City Council - Special Meeting

Thank you.

Good evening everyone and welcome to the August 24th, 2026 City Council special meeting. Thank you for joining us in this hybrid meeting format today. For special meetings 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. Thank you again for joining us. And I now call the August 24th, 2026 special meeting of the Eugene City Council to order. And I'm going to turn it right over to City Manager Haruyama to introduce our first topic, which is a special meeting and a presentation of Initiative Petition 2006-1 to the City Council.

All right. Well, thank you, Mayor, very much. As a reminder, a perspective initiative petition was filed with the City Recorder's Office in February regarding an ordinance to establish a licensure of large retailers to finance a clean energy fund. The petition was successful and is qualified for the November 3rd, 2026 general election. And today's work session is being held as directed by Eugene Code 2.980. And council must be presented with a petition and options no later than 20 days after the city recorder certifies a completed petition. So following me will be our city recorder to give a very brief overview of this issue. And then we'll turn it right back to you, Mayor.

Thank you, City Manager. I will share my screen. We will get started.

Right as the city manager outline, this is the presentation of initiative petition 2026 dash 1. Quick timeline. We started this process in February when the petition was filed. The signature gathering began in April, and they had a turn-in deadline of no later than July 27th. They did turn their signature sheets in before that deadline, and after the county reviewed the signatures and validated that they did have enough valid signatures, To meet the requirement, I certified the petition on the 5th of August, and that's how we are here for this special meeting. Real quick, I won't read you all of the language, but I do have this slide available if council has questions and needs to look at the language again. No later than 20 days, these options are to be presented to council. There are four options outlined in your code. The first one is to adopt the ordinance proposed by initiative petition. The second option is specific to referendum petitions. So it wouldn't be applicable to this scenario. The third option is to vote either the urge adoption or defeat of the initiative measure. The fourth is to order a submission of alternative measures or measure or measure to be voted on at the same time as the election for the initiative measure. Based on the timing of the completion date for this initiative petition, Council has the option to either urge adoption or defeat today or to take no action. And then I will stop there and just kick it back over to Mayor to facilitate the conversation and any questions.

Thank you City Recorder and City Manager for that presentation. And I now open the floor for Council discussion. And counselors, I'm having a hard time seeing the top of our zoom screen in my remote meeting format. I have counselor yay and counselor Keating at the top of the screen. Do either of you have your hands raised?

We do.

Counselor yay.

Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Katie, for taking the time to do this at the last minute. I appreciate it. Personally, I think we don't need to take any action. I think counselors are free to have an opinion and to express that into the community as they see fit as individuals. But as a council collectively, I think that we shouldn't take a position one way or the other. I'm curious to see what other folks think, but that's where I am at this point. Thanks.

Councillor Keating.

Thanks, Mayor. Good to see everyone. To be perfectly transparent, I was the second person who signed this initiative right behind former Mayor Kitty Peercy. I'm super supportive of this initiative. And I strongly feel that this initiative is smart public policy. It exempts grocery sales. It exempts construction. It's pro-labor. It's pro-climate action. And I am excited it's on the November ballot. But like Counselor Yeh, articulated i think this body best serves our constituents by letting the voters decide in november so rather than debate um and and re-litigate where we all kind of fall on on the spectrum i would like to see uh council tonight take no action um and and that's my two cents and i don't suspect i'll need a second round but um I'd love, like Councillor Yee said, to see where others land on this. And I just want to thank everyone for taking time out of their summer to get together and have this conversation tonight. Thanks.

Councillor Groves.

Mayor, I believe Councillor Clark was ahead of me.

Sorry, the two of you, your lineup has swapped. But Councillor Clark, please go ahead, and then Councillor Groves.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councillor. I have more questions than we have time for with this particular measure, but my first is for the city's attorney. I'm understanding that this is being put forward to the ballot as an ordinance. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

So any amendments, changes, adjustments to this is something council can do if it were to pass for example following your standard charter described ordinance amendment process yes correct all right have we done any work i guess i'm asking katie here but i don't really know who i'm asking actually on staff maybe city manager Have we done any kind of analysis of what this will cost the city or how it will be implemented if it passes?

I can answer that. The only thing that we've done is write a ballot title for this and then defend the ballot title in a challenge and then the standard elections process work that Katie has done. But we haven't done any work regarding the substance of this. Because by the time it was submitted, we wrote the ballot title as as soon as we wrote that ballot title, it became an election measure and we will not be doing any work regarding it substantively.

And were this to pass this is this is written as something that the city would implement. Am I correct in assuming that. Correct whether we have the budget to do it or not. Okay. I'll ask a lot more questions later, I assume, but thank you.

Councillor Groves.

Thank you, Mayor. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can. Thank you.

I want to say that I agree with Councillors Yee and Keating that we really shouldn't take a position on this. Whether we do that as individual councillors, I mean, I think that's up to each councillor. I know I have, like Councillor Clark, a lot of questions about cost and how we're going to oversee this and manage it. But that's really separate from what we're here to talk about tonight. But at the same time, I don't think we should be taking a position on it. I don't think we should be doing anything that disrupts the process either. So that's where I stand. And I'm interested in hearing the rest of our colleagues' thoughts. Thank you.

Any other comments or discussion from counselors this evening? This afternoon? And I will say thank you for those remarks. And for our time this evening. And with that, and with this presentation, it concludes our agenda for this special meeting. And I now close the August 24 2026 City Council special meeting and we are adjourned. See you all again soon.

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