals, but because the jail and public safety are mainly
funded through the “general fund,” which faces the biggest
cut, they are also difficult cuts to avoid.
The county commissioners have discussed looking into
placing a tax levy on the November ballot to blunt some of
the budget cuts. When Lane County commissioners proposed
an income tax in 2007, it led to an attempted recall of then-
commissioner Bobby Green, who was later defeated by
Handy. Current Commissioner Faye Stewart also voted for
that proposed income tax.
EUGENE WEEKLY MAY 24, 2012 7