Crystal
Balling
Eugene
looks ahead 21 years with both fear and hope.
As Eugene Weekly celebrates its 21st birthday, we decide not to
look backward over the last two decades at our history, but instead
to look forward to our future. Will Eugene be graced with award-winning
landscapes, vegetable gardens instead of lawns, or dirt and rock
from lack of water and too many footprints? Will we be using sustainable
technologies or suffering from congestion, energy shortages and
overpopulation? Will our business community prosper or falter? Will
the gap grow or shrink between rich and poor? And who will lead
us?
We asked EW readers and some local notables to tell us their thoughts
on the future, and these were some of the questions raised. Some
offer hopeful solutions; others are not so optimistic. We hope this
issue motivates everyone to think about how their actions now will
affect our town in 21 years and beyond. In 2024, lets regroup and
see how many of these predictions came true. Aria Seligmann
ASTROLOGY
A
Culture of Beauty
Astrologically, 2016 brings positive change.
Johanna Mitchell, a well-known local astrologer, has been forecasting
for Eugene for the past 21 years. Here she looks 21 years into the
future and sees whats ahead for our fair burg.
Eugene was born Oct. 17, 1862 at 2:30 pm in Salem, when Salem
granted us our charter. People lived here and called themselves
Eugene before that, but we werent officially recognized until then.
Thats when we were born as an entity.
Eugene right now, in 2003, doesnt have a vision or identity. We
lost some of it 20 to 25 years ago, but well be getting it back
from 2016-2021. The progressed sun goes into Aries at the end of
2016 and when that happens thats a big revitalization. Fire. Things
that have been diverse come together. The fog burns off and everything
becomes clear. That activates Eugenes chart in the area of our values,
economics and principles. Its going to take a couple of years, from
2016-18, when were struggling because we see that were not what
we were. By 2024, all will be worked out. When Aries comes, it comes
fast. That sun will last for 30 years, until 2046 a long time.
Also in 2016, the progressed Midheaven will conjunct Eugenes natal
Pluto in the sign of Taurus. With that, there is always some kind
of revolution and the citys power is diversified. Also, economic
strageties will change because of it.
The leadership coup will result in diversified power as well as
diversified economic power.
There will be an uprising of individuality and a real letting go
of commitment to big box stores, etc. We will have changed our strategy
for what we think of as abundance, security and stability.
In 2021, our progressed Venus, which represents beauty, the arts,
and abundance, goes into Taurus, which is its dignity it loves to
be there. That has to do with parks flourishing and commitment to
the arts.
In 2021-22, Eugene will garner a huge reputation and become recognized
as one of the most beautiful places to live. There will be some
kind of award-winning landscape, arts, architecture or gardens.
The arts will really flourish. We will have a new arts school or
arts institute that brings in a tremendous amount of recognition.
We will have more visual art than written or literary. A lot of
fame will come to the community because well have such well-known
artists Eugene will be a mecca for creativity, like Santa Fe, but
affordable and sustainable.
There will be a progressed Mars in Gemini trining Eugenes native
Jupiter. Transportion will be highlighted because of Gemini, and
sports because of Mars. Mars in Gemini can mean well have a new
rail system. I see more alternative transporation. Well have some
kind of rapid transit a trolley, or some sort of rail thing. It
will be really hip to go on it. Its creation will involve a lot
of young people.
Industry will also be transportation oriented. This may be connected
to the railyards, maybe well have a company here that makes trolleys,
or an expansion of Burley, or greater manufacture of Gizmo cars,
something like that.
Well have tremendous winning sports teams and a really vibrant
athletic community for everyone.
The boomers will have moved over and power will have skipped a
generation. The kids in grade school now will be in charge.
Johanna Mitchell, astrologer since 1981 and well-known for Eugenes
yearly astrological forecasts that benefit local organizations,
interviewed by Aria Seligmann
TECHNOLOGY
Innovations
Aprovecho is keeping skills alive that our grandparents had and
bringing them back to keep them alive for the future. We believe
21 years from now people will be more involved with local economies
and have a more direct relationship with food, energy and housing.
More people will be growing at least part of their own food and
being involved with the farms that grow the rest. There will be
more seedbanks and diversity will be completely embraced and everyone
will really come to appreciate that.
Looking at renewable energy, weve started to build a biodiesel
station so alternative fuels can replace the fossil fuels that will
have been used up. Were testing solar panels right now, and will
have a good idea about how viable that is, although we dont know
at this point if its going to be cloudy here in 21 years or not!
Were looking at woodstoves that can be used for cooking and heating,
also hayboxes that eliminate the need to cook things on the stove,
and a draft box instead of a refrigerator that works well in this
climate. Reducing the amount of energy you use means your ecological
imprint is going to be smaller. As the population goes up, thats
so crucial.
For housing, the impact of Western-style housing on resource use
worldwide cant sustain itself. Locally, were not against using wood
because it grows here. But we encourage people to live in small
houses where woods been harvested in a sustainable way, not clearcut.
Were also experimenting with straw bale, and in 21 years will have
enough information to see if its viable. Materials from earth to
straw and renewable fibers will all be incorporated into houses
of the future.
Water is tomorrows gold. Using precious water to flush waste away
will be a thing of the past. Aprovecho has no flush toilets, just
compost toilets; theyre a way to use waste material and turn it
into something valuable.
What Aprovecho wants to see is all of us incorporating alternative
resources into everyday life and reducing our consumption. Every
day.
Meera Subramanian, board member, Aprovecho Research Center, interviewed
by Aria Seligmann
GPS and Nanotechnology
Never prophecy. If you are right nobody remembers, and if you are
wrong nobody forgets is an old saying that has much truth to it.
However, I cannot resist the opportunity to speculate on the potential
impact during the next two decades of the rapid development and
combining of global positioning systems (GPS) and nanotechnology
(the creation of tiny devices). There is the prospect of never being
lost or losing anything. There is also the prospect of having your
position on the earth known to within a few feet at all times, whether
you like it or not.
How does this all work? In a nutshell, there exists a constellation
of dozens of satellites put up by the U.S. and other governments
cooperatively. The orbits of these satellites are known to an extreme
accuracy. Each satellite sends a unique signal that can be timed
by atomic clocks with extreme precision. From these signals and
their timing an exact location on the earth (within a few feet,
normally) can be determined. Using hand-held devices, ones location
can be read simply at any time and from almost anywhere. It is in
everyones interest to enhance and maintain this system so it is
most unlikely that governments will scrap it. The military is a
heavy user with their smart bombs and all.
Where is the technology today? Much has been written about current
applications of GPS technology in the fields of surveying, geographic
information systems, facilities management, and transportation.
For example, modern trucking companies have receiving and sending
units on each truck and they know where each unit is at all times.
In addition to each trucks location, they will have sensors that
monitor and send engine data like oil temperature. The driver might
get a call on his cell phone from the head office telling him that
he overstayed his coffee break 10 minutes and his engine is running
hot. So much for the independence of long-haul truckers!
How small can these units get? Microtechnology is evolving into
nanotechnology where the small gets even tinier. When the entire
receiving/sending unit is part of your cell phone it is small; when
it can be implanted in one of your teeth, it is tiny.
It is a benefit for your location to be known if you dial 911 in
an emergency or if you are lost in the wilderness. One application
might be to surgically implant a GPS unit (like a pacemaker is implanted)
in a criminal as part of a sentence. The persons location would
be known at all times and if a forbidden zone, like a restraining
order zone, is entered a bell would go off at police headquarters.
Maybe efficient, but at the cost of privacy.
Bill Loy, retired professor of geology, editor of Oregon Atlas
SUSTAINABILITY
People and Nature First
Eugene made all the right choices. People and nature come first.
The citys urban landscape has changed dramatically. Use of automobiles
has become minimal. Downtowns auto infrastucture has been redeveloped
into walkable places for residence, commerce, employment and parks.
There is a lively cultural scene.
Older residential areas have transformed auto dominance into open
space and mixed use. Neighborhood scale redevelopment allows walking
or biking to work or school.
The suburbs boast of new infill on former parking lots providing
new residential and economic opportunity. Most people live within
walking distance of basic needs. All over Eugene, public transit
makes trips pleasant and convenient.
New development pays its fair share, there are no corporate handouts.
New budget priorities favor human needs and restoring the environment.
These changes allow for public investment that serves the people
and restores the environment. Consequent savings in public health
and human services are immense.
A new civic ethic has prevailed over self interest and self indulgence.
Much of Eugenes progress comes from the volunteer realm. Young and
old have found new purpose.
The old Hyundai factory now produces photo voltaics. Golf courses
have become gardens. Area farmland is protected and productive.
Salmon are returning. The civic realm, art, and education flourish.
Jan Spencer, artist and activist.
Eco
Industry
The Goddess of Garbage looks in her recycled glass ball and sends
you a paragraph she saw in the July 2024 edition of Business magazine.
The moment you land in Eugene, Ore., you know youre not in Kansas
anymore. The sign that greets travelers at the airport says, Welcome
to Eugene. We put the Eco in Economic Development. Boy, do they
ever. Eco industry thrives here. The creativity, can-do spirit and
sense of fun this small city has become so famous for is evident
everywhere you look. Theres no such thing as waste in this town,
in fact their motto has become Live well without waste. Businesses
that utilize discards, manufacturers of energy-saving products,
eco-industrial engineers, designers and researchers have flourished
in the industrial parks financed by the innovative waste tax instituted
in the depths of the 02-06 recession. The 10-cent tax levied on
one-use products like plastic cups and grocery bags proved popular
with citizens and an effective way to jump start the economic renaissance.
Memories of underfunded schools, struggling arts organizations,
hunger and homelessness that haunted Eugene in the early years of
the millennium have faded. Eugene has found a winning formula and
is celebrating its success.
Julie Daniel, director of BRING Recycling
Roll
Call
Dearly beloved: opening words of a funeral, addressing both the
dearness of one known intimately, and the keen sorrow of fresh loss.
And so it is, each day, each year, each gaze into the future, for
those with an ecological eye: joy at the intricate reciprocities,
ingenious adaptations, and exquisite forms of beetles, algae, badgers,
seeds, and ponds. And, at every turn, sorrow at fresh loss by pavement,
pollution, shrunken boundaries, or neglect.
Ecology is the relationship of organisms to their environment.
There is biological ecology, of course, but also social ecology,
and the ecology of spirit, because everyone is in relationship with
their surroundings, immediate and distant.
What will be our relationship with the world in 21 years? There
will be more of Us and thinned ranks of Everyone Else. The streaming
Great White Bear, for one, is not expected to survive the loss of
Ice from warming. Bison will remain on roll call, threatened by
genes from Farmed Bison, now part Cattle. And Ferret, wracked by
distemper from Dogs, and losing breakfast, lunch, and dinner (i.e.,
Prairie Dog) to sport hunting and rancher poisoning will Ferret
still be able to speak for us all?
What will be our understanding of relationship in 21 years? Will
extreme concentration of wealth, operation of sweatshops, and a
burgeoning prison industry still be the growth we seek? Will erasing
Mule Deers homeland by mini-castles and Fenders Blue Butterflys
homeland by highways still be called development? Will genocide
through genetically engineered crops still be called progress?
Will land still be regarded as commodity rather than Community?
Will Water, Ocean, and Air have been sold to corporations? Will
makers and drivers of SUVs, advocates of social justice, homebuilders
associations, and breast cancer activists still insist on Humans
First rather than First, the Community of All?
Will Family, more than ever, mean only Us?
I dont know answers to those questions, but I do know this will
be happening in 2024:
Early in the year, new, pale green leaves will appear on old, gnarled
Trees. Winds will blow Small Winds, Big Winds, East, South, West,
North and some Humans will listen to them. Insects will fly, Waves
will roll and crash; and Cacti will grow big flowers on their heads.
Some Humans will be trying to restore some Wetlands, Grasslands,
Forests, and Rivers, for all the Creatures still existing, and thus
for themselves as well. Some Children will talk to Trees, Birds,
and Moon.
Each morning, some Humans will greet all their Relations, and will
move through the day, constantly astounded. Each evening, some Humans
will breathe thanks into the Darkness, for All of it.
Mary OBrien, EW contributing writer, activist, scientist
The
Ogallala Effect
The landscape around Eugene is radically altered in 2024. You see
fewer lawns, for one thing. The biggest reason, not surprisingly,
is water. It was clear from the start of the century that water
would be a defining issue of our time. Most people assumed that
the U.S., far away from the water wars, would be spared the direct
effects of the water crisis for a long time. But then the Ogallala
aquifer began to dry up, more than a decade sooner than expected.
This huge body of groundwater under the Western plains once watered
a fifth of Americas croplands, but we pumped water out of it 10
times faster than the recharge rate. When it dried up, agriculture
shifted to high rainfall areas like the Willamette Valley. There
is still plenty of winter rain here. Trouble is, until the state
devises a politically acceptable catchment system and figures out
how to pay for it, the price of water keeps soaring, and its restricted:
Residential landscape use, aside from rain captured on site, is
limited to gray water, with the homeowner responsible for changing
the plumbing.
For another thing, Bt resistance and contamination by rogue genes
has snarled the organic food industry, just when the demand for
chemical-free food is exploding due to mounting evidence linking
rampant asthma, soft tissue cancers and male sterility to pesticides.
Many people dug up their lawns and roses to grow organic food. There
is also a good deal of peer pressure to tear out lawns and plant
landscapes that provide some habitat for our vanishing wildlife.
A dwindling water supply and strict limitations on impervious surfaces
(combined with the discovery that real gardening is more work than
mowing a lawn) have led many people with large lots to turn them
over to the Suburban Community Land Banks. These organizations take
on the maintenance of private land in exchange for all rights of
cultivation, and take the bulk of any profits that result. So far,
only the largest, most level and easily accessible lots are cultivated;
the balance of the land is maintained using soil-building practices
and kept under green manure crops or native ground-cover.
Labor is mostly provided by volunteers, working under paid managers
in exchange for food. Not everyone who works for the Land Bank is
hungry, though. Its a great learning experience for high school
students. And volunteering for the Land Bank has become, like park
maintenance, a popular occupation for the retired. It is also an
excellent way to get chemical-free vegetables.
Rachel Foster, writer, garden consultant
POPULATION
Parks
and People
Tom Pringle says whats important to look at is the environmental
quality of life, the air, open space, noise and specifically, the
local parks. If current trends continue ...
Spencers Butte: In 1921, a UO botanist did their masters degree
on what was at Spencers Butte, so we know what we had then. Then
the plant society was working up there, so we have a good record
of what was happening. Its on a downward trend. What was there 80
or just 20 years ago were not sustaining. Its even gone way down
for the past 10 to 15 years, despite active volunteer groups. Trail
crews have worked hard putting gravel on trails. There are nets
on the summit, where its most fragile, a rock garden and rare plants.
Its a couple of acres, and were not holding our own, but losing
ground up there. Twenty-one years from now it will just be bare
ground and rock. There will be no flowers, just from human impact.
Im not optimistic. Although a lot of environmentally conscious
people go up there, if each person takes just a few steps off trail,
that damages it. There is vandalism. High energy people take shortcuts.
We need to reach every person to educate them on the cumulative
impacts of anyone just having a frolic, of everyone who has a dog
up there. If each person, though environmentally conscious, does
a little off trail, well, day after day thats not sustainable. There
are too many people now, its overwhelming.
Amazon Park: There was a good effort to protect and restore the
ash grove and good wetland restoration by the swimming pool. That
park has seen an upward trend with good efforts by youth crews whove
cleared out blackberries, exotic trees and shrubs. Theres been wetland
restoration, and city crews have become very aware of rare plants
and how to manage them.
The main problem there is floodlights. From Ems field, the tennis
court lights, and South Eugene High floodlights, there are gigantic,
10,000 watt bulbs lighting up the whole area. You cant hike out
there at night anymore, the headlights get in the way. The night
sky or sunset walk has deteriorated here in town. Its too bright
to see the moon and stars.
The intrusion is massive, but its correctable. They should get
the tennis courts out of there. The trend, however, is not to correct.
The light pollution here is worse and worse. Theres a cultural insensitivity
to the environment.
The traffic noise between Amazon and Hilyard is also a problem,
especially from SUVs with big tires. Plus, the fumes along the jogging
trail are getting worse.
Whats that going to be like 21 years from now? We have to look
at the projected population growth. Air, noise and light pollution
are all going to be worse. Were already putting the squeeze on Amazon
Park with the bus area, the pool and the soccer field.
Theyre spraying heavily in the park for weeds, putting all those
chemicals into the wetlands. What was a corridor area for the creek
has become high intensity human use.
Mount Pisgah: An immense amount of volunteer work and charitable
dollars have been put into it. Its a nice place with the arboretum
prescribed burns and restoration. But my experience is that its
deteriorating. There are too many people using it and too many going
offtrail, cutting new trails. You used to see one trail, the Summit
Trail, leading to the top, now you see six.
Therere also too many loose dogs, up to 300 to 400 offtrail on
a sunny weekend day. I no longer see wildlife up there, but I used
to see snakes, deer and skunk. Now I only see the occasional soaring
hawk.
Whatever happened to zero population growth and family planning?
Its coming back to hit us in the face. This is not the life we want
to have this many people in our face and all this pollution. What
is the carrying capacity of this town, this county and this planet?
How are we addressing it?
Tom Pringle, Eugene activist and scientist, interviewed
by Aria Seligmann
The
Congestion Question
Expect more people over the next 21 years, about half again as
many, doing pretty much the same things were doing now. Driving
from here to there, hiking in the forests, attending school, shopping
in the supermarkets, going to the coast, cheering at Duck games.
Where we can scooch over and make room for the newcomers, their
influx wont be noticed much. But in many of those areas and activities
that play special roles in defining this communitys special character,
expect significantly more crowding and a continual challenge to
our quality of life and the institutions that safeguard it.
How we anticipate and respond to different types of congestion
on the roads, trails, rivers, and beaches; and in our parks, malls,
schools, sports arenas, and concert halls will shape the very nature
of our interactions among ourselves and with this place. Will we
respond passively, letting the congestion grow worse so we spend
more time sitting in traffic, encounter more people on the hiking
trails, and wait longer in lines? Or, will we respond actively,
to avoid or reverse the congestion?
If we take the active approach well confront some widely divergent
options. We might try to build our way out of congestion, with more
roads, parking lots, etc. Or we might build larger bureaucracies
around land-use planning, mass transit, public schools, and the
like. Or we might rely more on market forces: for example, using
new technologies to charge you a road-use fee if you want to drive
during rush hour, or charging higher prices to use the swimming
pool at Amazon Park.
On my more sanguine days, Im confident that this community will
have sufficient courage and leadership not just to recognize the
damage mishandled growth can impose on our quality of life but to
take the bold steps necessary to keep Lane County from sliding inexorably
toward Anytown, USA. But I wouldnt bet on it.
Ernie Niemi, economist and resource management consultant with
ECONorthwest
ARTS
& CULTURE
Eugenes
Scene
After repeal of the growth management laws, urban sprawl forces
the state and city to redirect all arts spending to finance the
extension of highways and sewer hookups to the gated subdivisions
that comprise the entire valley from the Willamette National Clearcut
to the coast (now only half an hour away, thanks to rising sea levels
caused by global warming).
In the tri city area of Eugene-Corvallis-Salem, now-distant suburbanites
lack the time, money, or inclination to drive downtown which, under
the No Terrorist Left Alive law enacted by the martial-law Bush
administration, has been converted into a federal detention center
for homeless people, immigrants, and contraception and abortion
providers. The only central performing arts venue left is the Hult
Center, which, deprived of subsidies, embarks on its All Riverdance,
All the Time programming that survived the scandal resulting from
the revelation that the dancers were all robots, since no one could
tell the difference anyway.
At the few venues all located in shopping malls that still host
live music, the classical niche is filled by dinosaur grunge bands
or classic rock acts such as the Strolling Clones (the lab offspring
of Keith and Mick along with Robo-Watts on electrodrums and a revolving
cast of several hundred illegitimate grandchildren). No one is sure
whether the ageless headliner of the years biggest tour, Paul McCartney,
is a clone or not.
Classical and jazz music vanish because the elimination of funding
for arts in the schools produced a whole generation of audiences
that grew up with no training in or appreciation for creative arts.
Only mass-consumption generic pop bands survive, each sponsored
by a major corporation and stamped with its logo, cloned in Los
Angeles and played endlessly on KMIC the single radio and Internet
broadcaster remaining after the repeal of the antitrust laws and
Microsofts subsequent acquisition of the entire radio and internet
broadcast spectrum.
All music is made from samples programmed into computers, much
easier to learn than actual instruments, which are now mainly exhibited
in the expanded UO Museum of Art History. A very few privately schooled
offspring of the ultra-rich still play instruments, but the repeal
of the income and inheritance tax leaves the other 99 percent of
the population unable to afford to hear them. Therefore, all art-music
performances take place in gargantuan drawing rooms of the 28 mansions
in Lane County, attended only by other plutocrats.
A trace of Eugenes past remains at the McDonald Assisted Living
Theatre at RiverBend (finally dried out after the flood of 2016),
where a few geriatric Deadheads still spin their wheelchairs around
til theyre dizzy, grooving to the music of their favorite band,
the Other ClOnes which sounds better than ever since the high cost
of health care and the demise of the Oregon Health Plan means that
listeners cant afford hearing aids.
Brett Campbell, EW music columnist, who wrote the
performing arts chapter of the History of Eugene 1950-2000, published
by the City Club
Library
Sorts Things Out
In the year 2024, how many books will be piled up at the Eugene
Public Library still waiting to be checked in?
If Nessie, the librarys brand-new-state-of-the-art book sorter
actually sorts 250 books per hour, at 10 hours per day (thats being
generous), thats 2,500 books per day being sorted.
If current return rates remain constant at 3,400 per day, that
leaves 900 books per day unsorted.
At that rate, at the beginning of 2004, the entire collection will
be in Nessies bowels. (Thus rendering predictions for the ensuing
two decades unnecessary.)
The city of Eugene will then wait 20 years before it decides to
spend an additional $1.2 million (Nessies cost), adjusted for 2024
inflation, to procure even brand-newer-state-of-the-art technology
that will dig through piles of books to unearth buried library circulation
workers, who will still not have had a day off since opening on
Dec. 26, 2002.
Aria Seligmann
BUSINESS
Moving
East
In the past 21 years, Symantec, Sacred Heart Medical Center, Emeralds
Hult Center, Eugene Public Library, and eight 4J elementary schools
have all moved to Springfield; many because Eugeneans continually
reversed themselves on successive ballot measures.
Springfield lured all of them with tax breaks, lower ticket prices,
efficiently designed schools, spacious settings, and lots of accessible
free parking.
The cavernous Eugene Public Library was closed in 2010 because
parking was limited and expensive, and walking was unsafe for children.
The building was converted into a successful timber mill with logs
being lowered by helicopters through the installed moveable roof.
Converted LTD buses transport the finished lumber.
The glass of the former Hult Center was removed, and the drab concrete
exterior extended to complete the perimeter. With the theaters dismantled
and moved to two venues in Springfield, the Gutted Center now serves
as a reservoir.
Because Duck home football games now kick off at 10 am for TV,
the Eugene Celebration Parade, consisting solely of politicians
and businesses that can afford the exorbitant entry fee, traverses
a six-block route by dawns early light. It is viewed only by straggling
Friday night celebrants heading home to Springfield.
Kenneth Raymen, Springfield resident
A
Healthy Downtown
What will the business climate be like downtown in the year 2024?
Businesswoman and civic activist Sue Prichard foresees a healthy
economy ahead, and we might even see the construction of the elusive
Emerald Canal downtown. Big box retailers on the outskirts will
lose their popularity and more people will choose to live and shop
downtown, but parking meters of some sort will be with us forever,
she says or as long as people continue to drive cars.
One of the keys to a healthy future downtown, Prichard says, is
the infusion of public investment to stimulate private enterprise.
She doesnt expect a repeat of the urban renewal projects that destroyed
much of the character of downtown in decades past, but she does
see urban renewal funds, tax breaks and other incentives playing
a major role in enlivening downtown.
Another key to our local economy, she says, is finding the proper
balance between a healthy environment, strong employment opportunities
and a vibrant business climate. And shes hopeful.
Im seeing so many people looking at our community now and appreciating
that its small enough to get to know people, and large enough to
have the amenities of a larger city, she says.
Prichard is concerned about how the new downtown area along the
river and near the new federal building will be developed over the
years. She hopes it will not become another retail district competing
with downtown, but rather an attractive mixed-use place for people
to be.
Ted Taylor
POLITICS
Military
Might
Gated Community America lurches from one military adventure to
another, strewing nuclear/conventional devastation and dead civilians
across the globe in defense of its right to gobble everyones resources.
Terrorist attacks intermittently pierce the gates, causing havoc,
paranoia, higher gates.
Inside is a police state rich in manufactured goods, a wrecked
environment. Eugene is a small, anachronistic place, refuge to aging
adherents of world peace, among whom scars from non-lethal weapons,
developed in the first decade of the 21st century to fight terrorists
and protesters, are marks of self-respect.
OR ...
All Earth celebrates the Day of Water and World Peace. Eugene is
one vibrant dot in an intricate web of world connections, people
and creatures knit close by curiosity, respect, and need. Earth
is governed both locally and through international agreements and
councils that protect people and nature, outlaw weapons and exploitation,
and judge miscreants. These agreements and councils began in the
20th century, were dangerously undermined early in the 21st century,
and were rescued just in time for the U.S. to join the world community
in 2008, when it abandoned its military budget and devoted its wealth
and ingenuity to feeding and sheltering people and healing the planet.
Kate Rogers Gessert, freelance writer and LCC instructor
Emerald
City/County
A letter found on a table at LL Market, Jan. 31, 2024:
My dearest grandniece,
It was wonderful to bump into you at SeaTac, if only for a few
minutes. I promised to write and bring you up to date on whats happened
here is it really 21 years ago since your parents moved back to
Michigan?!
I guess the most important thing is that we are EmCC now (Emerald
City/County), not Eugene a true metro/county government. It took
years of really ugly sprawl during boom times along the river, and
on the outskirts of Eugene, Springfield, combined with a few downturns
in the business cycle that made the idea of a consolidated (and
thriftier) government palatable.
The savings in top and middle management jobs, a consolidated fleet,
one fire department, one police department, and one public works
department are what made the politicos able to stand up to the staff
and other special interests to vote for it. They did have to get
an outside accountant to run the numbers, though.
Consolidation meant that Eugene and Springfield could stop vying
with each other for development. It also meant that we could supplement
the property tax with a modest, but progressive, income tax. Finally,
it meant that the Urban Growth Boundary had real teeth, and we havent
had to extend it once despite doubling our population in the past
20 years, although theyre starting to talk about it now.
About the same time you will not believe this the homebuilders
and developers got fed up with endless lawsuits over new development,
the successful environmental initiatives, and delays in permitting
during boom times. So they were behind several changes to the planning
and infrastructure functions that turned the Republicans into dedicated
greenies.
They persuaded the powers that be to adopt a county-wide environmental
impact requirement for all new development so negative impacts on
the environment are mitigated. Development also has to have adequate
infrastructure, including pools, schools, streets, water and sewer.
The trade-off was uniform building and zoning codes for all jurisdictions
plus big bucks into re-engineering the permitting function to be
fast and transparent.
Then the Chamber became terminally disgusted with increases in
the system development charges for new development and formed a
coalition with the environmentalists to force the utilities to adopt
demand management and conservation strategies to keep costs down
and to benchmark staff salaries to those of EmCC.
This coalition also pushed through the requirement for EmWeb (the
county-wide electric, water, sewer and recycling utility) after
the Big Fire in the South Hills when the water system failed. EmWeb
now has to prepare a long term capital plan that is consistent with
EmCCs land use plan and TransPlan and its budget has to be approved
by EmCC.
But you have to hand it to EmWeb. They took these changes pretty
gracefully, and got with the program. They invested heavily in wind
turbines on the coast and initiated requirements later adopted by
all the governments here to transform their fleets into non gas
ones. And we now have purple pipes to recycle gray water, and subsidies
to cars with those Japanese hydrogen electrical fuel cells.
Well, dear, how I natter on. Although I could tell you about how
we elected Oregons first Latina congressperson (Pete S. went on
to the Senate), and weve had Asian and Latino City Managers and
Police Chiefs for years and that black woman who was UO President
was a real bundle of energy. I guess weve had a few gay mayors but
no one seems to pay much attention to that anymore.
Its been too long, but a real blessing to see you after all these
years. All my love, your great-aunt ...
Vicki Elmer, consultant, professor and former Eugene
city manager