City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. to the April 8th, 2026 city council work session. Thank you for joining us today

in this hybrid meeting format. For work sessions like this one, there is no opportunity for public comment. And those wishing to access the meeting can do so by watching the live stream available on our website, the broadcast on Comcast channel 21 or by calling into one of the mobile phone, one of the phone numbers listed for this meeting on the public webcast and meetings materials page of the city of Eugene website. In case of a medical emergency, an automated external defibrill and AED is located on the counter behind staff on the west side of this room. And in case of an emergency evacuation, emergency exits are through the double doors located at the back of the room and the doors to the patio can also be used as needed. Thank you all again for joining us and I now call the April 8th, 2026 work session of the Eugene City Council to order. City Council will now meet in executive session held pursuant to OS 192.6602F exempt public records. Representatives of the news media and designated staff shall be allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience are asked to leave the meeting. Representatives of the news media are specifically directed not to record or report on any of the deliberations during the executive session except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decisions may be made in executive session. At the end of the executive session, we will return to open session and welcome the audience back into the public work session. Counselors, please log out of this public work session and log back in using the executive session Zoom invitation. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.

Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. You're heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Oh, Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Yeah. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat.

Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat.

Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Oh, hey.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Oh,

heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Oh, heat, heat.

I will now turn to the city manager to introduce our second topic which is a work session on long range financial planning and economic development.

Thank you mayor. Um, this presentation is part of our long range financial planning series and Ann, if you could advance the slide and focuses on economic development. Just a quick reminder of our timeline for these conversations through the spring and fall. Uh we started with a conversation on the benchmarking that came out of the technical advisory group work on March 11th. Um and in May we'll have two work sessions that cover a variety of financial topics in and into June as a way to uh work our way towards the June 26 city council workshop where we'll be looking at financial policies and other areas of focus in real depth. So, just a reminder that um we had the technical advisory group process in the fall and that was a really intensive process with a group of technical experts and finance or organizational leadership, labor, uh nonprofits coming together to take a deep dive to look at the city's budget in really three areas uh in which they generated recommendations. operational efficiencies and expenditures, new revenues and economic development. And the area of opportunity that they really really jumped out at the end of the report was in economic development. Some of the information that was shared in the March 11th benchmarking presentation underscored how much Eugene has been underperforming in this area for the past 30 years um in both number of jobs generated and the average wage of jobs. This is an opportunity to talk about what it might look like to actually in invest to a level that we're a strong regional partner in this work and that

we can work together to try and change the trajectory of job creation in this in this region and for Eugene specifically. And of course it aligns with our strategic plan. So given our short amount of time, I'm going to pass it over to an to rest of the presentation.

Thank you. You can hear me. Okay. I'm an Field. I'm the economic development manager in the city's community development division and um I'm going to provide a quick summary of what we do now for economic development. But before I do that, I want to quickly review some of the data that came from the TAGs efforts. uh on March 11th, very recently, you had a work session that focused on the comparable cities that the tag the analysis of comparable cities and that work benchmarked some key metrics in Eugene to five other cities. Salem and Bend in Oregon, Boise, Idaho, Fort Collins, Colorado, and Spokane, Washington. They're not exactly comparable to Eugene, but the comparison provides some interesting insights. Um, one of the f one of the things the comparison analysis looked at was employment growth. This chart shows annual employment growth since 1991. Eugene is the orange line at the very bottom. We've been outpaced by all five cities and we've really been outpaced by Boise and Bund. Fewer jobs means less economic opportunity for Eugeneians. Um, less economic opportunity shows up in household income. This chart shows median household income, which is the midpoint of incomes. Half the households have more income, half the households have less. Eugene is the orange bars at the bottom. The bars on the far left show median household income for all households. And to the right, it's broken out by age. It's particularly interesting to look at how households in their prime earning years compare. Households between the ages of 25 and 64 years old have lower incomes in Eugene than in the comparison cities. Those are the households that make up the great majority of our workforce. These households get most of their income from employment earnings. Eugene's households

have jobs that pay less than their peers in these other cities. And one reason we have lower incomes is because there's fewer economic opportunities. It's harder to move up to a better job. Uh the lower earnings translates into less tax revenue for the city, less tax revenue for the schools and the county. Lower earnings means higher demand for social services, making it harder for h as households struggle to make ends meet. And households without good jobs are less likely to have health insurance. Increasing demand for charity medical services. The lack of economic opportunity affects all kinds of services. So now I'll talk about what the city does for economic development. But first, the basics. What is economic development? Its overarching goal is to improve the economic well-being for community members. An essential component of economic growth is growing jobs and income for members of the community. And the community development division is charged with economic development. The prosperity team in the community development division focuses on these areas on the slide with the majority of our time spent on supporting existing businesses. Uh the team also focuses on downtown improvements which is primarily funded by urban renewal. That's a really important part of our work. But today I'm focusing on the work that applies citywide. We do this work with the city's business liaison, the business loans analyst, and me. The city's business liaison is the first point of contact for businesses. He works with businesses to understand their issues and then identifies what part of the city can work to resolve them. He's talked to over 700 businesses in the last 5 years. It's time consuming work, but there's no shortcut to replace time spent listening to and working with people. It shows business owners in town that the city listens to them and works

with them. We have intentionally focused our resources in this area because it's essential to work with employers already in the community. Recruitment expansion is really hard if existing businesses are unhappy. The other staff person who's 100% focused on citywide economic development is our business loans analyst. We've had a business loan program for over 40 years providing gap financing to businesses across the community. been a resource for our food and beverage manufacturing industry, bicycle manufacturing, recycling, and many others. Our team also does some work on recruitment. This is a flyer that we've used uh to showcase some of our region's advantages. Recruitment generally works includes working with local individuals to start new businesses as well as firms possibly looking to locate here. For recruitment, we primarily react to opportunities. We do very little proactive work just due to limited capacity. The last thing I want to touch on on what we're doing now for economic development is our work on partnerships. The economic development team regularly coordinates with our counterparts at different agencies and organizations. So we have so we all have a shared understanding and can support each other. Um this work also includes working at the state to advocate for our priorities in legislative sessions. Our staff is part of the team that has successfully advocated for funding for the state for infrastructure in the Clear Lake area which will in the long term help us address some of our challenges on lack of shovel ready supply. I'm going to hand it over to Will now who will walk you through some of our staffing challenges and a proposed solution.

Okay, thank you. I'm Will Dowy. I'm the community development director. Uh, with that context that Ann provided, I'm going to focus on the work we've done, listening to the information highlighted through council's long-range financial planning and by the efforts of the TAG, assessing that in light of council's strategic plan and putting together a responsive plan for you to consider. As you know, economic development is a community partnership venture. We are not solely responsible for it. Yet, we are uniquely positioned to coordinate between other entities and various city operations, operate programs and tools that are locally controlled, support efforts and initiatives that come out of the work of our community partners, and meet businesses where they are. When you review the city's current staffing structure that Anne described for our ability to advance citywide economic development, we stack up like this. Very critically, we have our executive leadership engaged and able to part with leaders at other public and private organizations. At the next level, you'll find an and me. Our involvement is coordinating with these other partners, aligning our staff work plans, and enabling our teams counselors. As I know you are aware, neither Ann nor myself is fully dedicated to the business growth aspect of economic development and also manages our urban renewal programs and development projects. And I also oversee our work in affordable housing and homeless services. The two positions that we have that are fully dedicated to business growth are the two that Ann describes. One of these is funded by the revolving loan program and the other um the business leaison is our only general funded position. There's a noticeable gap in the structure right in the middle. It's project management and program development and broader implementation. Having the leadership engagement, inter agency coordination and technical capacity is the clear priority and has enabled us to support the community as much as we have. However, if the city is going to be part of a broad solution to set higher goals and outperform our current trajectory, then this middle slot is the place for investing in more capacity.

We agree with the key steps outlined by the tag, beginning with participating in a regional economic development strategy, followed by implementation aimed at retaining, enhancing, and attracting business. After mapping out needs and talking to internal and external partners, the most important tasks fall into four positions. Three of which would need general funds and a fourth that could be self-funded. Business development manager would be the position to help us achieve our economic growth. This would be the key staff for the city in the economic development strate in the economic development strategy described by the tag and would lead the development and execution of a resulting action plan. A business development analyst would be the critical support staff for this work because every great idea that you have or that I would have, every great idea depends on a uh would depend on a whole bunch of follow-through and this would be the position for that because housing featured prominently in the tags work and shows up as a top concern for local businesses that are trying to grow. The third position is a housing production analyst who helps turn the ideas of planning's urban growth strategies into tools that are available for the community. This would include creating and implementing programs along the lines of the moderate income housing incentive and commercial center housing incentive, the moderate income revolving loan or the micro village housing. Last on the list is a relaunch of the development liaison position within our building permit services or BPS division. A strong economy depends on clarity and efficiency in the permit process and we have a team in place in BPS that has embraced this vision. The development liaison can help individual projects navigate the various codes and requirements of 21st century Oregon and also support system improvements to make our processes run more smoothly. No action is needed on council on this position because it would be self-funded, but we included it here because it's part of an overall package. A year ago, the city manager's proposed

budget included cutting a vacant economic development position. It was a strategy that I helped prepare and part of a budget you ultimately adopted. So let's talk about what's changed between then and now and why we'd propose this kind of investment in a time of financial constraint. Because of the long range financial planning, these positions now make sense as part of a larger strategy. We have a clear understanding of why they are needed, what they need to accomplish, how they can connect to the work of our partners, how we can measure success, and how the investment pays off in increased tax revenue and community prosperity. Costs for this program would be $800,000 per year in new general fund. This includes funds for materials and supplies to support these positions, including funds for the studies, reports, and similar contracts that would be necessary for this kind of implementation. As mentioned earlier, the development liaison would be self-unded by BPS and would not require any general funds. This is what we see as the opportunity, an aggressive yet achievable goal. If we hit the target economic growth goals consistent with those recommended by the TAG report, the city would receive $10 million per year in new taxes by year 10. This target would result in well over a 1,000% return on the proposed investment. Even if we only achieved a fraction of that success, a quarter or a fifth of that target, the general fund increase would far exceed the investment. It's also important to talk about measures of success. The work of the TAG shown a spotlight on a number of ways in which Eugene is failing to keep keep pace with peer cities. These measures can be a practical way for us to track progress towards a healthier local economy. I'm not going to go through each item that's here on the screen, but the big picture is that we have some ways both in tax base and broader impact to quantify our efforts in pursuit of these goals. Before closing, let me illustrate this by talking about an exciting initiative that is exactly the kind of economic development catalyst to help achieve

these growth this growth in jobs, household income, and tax base. The southern Wamtt Valley Innovation Corridor is an initiative to build a cooperative shared economy in our region capitalizing on our many regional strengths and flagship institutions. With engaged public and private partners, it has the opportunity to retain and amplify the next generation of talent and innovation coming out of our community and educational institutions and attract new investment to our region. Already, our city manager is engaged in high level regional conversations. Ann and I are talking with partners like the University of Oregon and onward Eugene. But unless it's time to start talking to individual businesses about loans or particular challenges, we lack the ability to develop and implement an action plan. Any number of other initiatives repeat the same pattern. Whether it's helping to implement the vision for the Clear Lake Industrial Area, supporting the Bethl neighborhood plan that you'll be discussing in a couple of weeks, taking advantage of the billion-dollar investment in the night campus, the list goes on. We are only built to engage at the high level coordination or the very granular level. There's a significant opportunity to fill this gap in the middle and plug into the regional work, being good, engaged partners and bringing value to the community. You've set us on a path towards long-range financial sustainability. The TAG helped call attention to this community need and we've responded to this with our best plan to resource this work into the future. There's a motion in the packet and we're here for your questions. Thank you.

Thank you staff for that presentation. I have councelor Leech, Councelor Clark, and councelor Groves in the queue. Councelor Kosinsky, councelor, councelor Evans, and we are going to need to reset just to get through those five uh to a minute and a half for these first rounds and I'll entertain a motion to extend. I know some counselors cannot stay, but if we still have a quorum, we need to continue this conversation. Uh councelor Leech, thank you, mayor, and thank you um for the uh fast pace of your presentation. Um I want to start off with uh the our packet says um this is going to be funded with new general funds. What does that mean?

What that really means is it it's coming out of the existing general fund resources we have. So that's part of what we want to acknowledge. This is fairly unique, especially after coming out of a budget when we had substantial cuts. We don't typically come to you with this kind of an ask, but it's within the framing of what we've seen as the need in

Thank you. Um I feel a little bit like we're going out of order like we had one, two, and now we're on three and that we have a bunch more work sessions um and culminating like you say it in the packet in our council works shop in June. I kind of thought that the process would be in June have that um our financial conditions update the policies unfunded needs debt capacity priorities strategic plan and we'd have all that information which would then result in kind of an action plan that we can move forward with. I am supportive of these positions and this work. I think it's highly needed to be able to meet our goals. um I just am not I think ready to designate this level of funding without having that information um at hand first. So um that's just kind of where I'm sitting right now. But I I love this work. I I want to see us really being more actively engaged in saying, "Hey, we have this land this that's developable. We have goals in bringing in a business, really doing that recruitment like you're saying, like national recruitment. bring in the business that we want to see, bring in the jobs that we need. Um, do that planning. I just am not ready to vote on this piece today. So, thank you, Councelor Clark.

Thank you, Mayor Will and Anne. Phenomenal presentation. I think that was fantastic and it was very clear. I do have some concern about the fact that we're talking about spending more money at a time when we already know we're 2 to10 million in the hole starting next year. So, wow. This is this is where the prioritization meets the road. But at at the same time, I have to say it's my opinion that this is the only way for us to move forward in a healthy fashion. That's it. We have no hope, in my opinion, of getting ourselves off the road to bankruptcy unless we have a a very clear plan about how we will grow our local economy. So, sounds like a good first step. I'm in favor of starting, but I I want to have a lot more conversations about this in a in a similar way. One of one of the questions I would have for that would be we haven't gone through barriers that we might easily remove and that's one of the things I'd love to see a uh some more information on compared especially to the other five communities where do we have barriers that they do not so if either will or an would like to comment on that I'd love to hear at the moment

I'll weigh in I think uh the barriers would be identified in a regional strategic planning process us.

Thank you for that clarification. Very important doing the work to answer the questions. Um, Councelor Groves,

thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Will and Anne, for the presentation. Um, I'm I'm very eager to to keep moving this forward. A question I do have though in light of our budget constraints, any consideration been made in at least three of these positions being contracted out um through does some of this work? Is there a way that we can collaborate and maybe funding towards it that would have a lower number? I think the development liaison, which is something that I've talked about since I've been in office, I called it a shepherd for lack of a better term, but somebody who could help people through the process and you have one point of contact when you're having problems rather than bouncing back and forth between different people and getting different answers. And I hear that a lot. And that's that's something that I I think we do better if we have somebody that finds out the answers and gets the differences worked out before we applicant. But is is that something that you've considered?

It's something we've looked at. Part of the conversations we've had with with external partners about this has been what what makes sense to have within the city? There's a lot of these tasks and roles that we want to be we want to have performed within our region. like recruitment is something that really can be a big part of the the region, but the the city has this unique role of um you know, we get engaged in certain ways. And so having someone inside the city who is coordinating for example on something that's large and big like like Clear Lake um there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to go into that, lots of different and so having someone who is uh within the city organization to be doing that coordination is highly impactful. And so that's that is that's where this proposal is come from. not trying to take on all of the work, but trying to figure out what what makes sense to have embedded in the city so that we can be a better partner.

Thank you. I know you have to spend money to make money, and that's kind of what I'm seeing here. Still, um, concerns me of how we best utilize the limited resources we have, um, how we we really move this thing forward. And then my last comment would be I think even with the Clear Lake development area, I think we're still short of commercial and industrial lands and that's really what we need in order to to move our economy forward. Councelor Kashinsky.

Yes, thank you and thank you for the the work. Um uh I have many similar questions to as councelor Leech. Uh I do feel like this is a little bit out of order uh because while I see the value to the community as a whole for the economic development efforts, the connection to the budget and it's I think everybody agrees it's not a short-term uh fix and we're going to have some short-term need to have some more short-term conversations pretty soon as well. Um, and so would like be able to contextualize that within those conversations. And so wanting to see things like financial conditions report some of do some of that prioritization work before we sort of say let's let's make this commitment. Um, right now uh I I I think that's that's kind of where it is because I see the value in this work, but given the way a lot of our things are structured that I think feel like that return on investment is is a long way out and I don't want to accidentally end up in a position where we're having conversations about cutting things that not be having Councilors Lank and next in the queue and council just broadly one point to observe is that the work of the tag report was looking at an expected $10 million gap structurally in our budget. So one one sort of reference point to track to with when we would like to or if we would like to initiate development as a community um has to do with the fact that I think also former city manager Maderi had very clearly identified for us a particular uh challenge and uh threat to opportunity within this community that we are already facing. So, um I absolutely appreciate comments from council about what more we can learn and will continue

to learn and also um am very interested in seeing us do the policy work that we can do to invest in economic development and opportunity for our community. We have great data to indicate that we are behind in that work. Um councelor Zelena.

Yeah, I have an important meeting at 1:30. Um, economic development cycles. It comes in, vow, goes out. This is the third time in my time on the city. That's we're saying this is a long-term strategy, ineffective, if a nonsensical short-term revenue strategy and budget balancing strategy. It will take years to do this. And it'd be nice if growth paid for itself, but it usually does not. exception might be this development leaison. Is that position only funded if revenue shows up and is the back stop if it doesn't fund? So the 800,000 is actually more than that.

The development leaison position is um within funding that that is currently available in building permit services. So they have the ability to do that separate from the 800,000 currently. So I I share concerns. I I fear that we're going into reduced budgets. Budgets are zero sum and might be a good strategy to do that, but uh we need to clear about what we're cutting to make to do this. So it h that has to be really clear and it's not to me and I agree that it seems premature to our June workshop and our budget process that's got

I'm sorry I need to run. So council we have two counselors in the queue. Councelor Evans though we are out of time with you. We do not have a motion on the table. Um, thank you both. Remaining council, we are at time and so I want to check in with this body as to whether or not there's a motion to extend. Uh, I move to extend. Sorry. Move to extend the meeting by 10 minutes. Second.

All in favor? Yes. So, we are extending our meeting um by 10 more minutes. Councelor Yay, you're in the queue next. Yeah, thanks. Thank you guys for coming with this presentation. I'm wondering if you could So, I guess maybe I'm a little confused about where this money new general fund resources. Can you that coming from?

It it is coming from existing resources. So, this would be allocating budget the unbudgeted general fund towards this work. And um I just want to put out there that I realize that this is not typical and we wanted to see whether council was in the place to support this at this time. If council's not in that place, that's okay. there's time to have this conversation in more depth and to relate it to some of the other long-term financial planning work that we'll have before we get to opportunity if you chose to do it to add positions to a supplemental budget. But um we wanted to present the option as soon as we had figured out what we thought it would be knowing that this is a long-term opportunity right now regionally to actually work work towards this.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um I'm I'm not actually against doing something um not in the order we normally do. Uh especially if it's something important and it's certainly not the only time we've allocated budget money that wasn't during the session. So I don't I don't have a problem with that. Um I I do feel the general vibe of council is not in um maybe not today. Um, so it might I I have less concerns in that area. That seems very important. It seems like um timely uh oftentimes things that take a long time, it's easy to push them off u because you think you have a lot of time and I'd rather get going on some of these important projects and getting you the staff you need to really do them while we still have the opportunity, right? Um, but it sounds like maybe what would be helpful is a little more understanding about maybe we have this unbudgeted funding now, but what would that look like two or three years down the road? Um, it sounds like maybe some about that would be a little bit helpful. Um, but in general, I I think this makes sense and these positions are clearly defined, which is very helpful. Um, so yeah, I I I would be in favor of moving this forward once we get a majority of of councils comfortable with, you know, how it's going to be funded long term.

Councelor Kosinsky. And then I think we'll move towards closure of this meeting and discuss motion. Uh, I feel like one of the time pressures here is that I'm assuming we're going to get a supplemental budget packet in June and the the real question is do we include this in that supplemental budget? Um, would a supplemental budget discussion be a potential decision point or is that we need to decide now whether we want to include in the supplemental budget?

We don't need to decide now. Uh, I think it could be later in the long-term financial planning process. there is kind of a a cut off by which we put information into the supplemental budget, but I think uh Twila Miller, our finance director, as we go through that process, could highlight that as we're coming up to it. So, so there's the potential to bring this back later and then have that still make its way into the supplemental budget. Yes. Councelor Keading or Councelor Clark. I'm not seeing a small councelor clerk.

Sorry about that. I I think there may be I'm just guessing here because I'm not in the room, but I would guess there may be a majority to move forward to place this in the supplemental and I'd be in favor of us making such a motion.

I'm certainly willing to move forward with that conversation. Councelor Keading. Yeah, Mayor. I'm I'm a little less comfortable. Um I um if if we have some breathing room, I I would um I'd be more comfortable tableling it. I'd like to have a full complement of council here at the table. Uh I'd like to touch base with our incoming city manager. Um I I don't I don't see the need to take action today to put um this piece in the supplemental budget. Um, I get the uh the pitch. Um, a thousand plus percent ROI sounds awesome. Sounds too good to be true. Um, but I uh I think it'd be premature to hold a vote today uh without a full complement of council and the uh the affforementioned conversations that I think need to happen. Councelor Groves.

Thank you, Mayor. I I would support moving this ahead for a vote and just see where people are. councelor, given that we can come back to this staff, it's really helpful to have that information in the future and that we will learn more as we walk forward. Um, I am certainly willing to entertain a vote today. Okay. So, I'll now turn to the council president to put a motion forward to direct the city manager to begin implementation of on economic development from the tag and to add three related positions to the second further discuss.

Mayor, mayor, we can't hear the the the the motion being made. Can it be repeated? And I and I think I know why and I I wrote this to Cherish. I think others are having their microphone on while someone is speaking and it might be picking up the audio who's not the principal presenter. So we those of us online can't we're hearing every other word. Councelor Keing and I will repeat the motion move to direct the city manager to begin implementation of strategic recommendations on economic development from the tag and to add three related positions to the supplemental budget. Second.

Any further discussion from councel? That councelor Clark with your hand raised for further discussion. Just checking. Um then with that I will now take a vote for this motion. All in favor of the motion please raise your hand. One two three four. And all uh opposed. Uh, councelor Yay, councelor I'm sorry, councelor clerk, councelor Keading. All in favor, please raise your hands again. One, two, three. In favor also.

Thank you. Sorry, lots of hands going up and down and all opposed at this time. Um, and I will vote in the affirmative in favor. And so the motion passes with a vote of four to three. Thank you council for concluding our agenda today and to staff for an incredibly robust discussion. Um I will now close the April 8th, 2026 city council work session. And we are adjourned.