HomeMy WebLinkAboutPUBLIC COMMENT - SUE PRICHARD (3-7-17)My name is Sue Prichard. I live at 2671 Emerald Street in Eugene. I am a
licensed commercial real estate broker (mostly retired) and have spent the
past 39 years working in both residential and commercial real estate in
Eugene.
I am here to encourage you to support adoption of both of the
ordinances before you tonight.
In 2010, along with 50 or 60 other Eugene citizens, I was invited to
participate in the Community Resource Group... a group formed by our city
manager to create a new and inclusive way for our community to talk about
how we manage growth, a topic that in the past was fraught with contentious
and hostile debate.
Out of this successful, inclusive process, the Technical Resource Group was
formed to verify data, flush out assumptions, and review all of the work
leading up to this point done by city staff. Along with Shawn Boles, I co-
chaired the Technical Resource Group from its beginning, until we
completed our work late last year nearly 7 years later. The composition of
the TRG was intentionally broad-based Our task was to ensure that the
information upon which staff recommendations were made was sound and
thoroughly vetted.
This is the time to move forward on these ordinances.
The process getting to this point has been exemplary. Out of the
Community Resource Group, the SEVEN PILLARS were created to ensure
that the community's values were not lost in the analysis. The public
engagement process has been relentless and performed to the highest
standards. Newsletters, neighborhood presentations, a detailed and
constantly updated website, open houses, on-line surveys.... These efforts
by City Staff to ensure that the public was involved have been outstanding in
both quantity and quality, and the staff's generous and gracious manner
throughout this public engagement process is unprecedented in my
experience.
While the TRG was not tasked with making recommendations, either to staff
or to the City Council, we are united in seeing the critical role of Pillar
7.... the monitoring pillar.
To arrive at the recommended ordinances, assumptions had to be made, and
as always with assumptions, even when made based on the best data
available at the time, sometimes they are right and sometimes they are
wrong. We won't know whether assumptions about housing mix or
household size or redevelopment rates are correct until we put the
ordinances in place and get busy monitoring what is actually happening out
there in the community.
Monitoring, and making course corrections, is a critical part of why we must
move forward adopting these ordinances now.
Seven years, thousands of hours of staff time, hundreds of hours of volunteer
time, an exemplary public engagement process has culminated in two very
sound, well researched, thoroughly vetted ordinances that embody the larger
community values...... it's time to put them in place so that we can get on
with other important projects.
Thank you.
Sue Prichard
sue kprichardpartners.com