The City of Eugene has reached a $288,000 settlement in a $7.5 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Michael Amador Sanchez, who died following a January 2019 incident involving the Eugene Police Department.

The lawsuit, filed by Sanchez’s sister, Isabel M. Mihalich, alleged that police officers failed to recognize Sanchez was suffering from a mental health crisis. It also alleged that officers did not provide appropriate care and monitoring of his condition during his arrest and transport to a local hospital.  

In the January 2019 incident, officers arrested Sanchez, then 34, after responding to reports of a fire at Coast Farm and Ranch in the Trainsong neighborhood. Sanchez ran into the middle of a nearby highway, ignored police commands and resisted arrest. 

After officers took Sanchez into custody, he turned himself upside down in the back seat of the police car. A seat belt wrapped around his neck, causing him to become asphyxiated. By the time he arrived at the hospital, Sanchez was unconscious and fell into a coma. He died 241 days later. 

As part of the $288,000 settlement, the city did not admit wrongdoing or agree to make policy changes. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, preventing further lawsuits from being filed.

Eugene Police spokesperson Melinda McLaughlin declined to comment on this story. The law office representing Isabel M. Mihalich did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Eugene to pay $288K to settle lawsuit over man who died of seat belt strangulation in police car appeared first on Daily Emerald.

The Eugene City Council has passed the fire safety fee that aims to help close a projected $11.5 million general fund budget gap.

In a split vote at a Feb. 10 work session, councilors voted five to three to pass the fee. 

City Councilors Jennifer Yeh, Eliza Kashinsky, Matt Keating, Alan Zelenka, and Lyndsie Leech voted to implement the fee. 

“Our Fire EMS is very similar to a utility. It’s something we count on to be there every day,” Yeh said. “It cannot stop working.”

City Councilors Mike Clark, Greg Evans and Randy Groves voted against implementing the fee. 

Clark and Groves said they believe the decision to implement the fee should be made by the voters, not the city council.

“I don’t want to see these cuts either. Personally, if this was on a ballot, I would vote for it,” Groves said. “But, this is other people’s money. They should get a chance to weigh in themselves.”

Starting in July 2025, those who occupy developed property within Eugene’s city limits, like a home or building, who pay stormwater fees, will be responsible for paying for the fire safety fee.

The city estimates the new fee will cost property owners or tenants $10 per month for the median single-family home and $38 per month for the median commercial property. 

The post Eugene City Council has passed the fire safety fee appeared first on Daily Emerald.

On Jan. 15, Lane County officials warned county commissioners of difficult times to come, delivering a grim outlook for the upcoming 2025-2026 fiscal year. 

According to Budget and Financial Planning Manager Christine Moody, the county faces a projected $6.3 million shortfall in its general fund starting in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins in July. The projected gap, 0.5% of the county’s $1.24 billion total budget, accounts for more than 4% of the $143 million general fund — the largest pool of discretionary funds at the county’s disposal.

Around the same time last year, county officials predicted a $7 million general fund deficit. To address that gap, the county implemented a series of cost-saving measures, including keeping vacant positions open longer, cutting funding for material and service accounts and eliminating approximately 15 full-time positions across multiple departments. 

Since the county adopted the current fiscal year’s budget in June, two supplemental budgets have increased the total budget by more than 8% or roughly $103 million. The money came from unspent funds the prior year, state and federal grants, transfers between different county funds and additional county revenue. The spending increases will help pay for county infrastructure projects, public safety enhancements and other social services not included in the adopted budget.

Lane County officials said their budget woes have two key drivers: unstable revenue and skyrocketing expenses that have continued to outpace revenue growth in recent years. Next fiscal year, costs are projected to increase nearly 10%, while revenue is expected to rise by just 3%. The forecast marks a significant change from last year’s projections, which showed costs increasing by more than 5% and revenue rising by 2%.

“The money going out the door is leaving faster than the money that we can collect coming in the door,” longtime Lane County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky said. “Our expenses are growing faster than our revenues.”

Mokrohisky cited several reasons for the current imbalance between revenue and costs. He said revenue is unstable because the county has a lower property tax rate than other Oregon counties that provide similar services. He added that the issue is further complicated by high inflation following the coronavirus pandemic, the county’s past reliance on declining timber tax revenue and 1990s statewide voter measures restricting property tax increases.  

Officials say the imbalance has resulted in chronic underfunding of essential county services, like public safety and health and human services. They say the problem has been further exacerbated by the county not receiving enough state and federal funding.

Another reason for the imbalance is that other county expenses, like wages and county retirement plans, are growing faster than revenue, officials say.

Late last year, Eugene city officials painted a similarly bleak financial picture, saying the city council must implement a fire safety fee to close a $11.5 million general fund budget gap or make the equivalent cuts. But, unlike Eugene, the county is not considering implementing additional fees or taxes to address its projected shortfall.

Moody said the current area of focus for potential cuts is in the county’s central services departments. She said the county is looking at making cuts in the departments at 5% to 10%. The departments include technology services, county counsel, human resources, county administration, financial services, budget and financial planning, policy, operations and facilities. 

Another area officials say cuts could be made is in the county’s health and human services department. Department director Eve Gray said by eliminating funding for vacant positions in the department, a current department plan, the county could save $3 million — nearly half of the county’s projected budget gap.

In addition to those potential budget cuts, officials say other essential county functions may be at risk, including public safety, land management and parole and probation.

Chair David Loveall, who represents Springfield on the Board of Commissioners, said the county’s budget gap is growing and getting worse. He said addressing the shortfall will be a delicate balancing act. 

“We are going to have to do some serious prioritizing,” Loveall said, adding that he hopes to prioritize funding for public safety.    

While the county could dip into nearly $360 million in reserves to cover some or all of the gap, as they have done previously — most recently last fiscal year when they spent roughly $2.6 million in reserves to close a  $7.2 million shortfall —  Loveall said that would be a “last resort” for him. Doing so could jeopardize funding for future county projects, like the Lane Behavioral Health Stabilization Center in Springfield, he said. 

It is not clear yet how the shortfall will be resolved. The county is in the early stages of its budget process for the upcoming fiscal year. 

To date, the county has only completed forecasts for the general fund. The projections for the total budget deficit will not be complete until April, officials say. The gap may widen further as more analysis is done. 

In mid-June, county commissioners will vote on the final budget before the 2025-2026 fiscal year begins on July 1. There will be opportunities for the public to weigh in when the county’s budget committee starts meeting in May. 

The post Lane County heading toward $6.3 million budget gap later this year, officials warn appeared first on Daily Emerald.

On Jan. 13, Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson delivered the State of the City address at the Hult Center. 

Housing and homelessness

A major focus of Knudson’s speech was addressing housing and homelessness, a key priority during her campaign for mayor. Knudson called the current state of homelessness in Eugene a “crisis.”

“The lack of available, affordable housing is the root cause of our homelessness crisis,” Knudson said.

During this year’s state legislative session, Knudson said she plans to advocate more state funding to stabilize Eugene’s limited shelter capacity. According to city data, of roughly 3,000 people who are homeless in Eugene more than 2,000 are without shelter each night. 

Knudson highlighted housing reforms made under her predecessor Lucy Vinis, including the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and changes to Eugene’s middle housing code. 

“Thanks to reforms that allow for diversity and prioritize affordability, so far we’re seeing about 100 new units per year spread throughout a city with more than 83,000 existing residential addresses,” Knudson said. “So while the change isn’t radical, it’s significant progress. In just a few years, these regulatory changes are on track to spur what could be $50 million in new housing investment.”

Reflecting on her predecessor’s reforms, Knudson said it is important to remember that much of the new housing built in Eugene recently as a result did not need public funding. Rather, they needed policies that “allowed them to exist,” she said.

Knudson called to attention that Downtown Eugene has lower residential density than most of Eugene’s neighborhoods. That’s not the way it should be, she said.

“Our city center should be where residential density is highest,” Knudson said. “Downtown needs people to support local businesses, to start small businesses, to activate public spaces and to breathe life into the center of the city.”

Knudson set a goal to build 1,000 new housing units in Eugene’s downtown in the next five years. But achieving that goal won’t be easy, she said. 

“This is double our current housing production and a huge challenge,” Knudson said. “Zero units of housing have been built in the Downtown core in the past five years.”

To meet her goal, Knudson said the city will need to take various steps, including reforming the process of building new housing.

“To meet this goal, the city will need to identify multiple new sites for housing development each year, reform our processes to reduce cost and time and ensure downtown has the public safety support it needs,” Knudson said. “We will need to continue to work as an effective partner, bring financial tools to the table and look for new ways that the city can partner with housing developers to meet our community’s needs.”

Community engagement 

This year, Knudson said she plans to hold a series of informal community porch tours at residences and businesses across Eugene. The sessions will allow residents a chance to connect and share their thoughts on issues that matter to them, she said.

“Accessibility is a priority on my calendar, and as mayor, I hope to get to know you in the months and years ahead,” Knudson said. “Through me, I hope you will get to know our city better.”

On Jan. 22, a now-defunct Eugene-based wood treatment facility and its president agreed to pay $1.5 million in criminal fines for knowingly violating the Clean Air Act’s pollution control regulations.

The fines imposed on J.H. Baxter and its president, Georgia Baxter-Krause, follow their guilty plea to environmental violations related to improper waste disposal and storage at the Roosevelt Blvd. facility in Eugene.

The charges stem from unlawful practices at the now-closed J.H. Baxter plant, where toxic chemicals were used to treat and preserve wood. The resulting wastewater from the process, a hazardous material, was supposed to be managed through a regulated treatment and storage process. However, instead of following that process, the company engaged in an unauthorized practice of transferring hazardous waste into wood treatment retorts for years, prosecutors say. 

The process, referred to as “(boiling) it off,” allowed the company to reduce the amount of wastewater kept at the plant significantly. 

In doing so, prosecutors say the company bypassed required permits and pollution regulations. Through a multi-agency investigation, investigators determined the illegal boiling activity happened on at least 136 days from January to October 2019.

In addition to the fines, as part of her plea agreement, Krause, 61, faces up to two years in federal prison for lying to government officials about the illegal practices.

On Jan. 6, Lane County Commissioner Laurie Trieger delivered the annual State of the County address.

January 2024: Historic ice storm 

Trieger recalled last year’s historic ice storm that left many county residents without power and many schools, businesses and roads closed.

“It was almost a year ago that we had a historic ice storm,” Trieger said. “As the local emergency management entity, … we activated the County Emergency Operations Center to address the impacts of that storm … (coordinating) across multiple (government) entities and community groups … (and) staffing and access of Community Resource centers in Springfield, Creswell and Cottage Grove ensuring individuals who are without power had basic supplies and charging access for phones, medical equipment and other devices.”

Lane County Board Chair David Loveall, who represents Springfield on the commission, said the historic storm was one of the most significant challenges that the county faced last year.

“[It was] significant challenge, I was down at the Egan Warming Center (a) couple (of) nights [during the storm] in Springfield seeing firsthand what kind of challenges we face,” Loveall said in an interview with The Daily Emerald. “We didn’t really know about it before, we always [saw] the Egan Warming Center as a place … [for] homeless folks, but what we discovered was there (were) elderly people that were struggling with power outages and single moms and that (were) struggling.”

Holliday Fire recovery efforts

Trieger touted progress made on recovery from the Holiday Farm Fire. The 2020 wildfire destroyed much of Blue River, an unincorporated Lane County community on Oregon State Route 126 halfway between Eugene and Sisters. 

While she acknowledged that recovery efforts from the 2020 fire have been slow and “frustratingly difficult,” Trieger said the county has made significant progress.

Key achievements include a new library and fire station in Blue River and a $1.3 million agreement with McKenzie Valley Long-Term Recovery Group for rapid housing for low-income seniors and people with disabilities fire survivors, she said. 

Behavioral Health 

Like much of Oregon, which lags behind most of the nation in addressing mental health, Lane County faces significant challenges in addressing behavioral health, particularly for youth. 

According to a 2022 county survey, 20% of parents and guardians who tried to get counseling for their children were unable to get it. 

Trieger called behavioral health a “great concern” to everyone on the Lane County Board of Commissioners. 

Already, the county has launched a Mobile Crisis Response Team that officials say aims to keep people in their homes rather than a hospital or faculty. 

This year, Trieger said, the county is launching a Lane Behavioral Health Stabilization Center in Springfield.

“I think [the new center] (will be) awesome because our mental health capacity in Lane County from my direct experience with my family losing my son to suicide is in a real crisis,” Loveall,  the county board chair, said. 

County officials say the new center will significantly improve emergency room capacity and access by allowing people currently in hospitals facing mental health crises to be able to access care at the hospital. 

The center could free up to “two hallways” at hospitals and emergency rooms in the county, freeing up space in emergency rooms, Project Manager Britni D’Eliso said in a video played during Trieger’s speech. 

Budget gap

Largely absent from Trieger’s speech was any mention of the county’s budget gap. 

While she acknowledged “ever diminishing resources and continued rising costs,”  she did not mention a budget gap or deficit in her speech.

Loveall, the county board chair, said the county currently faces a $10 million budget deficit. He said the deficit is primarily caused by declining timber tax revenue and state mandates that the county does not receive enough funding from the state for. 

“The county has been mandated to do a lot of services and with very little or no funds and so that’s what’s really the hamstrung is just the way the finances work,” Loveall said. 

Editor’s note: On campus, the University Health Services provides free counseling for all students and an After-Hours Support and Crisis Line at 541-346-3227. Off campus, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available via phone or text at 988 or online at 988lifeline.org.

On Jan. 6, Eliza Kashinsky became the City Councilor for Ward 1, which includes parts of  Downtown Eugene and the West Eugene, Southwest Hills, West University, Friendly, Chambers Westside, Churchill and Jefferson Westside neighborhoods. 

Kashinsky is the only new member on the Eugene City Council this year. She replaces City Councilor Emily Semple, who opted not to run for reelection after serving two terms. Kashinsky ran unopposed in the November general election after winning outright in the May primary. She unsuccessfully ran for the Ward 1 seat in 2020, losing to Semple. 

Kashinsky has lived in Ward 1 for more than a decade. She currently works for Lane County in human resources as a compensation analyst. In the past, she has been a member of various committees and organizations, including the Eugene Budget Committee, Lane County Planning Commission and Eugene Active Transportation Committee. She is also a cofounder of the Walkable Eugene Citizens Advisory Network where she advocated for more affordable housing and more walkable neighborhoods.

Kashinsky said she was driven to run for city council by her passion for addressing issues in Eugene, like housing and homelessness and helping residents make their voices heard in local decision-making.

In her first three months in office, Kashinsky said that the city council’s agenda is largely set and includes addressing the city’s budget gap. 

Beyond immediate priorities, Kashinsky said she wants to see more affordable housing in Eugene and Downtown Eugene to become more of a robust community center.

Kashinsky’s top priorities include addressing Eugene’s housing shortage, homelessness, climate change and the city’s budget gap. 

Homelessness and housing 

Kashinsky said that the biggest challenges facing Ward 1 and Eugene are homelessness and the city’s housing shortage.

“I think … that (homelessness and Eugene’s housing shortage) are interconnected issues … (and) very impactful for people in Ward 1 and people across Eugene,” Kashinsky said. “I know lots of (people) who want to live here who (are) graduating from the university (or) grew up here who can’t find housing that they can afford … (it is) an immediate crisis that we need to (solve) and … a major contributor to homelessness in our community.”

Before she started working at Lane County in 2022, Kashinsky worked in the nonprofit sector, mostly recently for South Lane Mental Health. She said that her experience in the nonprofit sector and public sector make her a good fit for helping the city with homelessness.  

“I have an understanding of how a lot of these processes work, what’s realistic, what’s not realistic (and) what we actually need to do to get things done,” Kashinsky said.

Kashinsky offered broad solutions for homelessness in Eugene.“We really need to be using all of the tools in the toolbox,” Kashinsky said. “That includes things like looking at, ‘What are the barriers to get any more houses into Eugene?’ Some of those are barriers that the city puts in place surrounding things like zoning code and processes … we’ve made a lot of progress on (zoning) in the past few years … but continuing that work, I think it’s also looking at workforce … finding folks to physically build the houses.”

In the long term, Kashinsky said the city needs systemic change to address homelessness effectively.

“[As] someone who is systems thinker, [when] I think about how do we create and maintain systems that are going to support us … in the long term. I think that in order to ensure that we’re not in the same place 10 years from now, we really do need to have some systematic change,” she said.

Kashinsky, though, acknowledged that such change will take time to show results.

She also stressed the need to address homelessness in the short term.  

“At the same time, we need to be looking at, ‘How do we handle immediate short-term impacts?’” Kashinsky said. “[This is] a crisis right now. This is going to take time and we can’t wait 10 years to have the full solutions in place in order to start addressing the immediate impacts.” 

Eugene’s budget gap 

Kashinsky said she believes that structural problems with the city’s property taxes, caused by changes to Oregon’s property system in the 1990s that limit how much property taxes can increase every year, are the primary cause of the city’s current budget gap.

Kashinsky served on the revenue committee that helped develop the fire safety fee that the city council is poised to vote on later this month. The proposed fee aims to raise $10 million to close a $8 million general fund budget gap. Reflecting on the options the committee considered to address the city’s budget gap, she said the fire safety fee is the most practical solution to solving the gap. 

“I have a pretty good understanding of what the options were (and) the challenges of the different options,” she said. “This was the most solid. This is the one that I think would work the best, and so I would support it, especially given that [if the fire safety fee doesn’t pass] (we would need to) make some very deep substantial cuts to services that people care deeply about in our community.” 

Climate change

As the city confronts budgetary challenges, Kashinsky said she will look at solutions to climate change that don’t have a big price tag.

“I think a lot of it (will be) doing analysis to (see) what gives the biggest impact with the lowest price tag and following through with those items as well looking at where specific things accomplish multiple goals at once,” she said.

Community engagement 

Kashinsky said she plans to engage with her constituents in various ways.

“I think a lot of it is really spending time in the community having these conversations on a more ad hoc basis and trying to put yourself in other folks shoes … having conversations in the community both about specific issues that are coming up but also about, ‘What are the struggles that people are facing?’ (and) ‘What are the things that they find important?’” Kashinsky said.

On Jan. 6, longtime University of Oregon instructor and architect Kaarin Knudson became Mayor of Eugene.

Knudson replaces Lucy Vinis, who opted not to run for reelection after serving two terms. Knudson, who Vinis endorsed, ran unopposed in the November election after winning outright in the May primary.

Knudson said that she is honored to be the mayor of Eugene.

“I am very proud and it’s an honor to be elected as the next mayor of Eugene,” Knudson said. “I’m grateful to the voters for the strength of their support and it was really a pleasure to get to know so many people.”

“I’m looking forward to the ways in which we’re gonna work together to improve our community,” Knudson added.

Knudson is an Alaska native who ran cross country and track and field in the 1990s at UO. She was an All-American in the 800m and the indoor mile in track. She said that one of the most important lessons that sports taught her is being consistent. 

“The most important thing (I learned) is consistency, holding that vision and working towards a shared goal,” Knudson said.

Housing and homelessness 

One of Knudson’s top priorities is addressing Eugene’s housing shortage and homelessness. She said that Eugene’s current housing crisis is the “product of there being not nearly enough housing that people can afford.” 

Knudson helped found local housing advocacy group Better Housing Together in 2017 to “increase housing affordability, diversity and supply in Lane County.” She said that the city has a unique role to play in increasing the supply of housing through different strategies and partnerships. 

“Increasing the percentage of housing that we are delivering in our community, increasing the affordability and diversity and supply of housing in our community is something I’ve been working on for several years,” Knudson said. “The city has a unique role to play in supporting that outcome so we will be looking for partnerships and strategies that can be effective and productive.”

Knudson said connecting housing nonprofits and advocacy groups with the private sector could help increase the supply of housing in Eugene.

“A unique opportunity that we have now is related to connecting our nonprofit service community and advocacy community with the private sector and people who are working every day on the development of housing solutions,” Knudson said. “That’s a really important part of us meeting the housing crisis is actually building those partnerships and relationships and increasing the supply of housing that we have locally.”

Knudson said that Eugene’s state-enabled multi-unit property tax exemption program is an area that she wants to expand to increase the supply of housing.

“The multi-unit property tax exemption is one tool that we have and I would like us to look at how we can use that more effectively because while it gets a lot of attention, it has not been used that much,” Knudson said. “In comparison to maybe even the depression, it has not been a particularly frequently utilized tool. If you look in (Eugene’s) downtown, you can still count the projects that have received the (multi-unit tax exemption) on your hand.”

Knudson said that she believes that Eugene can achieve functional zero homelessness in the future, where homelessness will be “rare, brief and non-recurring.” 

“The potential for our community to reach functional zero in terms of our homelessness population … speaks to a whole host of partnerships between our city, county, nonprofit community, business community and neighborhoods,” Knudson said. “I think it is a very achievable goal especially when approached in working with a shared regional objective.”

Eugene’s budget gap

Knudson said she anticipates that the beginning of her term will also include working on the city’s budget. 

“I think also the beginning of 2025 is likely to include following up on any of the work that needs to be completed from 2024,” Knudson said. “That will include planning for our emergency services (and) planning for the budget that the city council will be adopting and making sure that we’re on stable footing.”

On the proposed fire safety fee ordinance that aims to close a $8 million budget gap, Knudson said she doesn’t see a way to maintain city services that Eugene residents expect without implementing it or something similar. 

“I have listened to the analysis from the community advisory team that worked on that process and I’ve seen the presentations that describe all of the cuts that (city departments) [have] already made,” Knudson said. “I don’t see a path towards balancing our budget and maintaining the levels of service that the community has asked for without implementing a strategy like this.”

In the long term, Knudson said that she hopes the city council can resolve the city’s budget problems.

“We will resolve our budget as required,” Knudson said. “I would hope that in the medium or longer term, we can dig in and look at what sort of shifts we might need to make so that we don’t have to spend so much time dealing with the same problem every few years.”

Success will be the result of collaboration

Knudson said that everything the city will accomplish over her time as mayor will be the result of partnerships.

“Everything that we accomplish in these coming years will be the outcome of partnership and connecting various areas of expertise to be able to give ourselves clear goals that have measurable outcomes,” Knudson said. 

On Jan. 6, Lucy Vinis left office after serving eight years as Eugene’s mayor. 

Vinis opted not to run for reelection. She was replaced by longtime University of Oregon instructor and architect Kaarin Knudson, who she endorsed. 

Vinis said her favorite accomplishment as mayor was creating the Eugene Youth Advisory Council in 2020 for high school students to “learn more about the city government and weigh in on issues that concern them.”

Vinis said her work over eight years as mayor includes major accomplishments in homelessness, housing, public safety, transportation and climate. 

“We passed the transportation system plan (and) the (Community Safety Payroll Tax). We have invested in a range of solutions to homelessness, including coordinating with the county for a permanent Shelter Navigation Center (and) our own Safe Sleep sites that we set up to help people get into a better setting off the street to transition into housing,” Vinis said. “We’ve invested in zoning changes to enable us to get on top of our housing needs. We’ve adopted a Climate Action Plan 2.0. We’ve passed renter protections to help people stabilize in their housing.”

Navigating challenges during a pandemic

During the coronavirus pandemic, Vinis said that the city did “double duty” by continuing to move Eugene forward amidst the global pandemic. 

“We did double duty [during COVID]. We adopted our Climate Action Plan in 2020 in the middle of COVID. We completed a brand new city park along the Riverfront District during COVID in time for the Oregon 2022 World Athletics Championships,” Vinis said. “We did all of the work that we were going to do anyway on road infrastructure, refurbishing parks, swimming pools and developing a new Riverfront District … (while) also (addressing) challenges of COVID.”

Homelessness was the toughest challenge

Vinis said the toughest challenge that the city faced when she was mayor was addressing homelessness. In Eugene, Vinis said that homelessness is a housing problem. 

“The fact is that we live in a community (where) there’s a huge gap between the wages and the cost of living,” Vinis said. 

Vinis said the city has made significant progress in addressing homelessness. 

When she first came into office in 2017, Vinis said the city had 200 shelter beds and one person working part-time for the city on homelessness. Now, she said that the city has more than 1,000 beds, a sophisticated homeless services team that works across different city departments, a permanent Shelter Navigation Center in collaboration with Lane County and several Safe Sleep sites throughout the city. 

“I think the city has been extraordinarily innovative and successful in developing alternative sheltering programs,” Vinis said. “Our Safe Sleep sites … (have been) very successful.”

“I think we’re a leader in the state and often a leader in the nation in terms of the kinds of models that we’ve developed here,” Vinis added. 

However, despite the city’s efforts to address homelessness over her tenure, Vinis acknowledged it remains an escalating issue in Eugene.

“We’ve done an enormous amount of work and yet we have not as a county, state or nation actually been able to stem the flow,” Vinis said. “Even though we’re serving more people, better than ever before, there are more people falling into homelessness (in Eugene) than ever before.”

In Eugene, Vinis said that homelessness is “kind of too great and beyond the city’s capacity to address.”

Earlier in her tenure, Vinis said she was hopeful that Eugene would be on the path to better address homelessness, but the pandemic made it harder.

“I was guardedly optimistic in 2018 and 2019 that we might be on the pathway to having a more robust program that would address (homelessness), (but) the pandemic just made that even harder,” Vinis said.

Vinis’ approach to her work as mayor

Reflecting on her approach to her work as mayor, Vinis said she prioritized mutual respect and understanding, even in moments of disagreement.  

“I have always approached the work by just assuming that your colleagues are trying to do their best work for the community,” Vinis said. “If you start from that place, even if you disagree with them, you’re more inclined to listen to them carefully and be respectful of their ideas and opinions.”

Learning from setbacks: Eugene’s natural gas ban

In July 2023, the Eugene City Council repealed an ordinance banning natural gas hookups in new low-rise residential construction that the council approved five months earlier. The now repealed ordinance sought to reduce greenhouse emissions and improve air quality. The council decided to repeal the ordinance and step back because of a successful legal challenge to a similar ban in Berkley, California, Vinis said.

Reflecting on the now repealed ordinance, Vinis said there is wisdom in knowing when to step back and change direction.

“When you’re in city government, you make choices based on your priorities and your urgent needs and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” Vinis said. “There’s wisdom [being in] elected office and recognizing it’s not going to work and you don’t want to continue pushing it. You need to step back and try a different strategy.”

Vinis said the city council’s decision to repeal the ordinance allowed for a stronger focus on community engagement around decarbonization efforts.

“The positive part about that is that when we did step back we were able to turn (more of) our focus on community engagement,’” Vinis said. “[We had] our staff meet with different communities, business sectors and members of the community to talk about, ‘How do we decarbonize? What does that actually look like in order to meet our climate goal?’”

Black Lives Matter protests 

In the summer of 2020, as the Black Lives Matter protests drew thousands of protestors and sparked riots in Eugene, Vinis found herself confronting a city in turmoil.

“I was reelected a week before George Floyd was murdered and our city was torn by nightly demonstrations. I remember reaching out to young Black leaders in weekly meetings that summer asking what it would take for us to turn the corner from demonstrations to change on the ground,” Vinis said in an exit interview with the Eugene City Club. “We turned that corner by convening a searching, painful, and often angry Ad Hoc Committee on police policies to scrutinize and recommend changes to better and more fairly serve our Black, Indigenous, and people of color community.”

Vinis’ legacy

Amid the challenges of the past eight years: a global pandemic, racial justice protests, and devastating wildfires, Vinis said that she is proud that she was able to help the city navigate through all of the turmoil. 

“My greatest legacy is that I helped this city navigate all of (the) turmoil. We still continued to move forward on the important work that needed to happen,” Vinis said. “We didn’t lose our way. We didn’t lose our vision. We didn’t fall apart with disagreement over the next path forward. The city council continued to function well (and) the city government continued to function well.”

The Eugene City Council is weighing whether to implement a fire safety fee that aims to raise $10 million to close a general fund budget gap. 

On Nov. 18, the council held a public hearing on the proposed ordinance. In a nearly full-room meeting, the proposed ordinance drew opposition from nearly all in attendance, including firefighters and the Eugene Chamber of Commerce.

Tiffany Edwards, the chamber’s vice president of policy and community development, said that the chamber has concerns that the city council is not being transparent about the purpose of the fire safety fee.

“It’s not the amount … it’s more about … the lack of transparency about what it is actually funding,” Edwards said in an interview with The Daily Emerald. “They’re calling it a fire protection fee, [but] the funds that are actually needed for the city are not within fire. They need $8 million to fill other budget holes.”

Eugene resident Dan Patch said he is concerned about the city council’s attempt to pass the fee without going to residents first for a vote. 

“We recently voted on the [Lane] County courthouse and we voted it down,” Patch said at the public hearing. “You [the city] didn’t want that to happen. So now your way is to eliminate us so we don’t get to vote. We have a right to vote on things and you’re denying that.”

If the city council passes the fee, the city estimates it would cost landowners or tenants $10 per month for the median single-family home and $38 for the median commercial property. Those who occupy developed property within Eugene’s city limits, like a home or building, who pay stormwater fees would be responsible for paying the fire safety fee starting in July 2025.

Under the proposal, the city would reallocate $8 million of the nearly $40 million Eugene-Springfield Fire receives each year from the city’s general fund for fire and emergency medical services in Eugene by replacing it with $10 million in projected revenue from the fee. Currently, the general fund accounts for roughly 67% of the more than $59 million that Eugene allocates to the department each year. An additional $2 million would be provided to the department for expanding fire services from the fee.

Eugene-Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven said that additional funding would allow his Eugene-based crews to have one smaller fire truck capable of responding to wildfires as well as fires and medical emergencies available. On peak service days during wildfire season, he said that the funds would be used to have two more of the smaller trucks available.

Kris Siewert is the President of the Lane Professional Firefighters Association, which represents firefighters in the Eugene-Springfield Fire Department. He said that additional squads that the fire safety fee would provide would do little to enhance the department’s service levels in Eugene.

“We have three engines that rank among the busiest in the country,” Siewert said at the Nov. 18 public hearing. “A two-person squad does little to reduce demand or response times.”

Eugene Chief Financial Officer Twylla Miller said that structural problems with the city’s property taxes, caused by changes to Oregon’s property system in the 1990s, which limit how much property taxes can increase every year, have led to the city’s current budget gap. She said that the problems have only worsened with inflation in recent years. 

Currently, the city council is still weighing the proposal and will likely not vote on it until January. Originally, the city council was poised to vote on the fire safety fee in December, but in a Nov. 20 work session councilors voted five to three to get more information from city staff about the city’s current financial condition before voting on it. They could still vote on the fee on Dec. 11 when the city council is scheduled to hold a work session to discuss the new information, but that’s unlikely, Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis said. 

“It’s conceivable that a councilor could step up and just put a motion for it and try to push it through, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen,” Vinis said. 

If the fire safety fee doesn’t pass, the city says it will need to enact $8 million in budget cuts. But exactly where those budget cuts will be isn’t exactly clear yet, Miller and City Councilor Jennifer Yeh said. 

If the fee doesn’t pass, Yeh said that the city council will face hard decisions about what they will need to cut. 

“Cutting millions of dollars from our budget is not going to feel the same as cuts that we’ve had in the past. These cuts will be felt,” Yeh said. “People will notice and that’s concerning because we’re done cutting the easy stuff and now we’re cutting the hard stuff, the stuff that is helping folks every day, services that people rely on.” 

However, other city councilors see the proposed fire safety fee differently than Yeh. City Councilor Mike Clark said that the proposed fee is a “bait and switch” that will shift currently allocated fire general fund dollars to fill a city budget gap.

“My problem with this is that it feels like a bait and switch and the reason is because we’re bringing in $10 million and spending it just on fire, but we’re taking $8 million of general fund money currently paying for fire out to go and spend on other things,” said City Councilor Mike Clark at the Nov. 20 work session. “And I think that’s part where we are going to risk losing community trust.”

Clark said that as a result of losing community trust over the proposal, the city council risks voters not renewing the Community Safety Payroll Tax in the future.

“I think the consequences could be failure of the public safety levy in a year and half [and] losing $23 million … to pay for police and public safety,” Clark said at the work session.