Attachment C <br />TO: Nick Gioello, Lead Planner February 24, 2018 <br />Eugene Planning & Development Attachment B <br />Hearings Official <br />City of Eugene <br />FROM: Nathaniel Teich, PhD <br />Professor Emeritus of English 2350 Spring Boulevard <br />University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403 <br />RE: Recommendation to Deny Tentative Capital Hill PUD Application (PDT 17-1) <br />I commiserate with you in dealing with this Application, because it is the worst formal public document that <br />I have had the misfortune to encounter in my professional experience. I believe that I have the qualifications <br />to make this judgment: teaching written composition, argumentation, and communication at the University of <br />Oregon for 39 years, and previously as a technical writer and editor for the US Army Corps of Engineers and <br />as a copy and production editor for the California Continuing Education for the Bar at UC Berkeley. <br />I know that this Application cannot be denied for failing writing, organization, and logic; however, I expect <br />that it would be denied for failing to meet and satisfy the Criteria of the Code as a result of its factual errors, <br />misleading and invalid reasoning, and exaggerated and deceptive claims. These deficiencies will be <br />identified and discussed in the report of the Joint Response Committee of the two neighborhood associations <br />and in their testimony at the Hearing. I completely endorse it. <br />Here, my personal concerns are more immediate. I have lived at 2350 Spring Boulevard for 39 years and for <br />the previous 10 years at another hillside residence in the Fairmount neighborhood. I have primarily walked to <br />my job at the University of Oregon and throughout the area for these 49 years. Thus I have observed and <br />experienced the increasing traffic in this hillside area close to the University. Because I can attest to the <br />limitations and dangers to vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, and emergency services presented by conditions <br />of these residential streets, I urge that the proposed Capital Hill PUD Application be denied. <br />I also attest that I was a witness and took the photos of an incident demonstrating the impediments to <br />emergency response along the narrow neighborhood streets. On July 19, 2017, at about 10:30 am, some <br />residents at 2350 and 2360 Spring Blvd. noticed that Eugene Fire truck 413, from the local University <br />Station on Agate Street and E. 17th Avenue, was stopped in front of our houses in the middle of Spring <br />Boulevard. Then it was being directed by one of the crew to back down Spring Boulevard until it could be <br />turned around at the intersection with Fairmount Boulevard (See photos attached). <br />The reason that Fire Truck #13 had to stop was that a Sanipac trash truck, one of their smallest rigs in use, <br />was making its every-Wednesday rounds. There was no way the two large vehicles could pass each other. <br />Now consider what would happen in an emergency. Suppose there were a growing brush or house fire up the <br />hill, even in the proposed CHPUD. And people began evacuating down the hill - from all the narrow roads <br />above the five-way intersection - where backups in all directions would result from trying to merge onto <br />Spring Boulevard. At the same time emergency vehicles would be trying to respond up the same and only <br />primary feeder roads of Spring Boulevard and Capital Drive. This may not be only a hypothetical. Consider <br />that during the summer of 2017, nobody expected as many deadly, destructive fires in Northern California, in <br />Washington, or in Oregon locations, such as the Gorge, Central Oregon, McKenzie River, where evacuations <br />were ordered. <br />Page 112 <br />