LET TERS
TERRORIST ACT
Finally a homophobic, religion-based
murder of American gay men and women
has been labeled “terrorism.” Islam is no
worse than Protestant Christianity in this
regard.
Tim Hilton
Springfield
PREVENT VIOLENCE
My heart is with the victims and
survivors of the massacre in Orlando,
Florida, an act of terror now being reported
as the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
I stand in solidarity with the families
and friends of all those who were killed or
injured, and my thanks go to the dedicated
first responders who rushed to the scene.
Americans are now coming together
to say enough to hate and violence, and to
show our support for the people of Orlando
and for our LGBT brothers and sisters. As
communities across the country celebrate
LGBT Pride Month, we are reminded that
every life is precious.
VIEWPOINT
The bottom line is that in this country,
it is far too easy for those who hate and are
intent on doing harm — including radical
jihadists — to access guns. We owe it to
the people of Orlando — and to all of the
90 Americans killed each day by guns —
to do everything in our power to prevent
this kind of violence.
Curtis Taylor
Eugene
NEEDLESS ACCIDENT
Thank you for the article on “Oil Train
Crashes” on page nine of your June 9 issue!
Surely safety precautions should have
prevented this accident, and according to
The Register-Guard, there have been “26
similar railroad derailments in the U.S. and
Canada.” This is especially shocking since
it occurred in small towns in this modern
era!
My two sisters and I witnessed this
accident firsthand as we were driving to
Washington state and this caused us and
many motorists nearly a three-hour delay.
The EPA and other organizations must
be properly monitored so a similar needless
accident never occurs.
Stace Webb
Eugene
POIGNANT FILM
Tonight my family and I went to see the
film that Robert De Niro says “everyone
should see” — Vaxxed, at the David Minor
Theater (despite the Weekly’s misleading
blurb which featured a jumbled and myopic
echo of the pharmaceutical establishment
via The Washington Post).
This is a film about scientific integrity and
the way that this integrity is compromised
by the pressures of industry, specifically as
revealed by Dr. William Thompson, former
head scientist at the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) and coauthor of the study
(enshrined as vaccination/autism gospel)
used to prove that the MMR doesn’t cause
autism.
The film shows plainly how Dr.
Thompson comes forward and reveals
CRASS DTURD
I just want to say how disappointing,
if not unsurprising, it is to see that the
Weekly published Janet Bevirt’s crass
letter [Letters, June 2] in opposition to
the Downtown Urban Renewal District.
Using the acronym “DTURD” was not
a mistake, not funny and not productive.
BY BONN Y BE T TM A N MCCORN ACK
Ongoing Boondoggle
A SERIES OF QUESTIONS ABOUT EUGENE URBAN RENEWAL
T
he Eugene City Council, Lane County
Commission,
Lane
Community
College and 4J are all on board with
diverting your tax dollars to benefit
private property and businesses in the
Downtown Urban Renewal District (DTURD) —
even though you paid those taxes assuming you
were funding education, public safety, libraries,
parks and other essential services.
On June 13, City Council voted 5-3 to extend the
DTURD.
If those elected and appointed officials had the
slightest interest in protecting the public’s best
interest and exercising their fiduciary responsibility
on behalf of the taxpayers, then these are some red
flags they could have raised regarding DTURD’s
proposals for high-speed fiber, LCC’s old building,
Farmers Market and the Park Blocks.
Why should Eugene taxpayers pay for fiber optics
downtown when voters granted charter authority in
1998 for EWEB to be the provider of a publicly
owned network?
Why should downtown properties exclusively
benefit with cheaper high-speed rates because their
hook-ups are publicly subsidized, while the rest of
the community pays the going rate and the subsidy?
Why aren’t benefiting property owners being
required to pay for their own fiber upgrade?
Are any of the properties receiving the publicly
funded high-speed fiber located in buildings in
which the manager rents city office space? In that
case, would taxpayers be paying twice for the
service, once to install it to private property and then
again for the city to use it?
Why does the revised DTURD plan amendment
4
that the study’s data was manipulated by
the CDC because it showed a correlation
between the MMR and autism (they actually
threw parts of the study into the trash in a
secret meeting and manipulated numbers in
their official report).
It was particularly poignant to see
pediatricians changed their practice after
reviewing the version of the original study
(preserved by Dr. Thompson) with the real
data un-retracted by the CDC.
It is also a film about how the lives of
many children and their families have been
tragically changed by the MMR vaccination.
Sabrina Siegel
Eugene
June 16, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
promise that none of the skimmed revenue will be
used for City Hall or a parking lot on City Hall
Block when everyone knows council does not keep
promises legislated in the DTURD (like the promise
it will terminate this year)?
Why was the public hearing held prematurely
on a range of vague and undefined plans and debt,
ranging from $17-$48 million, instead of defined
projects with their concomitant costs?
Why wasn’t the public able to testify regarding
significant text edits to the revised plan (available 17
days after the public hearing) and why is the public
input on the scope of the projects occurring after
council adopts the plan?
Why does the plan anticipate it will only collect
94 percent of property taxes levied in any given
year, when the city budget projects 94.5 percent and
the actual collection rate ends up being between 97-
98 percent? This translates into a lot of extra money
for the DTURD over the 11 years of the plan.
The proponents tout the benefits of URD in terms
of economic development and increasing the value
of land in the district. If DTURD is so beneficial,
then why, after 49 years and at least $100 million,
does the city manager claim in the official report
that, “The city concludes that the entire plan area is
blighted.” Why throw good money after bad? What
other ways could the city invest those tax dollars for
the benefit of the community, instead of exclusively
for downtown property owners and businesses?
Despite the news that the DTURD “debt limit”
is $19.4 million, the actual amount of money
committed is more than $27 million. Wouldn’t it be
common sense to fund the projects without Urban
Renewal and save all the additional costs of running
the DTURD scheme?
Why should city taxpayers be forced into the
middle of LCC’s sale of its old downtown campus
when they already paid for LCC’s new campus?
Why doesn’t the city use the revenue from
existing taxes, already paid for parks and park
maintenance, to upgrade the Park Blocks instead of
charging taxpayers twice for that service?
And why does the scope of the Farmers
Market project range from simple upgrades to the
existing site all the way to the extreme of building
a commercial structure on the butterfly lot or
elsewhere? What is the plan?
The city is exploiting the impact of compression
on 4J’s local option levy, claiming that it will result in
an additional $360,000 in 2016 if it adopts DTURD.
The city very carefully deleted that same Local
Option Levy (LOL) from projected revenue tables
for the plan’s 11 years. Is that because compression
variables could result in major 4J losses, just like it
has in the past, and the LOL expires in 2020 but the
DTURD is extended to 2027?
Since DTURD has been over-collecting tax
increment revenue since 2011 for the current plan,
aren’t there sufficient funds immediately available,
including the half million dollars allocated but
unspent for the Farmers Market, sufficient to retire
the debt, and therefore the district would terminate
automatically?
Legally, does the City Council have the authority
to adopt an amendment to DTURD if there are
sufficient funds right now to pay the debt?
What is the total amount of money diverted into
DTURD since its inception in 1968?
In the midst of their back-scratching and back-
slapping fest, the only question our public servants
are asking is: “How much longer can get we away
with this boondoggle?”
Bonny Bettman McCornack is a retired registered nurse, former Ward 1
city councilor and longtime progressive city and neighborhood activist.