     
  |
|
|
|
A
New Agenda: City Council gets input from progressives while conservatives
push development.
The
Inaugurauction: Eugene contingency bound for protests at Capitol.
News
Briefs: Road War | Censorship
or Compassion? | Noise From Prague | Silva
Mumbles | Grammy Nod | Corrections/Clarifications
Happening
People: Robin Aronson, Young Women's Theatre Collective.
A
New Agenda
City Council gets input
from progressives
while conservatives push development.
By Ted
Taylor
Activists from local political and environmental groups, once considered the minority
voice in Eugene, are lobbying the mayor and City Council this week, claiming to be
"the voice of the people." On the progressive agenda are local campaign
finance reform, sustainable land-use policies, and reforming the city's legal representation.
Progressives were not able to recruit a strong challenger to unseat incumbent Mayor
Jim Torrey in 2000, but they were able to gain a majority on the council through
the election of Councilor Bonny Bettman in Ward 5 and the reelection of Betty Taylor
in Ward 2 -- both beating out conservative candidates.
"The newly elected City Council provides a unique opportunity to take some positive
steps toward resolving important difficulties facing the city and its citizens,"
says a statement from Eugene Priorities 2001 (EP 2001), a collaborative effort orchestrated
by Citizens for Public Accountability (CPA).
"Our candidates won the election and our point of view seems to have the majority
at this place and time," says Jan Wostmann of CPA, "and our priorities
should get attention."
Wostmann says the timing of the effort is geared to the mayor's state of the city
address this week, the swearing-in of new councilors, and the council goal-setting
session scheduled Jan. 27.
So far, 18 local groups have signed onto the agenda proposals, including CPA, Alliance
for Democracy, Audubon Society, Center for Alternative Transport, EarthSave, Eugene
Natural History Society, Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network, Friends of Eugene,
Independent Police Review Board, LandWatch Lane County, Native Forest Council, NW
Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, Save Our ecoSystems, Solar Information
Center, Trainsong Neighbors Association; and local chapters of the Sierra Club, NW
Ecobuilding Guild, and the Green Party.
Charlie Magee of CPA says the group started off with a dozen ideas for changes on
a broad range of topics, from "green taxes" to wetlands preservation to
transportation reform, but narrowed the list to three topics that were deemed more
doable, noting the limited jurisdiction of the City Council.
John Herberg of CPA says the group also chose ideas that would save money or be low-cost,
and have been implemented successfully elsewhere.
Topping the list is campaign finance reform, driven by the growth in campaign spending
and the failure of a statewide ballot measure in November.
"Contribution and expenditure levels for city councilors and the mayor have
been increasing at an alarming rate," reads EP 2001. "The 2000 primary
elections resulted in total contributions or spending of over $37,000 in one contested
council race and $33,000 in another. ... This level of C&Es is more than three
times that of the only contested race in 1998 (approximately $10,500) and six times
the amount of the only contested race in 1996 (approximately $5,000). The statement
also notes the $30,000 raised by Mayor Torrey with "no serious contender."
Fearing further erosion of democracy by money in politics, the group proposes improved
reporting and disclosure, voluntary spending limits, and conflict of interest restrictions
for significant contributors to campaigns. Similar reforms have been enacted in other
cites across the country, says Wostmann.
Second on the list is the general category of "land use," dealing with
traffic congestion, air and water pollution, dwindling farmland, parkland, open spaces,
strip malls, a decaying downtown, a lack of affordable housing and "declining
feasibility of public and alternative transportation."
Solutions proposed include increasing systems development charges (SDCs) to better
reflect the costs of new development, providing a system of incentives for low-income
home ownership, and creating a design review process in the Land Use Code.
Regarding SDCs, John Herberg of CPA says, "If growth paid for itself, we wouldn't
be facing deficits and higher taxes." Wostmann also voices concern for city
planning staff time that is paid by taxpayers, not developers. "Developers have
gotten in the habit of sending in plans that are woefully incomplete," says
Wostmann. "The developers of Moon Mountain got a year of staff time out of one
application fee."
Third on the list is "city legal representation" and deals with reforming
the city's longtime practice of contracting with a private law firm. The proposal
estimates the city "will save between $200,000 and $1 million annually by canceling
the legal services contract with Harrang Long et. al. and establishing an in-house
legal staff."
EP 2001 cites perceived and potential conflicts of interest that arise from Harrang
Long representing both the city and major private interests, such as Hyundai Semiconductor,
"which has had numerous legal conflicts with the city."
The new Charter Review Committee appointed by the council already has the city attorney
issue on its agenda, but the authors of EP 2001 say they feel strongly about the
issue and want to go on record in support of reform.
While the CPA and allied groups are pushing for more sustainability and accountability
in city government, conservative interests are lining up for more growth and recruiting
new industry to the city. Torrey has blamed environmental groups for impeding progress
in Eugene, and he is expected to call for a new push for jobs and development in
his state of the city address this week.
The mayor and his supporters are also backing the proposed West Eugene Parkway project
that will serve growth in the outskirts, and abolishing Eugene's ward system of City
Council representation. Progressive groups see a return to expensive citywide campaigning
as a step backward in campaign finance reform.
Back to Top
The
Inaugurauction
Eugene contingency bound
for protests at the Capitol.
By Aria
Seligmann
 |
|
Members of the
metropolitan police department restrain a protester during the IMF-World Bank protests
in D.C. last April.
. |
|
Calling Bush's presidency a "stolen election" and the inaugural ceremonies
the "inaugurauction," protesters nationwide are gearing up for massive
rallies on Jan. 20. Many are expected to descend on downtown Washington, D.C. with
a large rally backed by the Rainbow Coalition, National Organization of Women and
others, planned for 10 am in Dupont Circle and continuing on foot as far as it can
get along the inaugural parade route.
But in preparation, D.C. police have already worked with Bush administration transition
officials in planning tight security, including more bleacher seating along the parade
route, which requires advance free tickets, and more ticketed events in general.
In preparation for the event -- which has the ironic theme of "Celebrating America's
Spirit Together" -- 1,500 local police have been trained in crowd control, Secret
Service Agents have mapped out rooftops for perching, the U.S. Park Police have been
told where to park themselves on horseback and where to hover in helicopters, the
FBI has put members of its hostage-rescue team on alert, and "the Federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is readying bomb-sniffing dogs" reports The
Washington Post.
Throughout the country, protest organizers are planning sit-ins, rallies and demonstrations
via Internet websites. In Oregon, rallies are planned for Portland, Corvallis and
Eugene.
Some local activists are planning on attending the events in D.C. Cascadia Media
Collective producer Randy Shadowalker and three others in the group are going to
D.C. to film the event. For the past year, the organization has attended protests
including the WTO, the convention in L.A., and others to document what Shadowalker
feels is a "defining trend of our times."
Protests are occurring more frequently over different topics. "Various subjects
are overlapping with the common thread of acknowledging that things are drastically
wrong and something should be done," says Shadowalker.
After documenting so many protests, Shadowalker says he has seen a basic trend emerge.
"You have your sign-waving protesters, your black-masked protesters linking
arms and showing solidarity; you've got your peace-police protesters, just there
to make sure everybody obeys the way they think things should go; and the cops fairly
consistent from event to event. When [the cops] want something to happen, they'll
go into a crowd and start pushing people around, or push people to the ground."
Shadowalker believes Jan. 20 in DC will have a "pretty charged atmosphere,"
adding, "That's the kind of thing we like to document."
To offset the chance that police will turn violent as they did during the WTO protests,
the Justice Action Movement (JAM), a national coalition of activists, wrote a letter
to Washington Chief of Police Charles H. Ramsey asking for a meeting to inform the
department of its plans to peacefully protest and exercise its "constitutionally
protected right to express our displeasure with a broken political system that has
become beholden to and even dependent on corporate interests."
The letter further states that "the MPD (Metropolitan Police Department) has
engaged in preemptive arrest and detention, disseminated false information to the
public and the press that mischaracterized peaceful demonstrators as violent, confiscated
political literature, and shut down our meeting spaces. We want assurances this conduct
will not occur again."
The letter is signed by Adam Eidinger, Daniel Holstein and Bill Andrews of JAM.
Despite protesters' efforts to be open with police about their plans, Eidinger told
The Washington Post that an undercover police officer showed up at his apartment
and tried to fit in with the protesters. When confronted with this fact, the MPD
accused the group of "counter-intelligence" and wondered what they were
up to that made them need to keep tabs on police. But the police didn't deny the
charges, saying "open intelligence is pretty fair game," reports the Post.
In Eugene, a rally will be held at 10 am, Saturday, Jan. 20 at the Wayne Morse Free
Speech Plaza. In Corvallis, a rally will be held at 10 am at the Benton County Courthouse,
with a "People's Inaugural Ball" to protest the one in Washington from
6 pm to midnight at Benton County Fairgrounds. There will be food, music and political
skits featuring "General Strike," "Art and Revolution," Jim Page,
Brian Cutean and Sweet Juice.
For those interested in bussing it to the D.C. protest, see www.votermarch.org
Back to Top
Road
War
 Development
interests supporting a freeway through the West Eugene wetlands are fighting to get
around a federal requirement that killed the pricey project.
Last month, the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) told the state and city that
to build the highway, the city has to include all $88 million of the four-phase project
in a financially constrained project list in TransPlan, the region's 20-year transportation
plan.
After hearing of the federal requirement, the Eugene City Council voted 4-3 last
month not to pursue the West Eugene Parkway (WEP) as part of TransPlan. Putting the
$88 million into TransPlan would have eliminated almost all the region's other state-funded
road projects in the next two decades.
Highway supporters on the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC), a regional advisory
group dominated by road-building interests, have drafted a letter to the FHA looking
for a way to still build the project. The MPC letter proposes "revising (or,
if necessary, redoing)" the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project
to identify a smaller, far less expensive, segment of the project as the preferred
alternative.
Rather than changing TransPlan to be consistent with the EIS, the MPC proposes changing
the EIS to be consistent with the financially constrained TransPlan.
But such a move could be difficult. Federal rules prohibit segmenting projects to
hide their environmental impact. A smaller section of the wetland highway would have
to show "independent utility" under the rules. But critics of the project
have called its first $17 million phase a "road to nowhere."
In another WEP development, the Eugene city attorney shot down a charge by development
interests that the City Council vote had "overturned" a 1986 vote approving
construction of the wetland highway.
Responding to questions from Mayor Jim Torrey and council members, the Eugene city
attorney issued an opinion last week that legally, "the council's decision did
not overturn the ballot measure."
The city attorney noted that the 1986 vote was held to satisfy a charter requirement
that new freeway projects be approved by voters. The vote removed the charter impediment
to building the freeway but, "approval of the ballot measure did not impose
a legal mandate on the city to build the WEP." -- AP
Censorship
or Compassion?
The jury's still out on whether or not KLSR-FOX TV General Manager Mark Metzger made
the right decision in yanking the Monday, Jan. 8 episode of the popular "Boston
Public" television show.
Eugene-area viewers who tuned in at 8 pm to see the weekly peak into the minds and
hearts of teachers and students at a large inner city Boston high school were surprised
to see a message explaining that the show was canceled "due to content."
Old episodes of "Spin City" and "Seinfeld" were shown instead.
Promotions Director Bob Broderick says the station received promotional messages
for the show from the network last week and started "airing them as usual, but
when Metzger noted the show involved a hostage situation in a school and a gunman
in a classroom, he thought the content was too close to recent events." Those
events were specifically last week's police lockdown of Yujin Gakuen, the Japanese
immersion school, where for 20 minutes or so the police kept students and teachers
sequestered in classrooms after chasing a fugitive through the building, as well
as the Thurston shootings.
Broderick explains that it's not unusual for station managers to make such decisions;
in fact, he says, the "networks in general will allow affiliates to make judgment
calls like this. All the network is concerned about is making up the commercial time."
Broderick did not know if any other FOX affiliates nationwide also pulled the show.
By noon on Tuesday, the station had received several calls from fans dismayed at
missing one of their favorites, but Broderick didn't know how many of those calls
may have been to agree with the decision.
At this point, according to Broderick, the station is considering airing the episode
when it returns as a rerun later in the season and rescheduling it to run later in
the evening with a content warning.
"This is the only time in the history of KLSR-TV and the only time in my television
career that this has been done," says Broderick. -- AS
Noise
From Prague
The Infernal Noise Brigade is coming to town Jan. 18 to show videos of anti-globalization
protests against the International Monetary Fund in Prague last fall.
The Noise Brigade is a band of drummers that marched into the middle of riots during
the WTO protests in Seattle to motivate demonstrators. The group went on to Prague
to continue protests against the environmental and human harms of corporate world
trade.
Whereas in Seattle the police chased protesters in the streets with volleys of tear
gas, stun grenades and pepper spray, the Prague protests turned the tables, says
Tim Lewis, a local videographer who's seen some of the Brigade's videos. Protesters
used two-by-fours and Molotov cocktails in Prague, he says. "They had the police
running and the people were on the offensive," Lewis says.
The Infernal Noise Brigade will show their videos at 7:30 pm Thursday, Jan. 18 in
Willamette Hall (13th and University) room 100 on the UO campus. A suggested $2-$5
donation will benefit the new Shamrock House info shop and community center in Whiteaker.
Call 607-5604 for information. -- AP
Silva
Mumbles
Listening to the symphony at the Hult Center is like "listening through a window
to an orchestra playing in another room," according to city staff that run the
facility.
In a memo last month to the City Council, staff described acoustic problems with
the Hult's Silva Concert Hall and what's being done to fix them.
The "Silva Concert Hall was the first hall in the country designed from the
beginning to incorporate electronic acoustic enhancement, a fact that helps account
for the keen national interest in its opening. The results, while initially heralded
for being able to accommodate a wide variety of musical styles, were ultimately less
than totally successful."
The heart of the computer controlled reverberation system for the concert hall is
an antiquated Radio Shack computer that no longer works, staff notes. In addition,
an orchestra shell designed to reflect sound is "poorly engineered," too
thin, falling apart, and a "serious safety concern."
A consultant and committee recommended a $2 million fix relying more on traditional
acoustics than electronic enhancement. The price tag includes about a $1 million
for a new shell and $750,000 for new electronics, plus other improvements.
Staff hope to pay for the fix with about $350,000 in city money raised through current
ticket surcharges and through private fund-raising from select individuals and foundations.
A committee has raised $724,000 so far. If the remaining money is raised, the city
plans to begin improvements in September and complete the project next January. --
AP
Grammy
Nod
Helmuth Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra have been nominated
for a 2001 Grammy Award in the field of Best Choral Performance for the world premiere
CD of Krzysztof Penderecki's Credo, the Recording Academy announced on Jan. 3.
The Hänssler recording captured widespread acclaim since its full distribution
in 1999. The New York Times said Penderecki's piece "reveals drama on a Herculean
scale, painted in every color in the composer's box." It received five stars
in Classic CD magazine.
Credo won the AFIM Indie award for best classical orchestral recording on an independent
label and the Cannes Classical Award as best album of music by a living composer.
Soloists on the CD include alto Milagro Vargas, a faculty member of the UO School
of Music; soprano Juliane Banse; and bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff.
The Credo recording was the climax of a two-year artistic journey. A co-commission
of the Oregon Bach Festival and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, Credo
began as Penderecki's setting of the full Catholic mass text. He settled on the Credo
section, a litany of the church's key beliefs, and supplemented the text with Psalms,
excerpts from Revelations, and quotations from two Polish hymns.
Penderecki put his finishing touches on the 53-minute work in Eugene on July 4, just
days before its premiere as the final concert of the 1998 festival. It was dedicated
to Rilling, who, like his friend Penderecki, celebrated his 65th birthday that year.
Rilling conducted subsequent performances throughout Europe including a gala premiere
in Poland, Penderecki's homeland.
Corrections/Clarifications
A key word was missing in a quote from Councilor David Kelly in our "Parkway
Pickle" cover story Jan. 4. The complete sentence should have read, "It
would have basically sacrificed every other ODOT project in TransPlan to build the
parkway."
Back to Top
 
Robin Aronson
First bitten by the theater bug as a kid in Queens, New York, Robin Aronson
later sang, danced, and acted in community theater during 12 years as a yoga teacher
and massage therapist in Santa Cruz. "At 36, I decided to get serious and go
to grad school," she says. "Hello, Fayetteville, Arkansas." With master's
degree in hand, Aronson arrived in Eugene in 1995 for doctoral studies in theater
arts. After graduation in 1999, she volunteered as assistant director of the Young
Women's Theatre Collective. "I had seen two perfomances -- they are incredibly
bold and vulnerable young women," she says. She apprenticed with Hannah Fox.
When Fox, the troupe's founder, left for grad school in New York last May, she asked
Aronson to take over as director. "The two have been equal mentors," says
three-year YMTC member Quail Downing. "Robin has a gift for theater -- she brings
out stories that young people have." A new YMTC troupe, assembled in September,
first performed at Eugene's First Night Celebration: "Fabulously successful
-- crowded and well-received," says Aronson. Catch them at the WOW Hall Jan.
19 and 20.
-- Paul Neevel
Happenin' People Archives
Nominate A Happenin' Person
Table
of Contents
| News
& Views
| Arts
& Entertainment
Classifieds | Personals
| EW
Archive
|
