City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

good afternoon and welcome to the june 10th 2026 city council work session thank you for joining us in this hybrid meeting format today 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 phone numbers listed for this meeting on the public webcast and meetings materials page of the city of eugene website thank you again for joining us and I now call the June 10th, 2026 work session of the Eugene City Council to order. And today we're beginning with an executive session. So the Eugene City Council will now meet in executive session held pursuant to 192.6602I review and evaluation of employment related performance. The 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 decision may be made in executive session. At the end of executive session, we will return to open session and welcome the audience back into the public work session.

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I will now turn to city attorney's office and to staff as we introduce our second topic, which is a work session on municipal judge evaluation.

Thank you, Mayor. I will turn it back over to Becky DeWitt.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is Becky DeWitt. I'm the Assistant ERC Director here at the City of Eugene. Today's work session is an opportunity for Council to complete the annual evaluation of Presiding Municipal Court Judge Gill. Judge Gill was hired into this role in August of 2019, and City Code outlines the cadence and process for evaluating his performance and salary annually. Today is an opportunity for you to provide feedback to Judge Gill, and following that, you will have an opportunity to discuss compensation options that were provided to you.

Thank you. I'll now open the floor for council discussion. I have Councillor Groves in the queue.

Thank you, Mayor, and I want to start by saying thank you, Becky, for putting this all together for us. It's very helpful. Judge, see there?

Lost him. We will pause for one moment.

The thunderstorm.

Thank you, staff. Welcome back, Judge. We know we're dealing with...

Sorry about that.

Certainly out of your control. As we left off, Councillor Groves was about to frame a question to you.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. And if you have a metal rod, do not hold it in the air back there. Judge... I very much appreciate the work you and your staff do, especially with the restorative justice programs and the fact that you're helping to declutter some of our court space at the circuit court level and keep that more available for more serious issues that can only be handled there. I did want to talk to you a little bit about becoming a court of record. Maybe you could start with a short explanation for the public of why we went through those steps.

Yes, absolutely. So this all begins with House Bill 2460. It was passed in 2025 in the regular session. And that bill was designed to address appeals from courts not of record. Those are municipal courts and justice courts who have not become a court of record. And at the time, there were maybe eight to 10 of those courts that were actually courts of record in the state of Oregon. In this new bill that was passed into law, there was a short section at the beginning of the municipal court portion that allowed a defendant in a municipal court, not of record, to transfer their case to the circuit court. So they would enter a not guilty plea and their case would automatically be sent to the circuit court as if it had been filed in the circuit court originally and prosecuted at the circuit court level in a court of record. And then the appellate rights for a court of record would attach and it would move forward there. The concept is good and it really wouldn't have anything to do with us as a municipal court of record, except for the fact that there is and was a very high potential that there would be a mass transfer process, meaning that defendants, a lot of defendants would want to transfer their cases. And that's not wrong for the defendant to want to do. But at the same time, the resources that the county has, and that the city has would not be able to meet the burden that such a transfer process would present. So, to be more clear. The lane county district district attorney's office would not be able to handle that load of folks coming in from the municipal system and prosecute the cases that they were already prosecuting on the county level. Same thing with the indigent defense firm. It would put a big strain on those folks, but really, it would also put a huge strain on the circuit court and the availability of judges and just courtrooms there. There were two new positions created for the Lane County Circuit Court bench in the first place to address the then-existing workload that the number of judges couldn't meet. They could meet, but it was under really high stress and really being overworked in doing that. Adding these municipal cases that are being transferred only would add to that file, and there just wasn't room for it. And then the real bottom line is the city prosecutor's office. If they were to continue to prosecute the cases because the district attorney's office wouldn't be able to prosecute those cases, they would, if they had to meet the burden, then be dividing their office between two courts, the municipal court for those folks that are still in municipal court, and then the folks who are transferring over to Lane County Circuit Court. And that was just absolutely untenable. There's no way That the city prosecutor's office would be able to do that. They'd have 2 different court systems, 2 different schedules. Trials will go at different paces and they just simply simply put. We just didn't have the resources to do that. Ultimately what would happen is the city. Would have to there would have to be decision on how many of these cases continue to be prosecuted in the, the, the idea that the city would might be in a position to where it wouldn't be able to prosecute violations of its own code. Meaning these cases wouldn't be able to be prosecuted both either in circuit court or in municipal court. That was just that was just. that all of a sudden just didn't become an option. And so the clear answer out of several options was to become a court of record, to obviate the need to worry about transfers in the first place, keep everybody in the municipal court so the city can still maintain its fair and just process for misdemeanors filed in the city, and the city can still prosecute the violations of its own code. I hope that was descriptive enough, Councillor. I'm sorry if I was mincing words.

No, you covered it. Thank you, Judge Gill. I appreciate that. In the process of making the transition, were there any things you didn't anticipate or things that you learned and you and your staff learned from the process?

Well, there were a lot of things that staff learned in the process and judges and administrative too, but I'm going to give you my cheat answer on that. The surprise was how fast the court was able to pivot court administration, making sure that we become a court of record very quickly, getting the equipment necessary, getting the software necessary, and then the trainings necessary. in to make sure that staff were ready and prepared to be a court of record and then working with the judges to transition to becoming saying a lot more words on the docket to make sure everything gets into the record that's going to be required to make sure you have a transparent process. Everybody did it smoothly. There were a couple of speed bumps along the way just in getting used to it, but they did a fantastic job in moving, and they did it so quickly. So I admire their discipline in rolling up their sleeves very much. So that's my cheat answer on what surprised me.

Thank you, Judge Gill, and thank you, Mayor.

Councillor Yee. Yeah, thank you. So Judge Gill, I want to thank you for your truly exceptional work that you've been doing. Your thoughtful leadership centered around both the needs of individuals but also our broader community really continues to strengthen the foundations of our municipal court. Your clear communication has been especially valuable over the years, but it has been very evident throughout this transition to a court of record, helping to ensure the process was very understandable and that counselors were kept up to date. I'm also deeply appreciative of your commitment to our community court program and your coordination with Lane County's deflection program was really encouraging to read in your evaluation how that program has been successful and even getting national recognition, but most importantly, how the program is reaching our goals of improving our long-term public safety and connecting people with the services that we know that they need. And reading your evaluation was really a good reminder of all the things the court has been through recently. As both a city councilor and a resident of Eugene, I really appreciate the values that I see you bringing to your job, values of fairness and accountability, clarity, transparency, collaboration, and compassion. Along with this commitment to continually improve our municipal court and your willingness to adapt to what our community needs. Jean is really fortunate to have you as a municipal judge. I wish there were more opportunities like this to highlight the excellent work not only you're doing but your entire staff is doing. So I just want to thank you for being here today to have an opportunity to daylight that good work that's happening in our city that often is just working fine and so it goes a little under the radar. Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor. And I just want to throw a quick statistic that I learned today. The Lane County Deflection Program and working with all of its law enforcement partners at EPD, SPD, LCSO, and all the other municipal law enforcement and the Oregon State Police. The statistic is now that up to 64% of law enforcement officers are now offering deflection as a potential option instead of arrest and incarceration for these low level quality of life type crimes that involve substance abuse and other or behavioral health issues. That's a huge boon to our community in conjunction with all of the other programs and efforts that the city and the county are doing. So I just want to throw that statistic out there because it really, really sat me down for a second. Thank you.

Thank you, Judge. Any other comments from Council? Councillor Keating.

Thank you, Mayor. Judge, great to see you. You are so communicative, committed to fairness and transparency and justice, and I echo my colleagues' my colleagues' observations when it comes to applauding your service and your passion for restorative justice and your commitment to our community. I have kind of a complicated question, Judge. I think you know where I'm going to go there. When you're on a plane or you're meeting someone who learns that you are the municipal court justice, you're our judge here in Eugene. What's the one thing you share to someone who's meeting you for the first time perhaps that you're the most proud of our municipal court here in Eugene?

So to re-say the question, say it back to you, if I'm on the plane and someone actually finds out what I do, and it's my chance to talk about our court, what is it that I say? What is it that I'm most proud of? Is that what you're asking, Counselor? Thank you. And then I have a follow-up that's a little more complicated, but yeah. So I had this chance just last night. My wife and I met some people when we were out on a walk and they're from New Jersey and they're familiar with New York. And so we just through small talk started to talk about some of the things that we see. And that includes the fact that Eugene has a lot of big city problems, even though it's not itself a really big city by national standards. But we found real commonality in a lot of stuff that we, in what we see. And that's the unhoused, that's the addicted, that's the folks who are suffering trauma, both current and in past. And then the confluence of all of those plus other additional items. And so what I'm the most proud of is the fact that we approach these issues that aren't going away in the way that we do as a court. And that's from staff, the front counter staff, front line staff, staff in the courtroom, staff who are out of court, folks that take care of everything that needs to take care of to make sure that everybody's treated fairly, everybody's treated with equity and everybody has as best experience as you can when you're involved with the criminal justice system and how we do that. And if at that point, their eyes haven't glazed over because these folks that we talked to last night, their eyes hadn't glazed over, yet. I'll go into some of the things that we do. I'll start with the fact that we have trials. We have criminal trials. And I think we do it the right way. We have an experienced bench, all the way to the programs that the administrator and staff put together and what they do and the hard things they have to handle every day. But showing up every day and continuing to do it It's a really big deal. So that's, if I had someone who had the window seat on an airplane and they couldn't get out, that's what I would be, that's what I would be answering with them. And as you all probably know, I could go on and on about a lot of the things that we do, but that would be probably the most, the biggest fact I would want to enunciate to somebody.

Your passion and your perspective are so greatly appreciated, Judge. You referenced in your self-evaluation the challenges that come with defendants who might not have the capacity to proceed or to stand trial. And you said that local resources are simply inadequate to effectively work with criminal defendants who are unable to stay on trial because they suffer from an incapacitating qualifying mental disorder. What can be done, especially since we have three members of our IGR team here, Councilors Evans and Groves and Yeh, what can be done to better prepare the court to face those challenges when it comes time to criminal, when it comes time to ensuring justice for criminal defendants who might not be able to stand trial because of their, because of a mental or a qualifying mental disorder.

The big answer, Counselor Keating, to that question is The community safety payroll tax, the CSPT, has been integral and the nucleus of our ability to work in a context to where resources are scarce to address these problems. It allows our court staff to work with a lot of these folks and with our system partners. We work with our system partners every single day. Lane County Behavioral Health, in terms of their 370 folks and their fit team, and the doctor that's part of the fit team now, Dr. Berry, They're doing very good things. They're doing very good work with us. The city is doing very good work in its different programs and approaches. The county is doing wonderful things in its different programs. But the CSPT, the Community Safety Payroll Tax, has been the number one piece that allows the court to continue to do what it has to do in order to work in this area of limited resources and be able to work with its system partners. So if I could say what the one thing would be, if there was just one, it would make sure that that stays if we can possibly do it. Because if it goes away, our whole ability to approach what we see in the city of Eugene, and especially with folks who don't have the capacity to proceed and may be able to be restored, it would be to its huge detriment.

If I could follow up, Judge, are there any local or state reforms that you're recommending in regard to the rules, timelines regarding defendants who are being restored in communities when they are charged or outside of Oregon State Hospital?

There's a lot there, Counselor Keating. I appreciate that. And I smile only because there's a lot of history there. And there isn't anything that I'm advocating to use the word advocating, for really right now, simply the court is just trying to make sure that we adhere as best as possible to the new timelines that have been introduced by legislation, work with the limitations that are put on the Oregon State Hospital by the federal bench, and then be able to pay attention to and work with the defendants that are coming through the court. I'd say three or four years ago or five or six years ago as the state was working through SB 24 and HB 295 and before 4002, I would have a lot of opinions and a lot of folks heard what my opinions were in terms of timeline and limitations, etc., But right now, we are where we are, and I don't think that there's going to be a chance to advocate for one particular thing for a little while. And right now, it's just making sure that we keep things moving straightforward. I appreciate the question very much.

Judge, I appreciate, I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but pretty clearly, we appreciate you very much. Thank you.

Councillor Zelenka.

Yeah, really hard to follow Counselor Yeh's comments. They were so comprehensive with all the great things that you're doing and so well said. Thank you for saying all that stuff, Jennifer. So ditto to everything that Jennifer said. I think they were spot on. Suffice to say, I think you're doing a really great job as judge. And the court runs really well. And I hope you stay here a long time. Our loss would be someone else's gain, that's for sure. So thank you, Judge. Thank you, Councillor. I'm here. Oh, and sorry for being late. I got caught up at work. And also, your answer is the reason I never tell anybody what I do when I get on a plane.

Councillor Kuczynski.

Yes, thank you and thank you, Judge Gill. I will be brief because many of my colleagues have said the things that I would have said as well, but just wanted to express my appreciation for your work and your willingness to connect and make sure that we as council understand what's going on with the court and with what the needs are and all of your good work and all the good work of your team. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you, Judge Gill. I'm going to turn to the Council President for a motion in about 30 seconds or maybe 15. I just want to add my appreciation to you as a colleague. Your communication around the transition to the Court of Record was excellent. That's a major event for our community, and it's great to hear that the staff and the Municipal Court has handled that. so well, thank you for sharing that work and describing its importance and thank you also for the work that you have done to ensure that our municipal court is a reflection of our community just as our municipal laws are a reflection of our community and to ensure the fairness of that process. It's very appreciated and I appreciate that this session has allowed us to spend a little bit of time sharing that with the public as well today. Now turn to the Council President to put a motion forward.

Thank you, Mayor. And before I do that, I want to echo also my appreciation for your steady leadership, your compassion, commitment to equity and fairness. Those are all qualities that are essential and you are superb at demonstrating through our court system. And we and all of our staff at the court are just so lucky to have you. And so with that, I move to recognize Judge Gill's positive contribution to the city.

Second. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, I'll now take a vote for this motion. All in favor, please raise your hand. vote from council and the motion passes with a vote of eight to zero. Thank you all. Thank you, Judge Gill, for this checkpoint. And that concludes our second agenda item today. And thank you to thunderstorms for cooperating just a little bit longer.

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you, Judge. I'll now turn to our city attorney to introduce our third topic, which is a work session on community wildfire protection plan and an update.

And city manager Jenny is on her way. She should be here any moment. So if you give just one or two minutes, she will be here.

Thank you. Sorry for the delay. Just really quickly, this is a work session that will provide an overview of the Eugene Springfield Community Wildfire Protection Draft Plan. This is the first wildfire protection draft plan in the metro area. This is for informational purposes only. There's no action required today. And we welcome council's comments and feedback. And I'll turn it over to staff. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Travis Worthington, Deputy Chief of Committee Risk Reduction and Resilience for Eugene Springfield Fire. Today I've brought with me our wildfire preparedness manager, Hannah Schaefer, to present to you our community wildfire protection plan, which is an annex to the Lane County plan. So we have our technology good. We'll turn it over to Hannah, and she can get started with the presentation. Thank you.

All right, thank you, council, for your time today. As Chief Worthington mentioned, I will be presenting an update on the community wildfire protection plan. I'll be going through the CWPP development process and the purpose of CWPP's stakeholder and engagement process. I'll be going through what came out of the wildfire risk assessment. I'll be reviewing our action plan and action items and then following up with our plan implementation and maintenance for the next five years. I want to begin by talking about what a CWPP is. They began with the passage of the Federal Healthy Forest Restoration Act in 2003. These established a locally driven framework to reduce wildfire risk and protect lives and strengthen overall community resilience. So communities that develop a CWPP and adopt one are then eligible for federal funds. and state funds. Each plan must identify wildfire hazards in the local context. AREAS OF CONCERN AND OUTLINE STRATEGIES TO REDUCE FIRE RISK IN COORDINATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES. THE EXACT CONTENTS AND BOUNDARIES OF THE PLAN ARE HIGHLY LOCALIZED. SO THIS PLAN IS NONREGULATORY. IT DOES NOT MANDATE ANYTHING. IT DOESN'T CREATE ANY NEW LAWS, ORDINANCES OR LAND USED REGULATIONS. IT'S SIMPLY a planning tool for us to use. We can only take the risk assessment and use it to guide other decisions. And to adopt a CWPP, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act requires that three decision makers mutually agree to the final contents of the plan. So local government officials, fire departments, and the Oregon Department of Forestry. This plan was developed by a grant from the Oregon State Fire Marshal, the Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Grant. We were awarded $150,000 to hire a consultant to develop the contents of the plan, which was done throughout the last 19 months. And then this was developed in alignment with federal and state wildfire planning frameworks. So using the guidance of Oregon Department of Forestry frameworks, it complements and supports existing emergency management plans. So the natural hazard mitigation plan with the county Springfield and Eugene's plans and other wildfire mitigation plans in the region. And this will act as an annex to Lane County's CWPP. They are currently in the process of updating their plan, and they hope to have that finalized and adopted by the end of August of this year. This plan established six goals. So goal one is to protect lives, property, and critical infrastructure. Goal two is to enhance wildfire resilience through community engagement and education. Goal three is to reduce hazardous fuels and maintain resilient landscapes. Goal four is to improve emergency response and recovery capabilities. Goal five is to strengthen collaboration across jurisdictions, and goal six is to support policy alignment and regulatory integration. And we used those six goals to help develop the contents of the plan. And I want to talk about stakeholder and our community engagement process. So to develop the plan, we received active participation from cities of Springfield and Eugene, specifically the emergency management departments and the parks and rec departments. We partnered with Willamalane Parks and Recreation District, the Oregon Department of Forestry, Lane County Emergency Management, Oregon State Fire Marshal, E-Web and Springfield Utility Board, ELRAPA, and the US Forest Service and BLM. And then getting into community engagement, we started out with a public survey that ran from December throughout January of this year. We didn't get as many responses as we had initially hoped. We ended up out with, I think, around 85 total responses there. That was shared out to our neighborhood associations through a newsletter. This was shared out through other newsletters as well, shared internally to Eugene and Springfield departments, and shared on Eugene Springfield Fire's social media accounts, which has over 30,000 followers. The survey was also shared to anyone who had a defensible space assessment done and included in any reporting. Those survey results did find that more than 60% of respondents feel unprepared for a wildfire event in the area. I'm going to focus specifically on the Eugene side of things just for time's sake and not get into Springfield, but respondents in the Eugene area identified that the South Hills, the Southwest Hills, and the Laurel Hill Valley areas are facing the greatest wildfire risk in Eugene. and their priority concerns are evacuation safety and damage to their properties. They showed strong interest in getting assistance with vegetation management around their homes and any financial and technical support. And then continuing on with community engagement, we've been active in community events since this past April where we've been able to table at the Lane County Farmer's Market since they first opened the Lane County Home and Garden Show. We've attended a South Eugene Neighbors event and we were able to attend the new Springfield Farmer's Market last Sunday. Here we are trying to spread general wildfire preparedness and also talk about the CWPP, let them know that it's open for public comment. We've had some meetings with some South Eugene neighbors leaders and the Hendricks Park and Laurel Hill Valley neighborhoods to discuss the plan and how to stay involved. And as part of Wildfire Awareness Month in May, we partnered with Northwest Youth Corps and offered two free woody debris drop sites, one in Eugene and one in Springfield. We were able to send 400 mailers out to some of the higher risk areas identified in this plan. And I was able to interact with a lot of residents there to discuss wildfire preparedness in the CWPP. We recently concluded a public comment period which was also shared out to our plan stakeholders and mentioned earlier in this presentation and to Eugene Springfield Fire's social media accounts. The majority of those comments we received were concerns about a new development proposal in the Laurel Hill Valley and citing how the CWPP's risk maps should be used to guide the permitting of that development. We have some upcoming events throughout June and July and the rest of the summer. We hope to meet with neighborhood association groups and leaders to attend any of their meetings and be included in any of their newsletters going out to present information from this plan and hear any feedback that they have. Some of these are already scheduled throughout June and July. We'll be attending various Firewise events in the area. We will be attending Lane County Fair throughout that entire week. And we'll continue with defensible space assessment interactions and talking about the plan for people to be aware. And then getting into the risk assessment, the purpose of the risk assessment is to establish a data-informed foundation and planning tool for understanding what hazards exist in our area. We used a layered approach of multiple data sets to create one comprehensive map to show where mitigation will be the most effective. And so I just listed a couple of these data sets that we used. Not gonna get too technical, but some of those are the community wildfire risk reduction zones. This incorporates burn probability, fire intensity, and proximity to homes and structures. Another one is the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System. This is a publicly available data layer, and this uses, it used to model potential fire behavior and spread under a different range of weather and fuel conditions, so we get to see multiple scenarios under various conditions. And then finally, land fire, which uses vegetation and fuel characteristics. And then this is the community wildfire risk reduction zone map. And so we can see here in the legend that the urban core is generally low risk. And then when you kind of get to the outskirts of both Eugene and Springfield into the WUI areas, we see some of the greater vulnerabilities and it's rated moderate to high wildfire risk in those areas. And we also wanted to include a risk rating for the entire metro area, so this kind of zooms out to the greater Lane County area and does a vulnerability assessment. These areas were informed by fire personnel, planning staff, land managers, and emergency management with the cities. And then getting into some specific Eugene areas, I wanted to highlight the Southwest Eugene Hills, which was rated moderate to high. Here we see dense vegetation and complex terrain. There's a mix of conifer and hardwood fuels in the area. That combined with the population density and some access limitations and how homes are built on the steep and wooded hillsides, creates a more higher fire risk. A lot of these homes have limited defensible space around them. Given the right conditions, if there's east driven winds, it can really accelerate the fire spread uphill. There's also a lot of ecologically significant natural areas and parks and trail systems in these areas as well that we want to protect. So some mitigation priorities for that area would be shaded fuel breaks along the key ridge lines, access roads, and in the perimeter of residential neighborhoods. We would partner up and try to do some multi-jurisdictional fuel reduction because our Eugene Springfield Fire's jurisdictional boundaries there kind of intermixed with some other agencies and then promoting defensible space and structure hardening around some of those homes in the area. We'd also want to educate on evacuation and start evaluating some street connectivity with any new development. And then we have the Hendricks Park in Laurel Hill Valley. This is similar to the Southeast Eugene Hills. We see dense tree canopy, steep slopes, proximity of residential structures next to heavy fuels. Hendricks Park is the oldest park in Eugene. It contains a lot of mature forest vegetation that presents hazards when it's September, October, and the fuels have been dried out for so long. So the hillside homes with limited defensible space and tree cover over structures with narrow access roads creates that heightened risk. Mitigation priorities would look similar as before, doing some selective forest thinning, reducing those ladder fuels, brush removal, creating more fuel breaks along the park's perimeter and residential zones, doing some hazard tree assessments, and again, promoting defensible space, evacuation education, and doing some more street assessments. And then the southeast Eugene Hills, also steep terrain, dense vegetation, a big concentration of homes in the wildland urban interface zone. There's residential zones with mature trees and thick understories and again more minimal defensible space in the area. And similar mitigation priorities would be increased fuel breaks along public land boundaries, ridgelines, access routes, partnering up with agencies to tackle some fuels reduction projects, promoting defensible space and evacuation education to residents in the area. And I wanted to go over the action plan and some action items that we have. And so with each of the goals that I mentioned earlier, we tried to have a list of action items to go along with each goal. And those are rated from high to low. So I'm just gonna touch on some of the higher action items that we have identified in the plan. Goal one, protect lives, property, and critical infrastructure. We're really looking to do more assessments specifically on critical infrastructure corridors. The plan offers a general overview, but we'd like to get more detailed assessments there to figure out what mitigation actions we can take. Goal two, some of these action items involve public outreach campaigns. One specific one we're starting to work on now is offering more materials in Spanish and creating more localized materials. We currently use a lot of our outreach with state and federal resources, so trying to create our own localized data materials would be an action item. And then goal three, some fuels reduction work, so implementing fuels reduction fuels reduction projects, and then creating those fuel breaks that I mentioned earlier along park roads. Goal four, improving emergency response and recovery capabilities. We're looking to create updated evacuation route maps and some more signage for those wild and urban interface areas. And then pre-designate and equip temporary evacuation centers with defensible space and backup power. I know there's been a lot of discussion around resiliency centers with the city and county as people are evacuating to the area from the upper McKenzie. This would be a good opportunity to incorporate some of that work. And goal five, strengthen collaboration. This would just be working on action items that we've identified with other agencies and try to partner up to apply for grants together. Goal six, support policy alignment and regulatory integration. This is a goal that would take a little bit longer to achieve. The Oregon State Fire Marshal has a model code available for defensible space and home hardening for local jurisdictions to adopt. We hope to engage local stakeholders and do a review process to see what recommendations we would make for adopting some of that code for Eugene and Springfield, specifically for new development and then looking at some of the wildland urban interface areas and seeing if there's any defensible space codes we could possibly implement to make those areas safer. And then something earlier than that that we want to start implementing by the end of 2027 is to implement a standardized process to distribute defensible space and home hardening guidance to applicable residential permit applicants. So anyone that's applying for any residential construction or development would receive materials, and there's no enforcement there. It's all educational for them. And then finally, just reviewing our plan going forward. So this CWPP will be a five-year plan. It'll be active for five years and then we'll update it in the next five. Eugene Springfield Fire will serve as the lead agency for maintaining the plan. We will continue with our ongoing outreach and education efforts. And when the plan is adopted, we'll create an advisory committee made up of some of the same stakeholders I mentioned earlier. That group will be responsible for evaluating progress on the action items, providing a venue for collaboration on some grants and projects, partnering up with community outreach, fuels treatment projects, identifying new or treated risks and making sure that the plan stays current. and then identifying any mapping updates. So that is all I have for the overview. I know it's a lot of information at once, so we welcome any comments, questions, feedbacks that you have. Thank you.

Thank you very much, we really appreciate a comprehensive update and this is important information and I think all of us are feeling a sense that this will become even more important and feel even more current as we move into the hotter months of this summer. I have Councillor Kuczynski, Councillor Evans, Councillor Keating, Councillor Groves in the queue.

Yes, thank you, and thank you for the presentation and all of your work on this very, very important topic. I feel like one of my questions, you kind of hinted at the answer when you were talking about some of the goals for the future, but I wanted to kind of make sure I wasn't making assumptions. How much of our work regarding defensible space and hardening and things like that is an encouragement level of work versus how much of that is things that people are required to do?

Yeah, so Eugene does not have any code currently that requires anybody to maintain a certain level of defensible space around their home and property. We do have a vegetation complaint process with code compliance in the fire marshal's office. If someone makes a complaint, we can require some action be taken for under certain conditions. But other than that, there is no code that currently exists. So it's all educational when I do an assessment. I don't enforce any of that. It's all educational and for their awareness.

Okay. And I know that the vegetation code, like the level of vegetation that would require code enforcement is probably greater than what we would want to see somewhere where there's a high fire risk because it's designed for a different situation. Does that seem right?

Yes. Okay. have criteria, i.e. it's over a half an acre lot, it's within a certain feet of a critical infrastructure or a structure, and it's within like wildfire safety months. So we're looking at that during the wildfire season. That's when we have more code enforcement opportunities when we can't just educate.

Okay. And then, so it sounds like a lot of the mitigation strategies are voluntary at this point. And so that's something that we should probably look at some. What are some of the funding sources for this work? I know that there's been a mix of grants and I know that there's been some of the Particularly surrounding the resiliency hubs where there's been some funding pieces. So I was just wondering like sort of what does the funding picture look like?

Work yeah, so my position is funded by the community safety payroll tax And then from there on for any projects that we do we have one right now with the Oregon State Fire Marshal the same grant that made this plan possible. We have another award from them, the Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Grant. So that is available for homeowners to, for us to hire a contractor to do fuels reduction work on their properties or do any other projects in the higher risk areas. And yeah, there's community wildfire defense grants at the federal level that we don't have currently, but usually it's coming from the state fire marshal. The most reoccurring grants that are made available.

Okay, so some community safety payroll tax, some state, possibly potential for federal, but not right now. Correct. Okay, thank you. And thank you again for your presentation and the work. Councillor Evans.

Thank you, Mayor. My question is more towards, did you guys do any specific analysis on some of the flatlands? We're talking about West Eugene, Northwest Eugene. I'll note that last year we had a brush fire in West Eugene that could have turned into something pretty ugly if we hadn't gotten to it as quickly as we did. Um, and maybe I see chief Cavens in the, in the audience and maybe he can speak to this as well. But, um, there was a potential that our neighborhood over in Bethel could have gone up in flames pretty fast. And I'm concerned about us having a more comprehensive plan and strategy that covers the most exposed areas, like the Southwest Hills and the South Hills, but also looking at potentials in the flatlands where wildfire can spread pretty quickly.

Yeah, so the fire you referred to last year started in another jurisdiction. We do send resources out into those areas intentionally to protect our territory. And when it was encroaching on one of our protected rural fire districts that contracts with the city, Eugene Springfield Fire deployed an entire task force immediately and pretty much stopped the situation where it stood. But much of our planning, I'll let Hannah speak to the plan, is not isolated just to the hills. The goal of any of these projects is to keep wildfire out of the built community because your defensible space, vegetation to structure is relatively small. Structure to structure, you're closer to 50 feet. And so that's the goal is keep it out of the structures, keep it out of town. And we operate automatic aid agreements surrounding our area, not just to support our neighbors, but it's to keep fire out of our community.

Yeah, and I would just add that I did only focus on the higher risk areas of the plan just for time's sake of the presentation. But it does cover the entire area of Eugene Springfield. And so for those areas, it was rated, I think, mostly low. And that's just due to some of the vegetation and, like, proximity to homes and the terrain and slopes that it was rated the low risk. But it does cover all of that. And I will say there's no – it's always low. It's never zero. So there's not a zero percent chance that something would occur in that area.

I was going to add one point. Wildfire sites, especially in our flat areas and our more densely populated West Eugene neighborhoods, It's not uncommon to have a structure fire become more than one structure fire on the wrong day or even a rainy day. And so we're constantly focused on keeping resources in the regular house fire from becoming a. Councillor Keating.

Thank you, Mayor. I was just at a League of Cities conference in which we heard from the City of Sisters and they referenced the City of Ashland as being really creative in expanding the home hardening and defensible space knowledge throughout their communities. I pointed out that my in-laws, who live just a stone's throw from Spencer's Butte, are outside of the city limits. They are in county territory. They were thrilled to take advantage of the Firewise grants that were offered them to appropriately build that defensible space and that home hardening around their property. I am concerned about the municipal residents who might not have access to the same funding source who are just as at risk. They just happen to live on the other side of an imaginary line. Is there any opportunity or any potential for non-county residents, for these municipal residents who are living in just as, who are living in, whether it's the South Hills, Southwest Hills, who are living in spaces where there's a danger, but there's not access to the capital, to the grant dollars, because it's a county, because those dollars, as I understand it, are open and available to county residents. Is there a pathway for expanding those Firewise grants at the state level so our municipal residents who might live within a half mile or whatever distance determines that they're at risk, so our municipal residents could have access to the same level of funding as our county residents do to better prepare and harden their home appropriately?

Yeah, we are looking to start implementing a similar program. The issue with that right now is just it's limited to grant funding. And so I mentioned we have the community wildfire risk reduction grant funds available now. And so we're doing assessments and working to see where we can use those funds to do work on properties. But yeah, we have to think of a sustainable funding source for that. Firewise USA is a national organization And so sometimes if you're a Firewise community, they will have some funds available for that. And so that's something that we're continually working on. We recently did purchase a chipper with the community safety payroll tax funds. And so the idea with that is to provide neighborhoods a chance to partner up and have a chipper come out. And so if they do any work on their property and they have a lot of vegetation to dispose of, that can be quite costly and so we would provide that completely for free. And so we're starting to slowly get there and I will say this is a newer program and I hope by like a year from now we'll have more programs available for residents and we'll get the word out there.

Do you see any tension between renters and property owners? If a renter is pretty clearly pointing out that there's some issues on their property, if you've recognized or if you've come across this tension, how empowered are renters to point out dangers on their community and access said chipper, for example?

Yeah, I will say when I'm tabling at events, I do come across a lot of people who say, well, I rent, so I can't do anything about that. But I'm always there to say, if you let your landlord or property management company know that you're interested in having an assessment done and that funds may be available for the homeowner, we just need the homeowner or property owner's information. permission for us to go and do an assessment on the property and then once we have their information and contact information, if they're okay with it, they are eligible for us to go out and do whatever fuels reduction work is So yeah, we do encourage renters to try to work with their landlords and property management companies to see where that could exist. But we do need whoever the owner is, who we need to be talking to, to make sure everything's in place there.

We also have this scenario where we're seeing it becoming where the insurance companies are actually starting to ask, if you're in a wildfire area, have you had an assessment done? Did you comply with the recommendations of that assessment? And we're seeing that starting to be the trend going forward. So we want to be in a position to where we can provide those defensible space assessments and make really good, solid recommendations that are achievable, realistic goals, so that they can also benefit from any insurance decreases they can achieve.

Thanks. This council has banned fireworks well beyond just east of Agate or south of 18th. Citywide, we've banned the sale and use of fireworks. Yet we're still in an education phase around educating the public that they can't or shouldn't use fireworks. Should we consider shifting to an enforcement phase? And are there any gaps in what this city has done in regard to banning fireworks in the safety of our community?

Good question. I would say that the enforcement phase, I don't think we're there yet. I think we do need some more education with that. And also capacity is a concern, having the staff to be able to chase those down. EPD would be the ones that would have to do that. That's not charged to the fire department to enforce. And their capacity to be able to do that is probably going to be challenging at this juncture.

Councilor Groves.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I want to pick up on the insurance companies where you left off. Those are on my list. Is O-Chiefs or I-Chiefs doing anything to try to work with our insurance companies to help enforce this? They're the ones really that have the teeth, especially with the multibillion-dollar losses that they're suffering in Western states from wildfire.

Yes, the high chiefs especially are pushing this. They're doing a lot of education currently regarding that and pushing the wildfire. They're actually having a new conference just based on wildfire that's coming up directly. I think it's in Las Vegas. But they are front and center with the lead on this and legislation and support to get what we need to make landscape more resilient and cities more resilient as well.

Thank you. That's something that's always been on my mind. It just seems like there's been too little effort to try to push the insurance companies are having to pay for the losses. Is Youth Corps still involved with vegetation mitigation?

Yeah, we were able to partner up with Youth Corps four times this spring to do like five weeks worth of projects. So they've been very, very helpful throughout the process. Yeah, the crews have all been great. Good learning experiences for them to help build up the workforce in this area.

Thank you. Under the goal one, I notice we have protect lives, property, and critical infrastructure, which I think is good, but what happened to the environment? It's still in the mission statement on slide one, but that's an important piece as well. I know in past fires, well, this example wasn't wildland, but Gein Irrigation Fire, Fire stopped putting water on the fire at one point just because we had a lot of heat and good thermal column taking the products of incomplete combustion up into the atmosphere and out of the area. But they stopped putting water on the fire because it was starting to overrun our containment capabilities and getting into the sensitive wetlands. I really think environment should be in there if it's not too late to add that piece.

Yeah, thank you for your feedback, Counselor. We will make sure to add that in. I agree that's an important part, especially given all of Eugene's natural areas and spaces.

And it's important to our community as well to protect the environment. We just had a watershed bill that came up, and I know the department's done a lot of things, soy-based foam for Class A combustibles, things like that. I assume we're still using that. Very good. And then the last point I have is more of a point-specific location. Our Parks and Open Spaces Division of Public Works has been really involved with the Wild Irish Ridge area. And I know police are aware of it. Parks is aware of it. There's been some youth behavioral problems up there. youth getting together to drink beer, but they're building small fires in the middle of summer out into the tall grass. And I know that that's one of the areas that's always been of concern to fire where a South Hills conflagration could really take off. Is fire doing anything specific for that area?

Not for that area that I, at least I'm aware of. I know like Skinner Butte lot, we had closed off the parking lot to the summit lot to reduce similar activity that's occurring. I don't know if that's something that we could look into doing, but.

I'll reach out to Parks and Rec and discuss options that we can do, just like we did at Spencer Beach.

Craig Carnegie is very aware of the situation, has been extremely helpful in some of that work, including getting a Guardian camera trailer up there. right around the 4th of July because there's people show up there to light off fireworks as well. And it's not a real easy area to get into, but it's, you know, with the prevailing winds out of the south and west and that being kind of the leading edge of Eugene, it's just ripe with that southern exposure upslope aspect to really get something going in there. I certainly would appreciate as would the neighbors of that area. WITH SOME FIRE ATTENTION. I KNOW THERE'S BEEN PERIODIC UNITS DRIVING UP INTO THERE, BUT ANYWAY, I'M OUT OF TIME. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

COUNCILOR ZELENKA.

THANKS. I AGREE WITH RANDY ADDING ENVIRONMENT TO THAT CRITERIA WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA. I have a question about insurance as well. Maps and insurance. There was a statewide map which created quite a kerfuffle at the legislature and that printing the the maps were increasing insurance costs, which I found kind of ridiculous since thinking that the insurance companies hadn't already known all of this information. To me, it was just kind of ludicrous. But maps don't create that. Insurance companies already know this stuff. So my question is, are we seeing interactions with insurance companies or impacts on homeowners on their insurance costs that are in these higher risk areas?

Yes, and we're back to the map. I'll just back and reference that. So the wildfire hazard map that the state was trying to initiate encountered a lot of lawsuits and public outcry that this isn't fair. I served on the RAC committee for the rules and We went back and tried to do it a second time and could not get there. So Senate Bill 85 was passed, and that gives the localities the ability to define their own hazard map and their own wildfire hazard areas. So that's been very beneficial to us locally. So we're not seeing that insurance input yet locally, but we are seeing it in other parts of the state, particularly on the eastern side.

Since you were on that rack, did the insurance companies... They already had these maps. They already figured this out, right? I'm assuming that.

They knew. And I would just add, as a resident of the South Hills, buying a house at the same time that map was being deployed, I got a letter immediately threatening to cancel my insurance if I didn't cut the rhododendrons and the trees back, which was a spicy experience, but I appreciated how fast they were on it. It is a real, like, they are paying attention. My new insurance carrier, same thing. High risk zone. They sent a letter about pre-deploying their own fire crews in the event of a fire. You can opt in or opt out. Being active and engaging in this space for sure.

Yeah, I just wanted to point that out because we're not adding new information that the insurance companies already don't know. We're not causing any of this stuff. This is stuff that's widely known and they're taking action already. But your personal example, Chief, is a good one, the perception versus reality. Last year in the Laurel Hill Valley on Moon Mountain had a wildfire that took off, and it came down the hill right there. 100 feet or 200 feet from a group of homes. And it was quite scary. I remember standing on my property in Laurel Valley and Riverview and looking at the flames going, holy cow, if this got any worse, we'd all be evacuating. And so the psychological impact of that was pretty tremendous on folks. I mean, I still remember it vividly. The people who are right there really remember it. and the Neighborhood Association in Morehill Valley certainly does. I'm wondering about what we're doing to address some of the reality and the perception about risk areas. because everybody's starting to freak out about um wildfires and potential fires and especially in the south hills all the way from like from Franklin Boulevard all the way around the valley here

Yeah, we are starting to see a lot more awareness around it, which is great. That can also create a big sense of fear among residents that live in the area. And so the biggest thing is just spreading more education and awareness. And again, like doing the most we can by attending events, trying to interact with the neighborhoods. Anytime I'm doing an assessment, I ask them to please share this out with neighbors and We hope to do more like mailers and create some like signage and yards that say, like I had a defensible space assessment done. So people are driving by and they can see like, oh, I didn't know that that was an option. It's really the one-on-one interaction that I can like have with people that creates more awareness around their wildfire risk. But I'm really just asking neighborhoods and communities to be involved in with each other. I think that's the best way. If someone in your neighborhood knows a lot about fire and fire risk and emergency preparedness, please spread the word. I think that's the best course of action we can take right now as we continue to build up this program.

And I wasn't at the meeting, but the fire marshal met with the Laurel Valley folks. And when they described it as low to moderate risk, they were very surprised, apparently. Councilor-elect Jennifer Smith was there and she recounted that to me. So I think getting the information out and maybe helping calm people down a little bit would be very valuable The last question I had is about the Hendricks Park fire risk. You put up that slide. That is a valuable crown jewel of our parks, but it is large trees and old growth forests. And Chief, we've talked about this. I'm interested in the gates that were put up in terms of and the closure of those gates. That's one of very, very few egress Dave Kuntz, Access routes for that area should something happen in the rural valley, and then you can describe how that process of closing those gates and we did that with. Dave Kuntz, Skinner be park that makes a whole lot more sense, this is standard parks is different. Maybe just describe how that might work.

We went to parks and talked with the neighborhood there regarding those gates. There was an issue with the unhoused that were parking and creating fire potential to go up the hill on that road that connects those two gates. So it is open and they maintain it open. They use it to close it down when there is a threat or when they need to divert traffic or they feel like they need to do some work on those roads. So they're not closed all the time. The fire department and other emergency responders have keys to the gates so we can open those effectively. We've got that notated in our maps as well for evacuation maps. And we know what we need to do in the instance that we need to have them open. Again, we've been working with emergency management to update the evacuation maps through Genesis, which is a state program that the county uses. And we've made smaller zones. Those smaller zones help us to phase evacuation that we can control it and give enough capacity on the roadways for residents to leave when they need to leave.

well as far as my understanding is they've never been closed um and i hope that and and i hope they never are unless there's a really bad fire circumstance i certainly don't uh think they should be closed in reaction overreaction of some of the neighbors to unhoused people in the parking lots that was i think an inappropriate response i hope we never end up discriminating against uh homeless people by closing the park to everybody thanks

Thank you, staff, for this presentation today. I have two quick questions. One is, is Lane Alerts where community members should be signing up to receive information about wildfire risk and potential need to evacuate?

For evacuation and alerts, lanealerts.com is where they can sign up for those. And for other information, if you go to our website, On the fire marshal's office page, there's a wildfire page, so eugene-or.gov slash wildfire. That has some more wildfire-related information. There's also good resources on the Oregon State Fire Marshal's website as well.

Thank you. Very appreciated as we're discussing circumstances where people might need to know something immediately and follow good advice immediately. That's always important to share. My second very quick question is about your wildfire fuels drop sites as part of that community engagement plan. When does that happen and where did they happen?

Yeah, so given limited, unverified, or not verified, unregular, I guess, grant opportunities, it just kind of depends on what we have available. And so this year, that was provided by the Northwest Youth Corps. And so they had a trailer come out and then they helped people dispose of their debris and then they brought it and they used their chipper and they were able to distribute those chips to various community gardens around Eugene. And then we have some funds in the community wildfire risk reduction grant that we received that we have done some like dumpster days in the past where people can just drop their woody debris in those dumpsters and it's just parked there for a week or so and the whole neighborhood can use it. And so I hope to do something similar every May, which is Wildfire Awareness Month. So yeah, hopefully it'll become a more sustainable event in the future. But for now, it's just whenever there's free availability from Northwest Youth Corps and grant funding.

Thank you for adding that clarification. We have such an incredible history in terms of managing waste and connecting those dots and reusing materials that might otherwise end up not having a next life. And I do think that as we continue to move into the future, looking to model some of our fuels reduction work after some of the work that we've done with our leaf collection process for example is a good reference point and it's something that resonates in our community. Thank you again for this discussion, for sharing an update on this plan and we know that we will unfortunately continue to be talking a lot about wildfire but hope that this is a good resource for people. With that, this concludes our agenda for today, and I now close the June 10th, 2026 City Council Work Session. We are adjourned.