BY BEN RICKER
ONWARD
CITY HALL
Y
ears of deliberation, millions of tax dollars spent,
and still nothing to show but a city block of gravel
flats and an angry clutch of frustrated taxpayers: A
sharply divided Eugene City Council agreed last
week to pursue a costly plan (of as-of-yet dubious
legal merit) to erect a shiny new City Hall building on a
county-owned plot north of the Park Blocks downtown.
After bureaucratic wishful thinking, inadequate plan-
ning and opaque city management the City Hall saga has
abraded the public trust, though incoming Mayor Lucy Vi-
nis wants to restore faith in the project.
“We need to restore the sense that the city is being re-
sponsible with tax dollars,” Vinis says.
Despite baby steps made Dec. 14 at the City Council
meeting, City Hall still has major hurdles to clear, includ-
ing a court ruling to determine whether a 160-year-old
deed restriction will limit the city-county land transfer.
Many wonder whether city leaders have the mettle to com-
plete their quest to build an attractive and durable City Hall
without millions more taxpayer dollars going to waste.
“My opinion is the same as everyone else’s,” says Em-
ily Semple, the recently elected Ward 1 City Councilor.
”It’s been a fiasco.”
City Manager Jon Ruiz revealed this past summer that
plans drawn up for City Hall by Rowell Brokaw Archi-
tects would exceed the approved budget by approximately
$10 million. The Register-Guard reported that Ruiz knew
months in advance that the city was facing a hard financial
pill to swallow, but for whatever reason decided to keep it
under his hat until the last possible moment.
Once brought up to speed, city councilors got cold feet
and began exploring a potential land swap involving the
former City Hall site and the county’s “butterfly” parking
lot. The city even rekindled the popular riverfront EWEB
City Hall idea for a short while.
‘The history is, the public was
never interested in paying for
a new City Hall.’
— M AYO R - E L E C T L U C Y V I N I S
“It’s shaken my faith in the system,” Semple says, add-
ing that the floundering City Hall Project is partly what
spurred her to run for office in the first place.
She calls it a “nightmare,” the silver lining of which is
that it “got people stirred up and paying attention.”
“That’s what we want,” Semple adds.
Mayor-elect Lucy Vinis doesn’t doubt that there are a
lot of eyes on the City Hall issue.
“One thing is very clear,” Vinis says, “City Council and
staff have learned a lesson.”
For her part, Vinis says she’s pleased with City Coun-
cil’s decision to prioritize a design that keeps city head-
quarters close to the County Courthouse and Farmers
Market, but agrees the city’s recent mistakes have tested
Eugeneans’ patience across wards.
“The history is, the public was never interested in pay-
ing for a new City Hall,” Vinis says.
Vinis acknowledges a major challenge upon taking of-
fice next month is earning back the public trust. There are
several avenues of approach, she notes.
Details remain to be hammered out, but Vinis is consid-
ering a handful of different, innovative ways to keep tax-
payers in the loop when it comes to projects like City Hall.
She envisions a spreadsheet available online that would list
active city projects, updated regularly to show their status.
She would also like to touch base monthly with a State-
of-the-City-style report published in local newspapers the
R-G and Eugene Weekly.
Furthermore, she’s open to calls she heard during the
election for the hiring of an independent city performance
auditor.
Vinis, too, is aware that Ruiz’s withholding informa-
tion has made him a lightning rod for criticism. Ruiz has
said there’s “no particular reason” he kept council in the
dark and Vinis takes him at his word. She suspects he acted
without malicious intent, she says.
Vinis points out that the city manager form of govern-
ment is at the center of a lot of tension these days. It’s un-
clear to Eugene’s next mayor whether Ruiz’s silence was a
judgment error or if he was merely carrying out confused
orders given to him by an uncommunicative council.
“It’s something to pay close attention to,” Vinis says.
No discussions of City Hall are currently on the coun-
cil’s tentative agenda for January 2017
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December 22, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com