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WETLANDS: SLIDESHOW: Permanent Cancellation?
West Eugene Collaborative: two flavors of elites exclude 9 neighborhood groups
Fake Alternatives
WEP a Federal, not city, decision
one of the most illegal highways ever
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Much Ado About Nothing: West Eugene Collaborators want $250 million, more than the West Eugene Porkway cost, to rebuild West 11th WEC report ignores the financial meltdown and Peak Oil which are more important than plans for an overpriced “boulevard” by Mark Robinowitz comments on the West Eugene Collaborative report related pages:
on this page - analysis of the WEC report:
www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/search/1553101-47/story.csp GUEST VIEWPOINT West Eugene Collaborative being too narrow The West Eugene Collaborative is an effort to bring together people from diverse backgrounds to examine solutions to decades of failed land use and transportation policies. However, the collaborative needs a broader range of perspectives to be effective. The collaborative is an outgrowth of the failed West Eugene Parkway, a highway first proposed in 1951 and formally canceled by the Federal Highway Administration in 2007. The parkway was not approved because it violated nearly every federal transportation law — including Section 4(f) of the 1966 Transportation Act, which prohibits highways built with federal aid from being built through protected parklands such as the West Eugene Wetlands. Only $17 million of the required $169 million official price tag was appropriated, despite promises from parkway promoters that “the money was there.” And the state’s traffic analyses showed it would not solve traffic snarls. In June 2001, an intergovernmental meeting called the West Eugene Charette brought together the Eugene, Lane County, state and federal governments. Participants agreed the parkway could not get federal approvals, and it was time to move beyond this failed proposal. Mayor Jim Torrey, County Commissioner Bobby Green and Oregon Transportation Commissioner Randy Papé were part of this consensus, but a few weeks later they changed their minds and put a nonbinding resolution on the city of Eugene ballot that passed 51 percent to 49 percent. This local resolution in favor of the parkway could not force the Federal Highway Administration to approve a road they knew was illegal, and the city never authorized a dime toward its construction. After the city reaffirmed its rhetorical support for the parkway, Oregon Department of Transportation officials spent at least $2 million to study further a project that privately they knew was unlikely to be approved. If the June 2001 “no build” consensus had been implemented, our money spent on these failed studies could have been used to fix West 11th Avenue intersections to facilitate traffic flows. Adding extra turn lanes would not solve all of the transportation and land use problems, but it would be part of the solution. If pro-parkway politicians had agreed to remove the parkway from life support when they agreed it was unlikely to be built, these fixes already would have been in place. During the debates about the Parkway, a citizens-led alternative was developed — Wetlands: West Eugene Transportation, Land and Neighborhood Design Solutions (to read more about it, visit www.greenwasheugene.com/wetlands.html). One of the West Eugene Collaborative’s consultants told me that the wetlands alternative was well presented, and one of the private citizens responsible for the collaborative told me she thought it was “brilliant.” But despite this private praise, wetlands supporters were not invited to participate, and the collaborative has avoided including it in its deliberations. Worse, the collaborators did not welcome west Eugene’s neighborhood groups until after more than a year of meetings (they now have included two of the eight groups). The wetlands alternative recommends a combination of road fixes and land use changes to improve traffic flow, reduce travel demand and mitigate dumb land use planning in West Eugene. West 11th could be improved significantly through intersection work without the collaborative’s expensive and unworkable suggestion for a “boulevard” widening. A couple of small links, such as between Second Avenue and Garfield Street and First Avenue and Seneca Road, could fix connection issues without having to build any part of the parkway. Perhaps the biggest bottleneck is the Roosevelt Boulevard/Highway 99 intersection, which the parkway Environmental Impact Statement admitted would remain a problem even if the parkway is built. Since the nearby Highway 99 bridge over the railroad needs to be replaced, a renewed focus on this area might find the resources to reconstruct this intersection. Any road construction in west Eugene will be inadequate if the underlying land use issues are avoided. While it took decades to create the problems, the city continues to permit uses that make the situation worse. Eugene could follow Hood River’s lead and ban oversized big-box stores, a law that the Oregon Supreme Court upheld in 2002. The recent approvals near West 11th of a Lowe’s hardware store next to a Home Depot store instead could have included mixed-use residential development — the only way that the proposed West 11th bus rapid transit line could be viable. The wetlands alternative developed two options for the Belt Line Road/Roosevelt intersection based on projections of energy supplies. If gasoline prices remain relatively low, then this intersection would be expanded into a grade-separated interchange. But if the era of cheap gas is ending, then traffic also is going to be diminished as expensive oil slows travel demand, and therefore an interchange would not be needed. The collaborative would better serve the community if it refocused on how to mitigate the effects of the energy and economic crises. Mark Robinowitz was the primary “road scholar” for the wetlands alternative.
Press Release announcing WEC report
A Personal Note
From 1999 through 2006, I was at the core of efforts to prevent the West Eugene Parkway. I participated in committees, led public hikes along the “wrong of way,” wrote articles, did legal research, spoke at hearings, organized public meetings, presented slide shows, and maintained a detailed website. I am probably the only member of the public who has read every iteration of the WEP’s Environmental Impact Statement (1985, 1986, 1990, 1997, draft versions 1999 through 2006). I was the core organizer of an interdisciplinary effort to develop a practical alternative to the WEP called WETLANDS: West Eugene Transportation, Land and Neighborhood Design Solutions. These efforts built on a lot of other people’s work, especially the 15 year campaign of Barbara Kelley of Save Our ecoSystems (SOS) to prevent the porkway, including a 1996 lawsuit that forced the Federal Highway Administration to withdrawn their 1990 approval. My technical analyses complimented a broader public education campaign that peaked in November, 2001, when an advisory referendum showed that Eugene was evenly split on the WEP if the full cost and impacts of the project were not considered. (The WEP was a Federal issue not subject to local approval or rejection.) On June 18, 2001, I got Federal Judge Hogan to promise to recuse himself from the issue, which could have been helpful if the WEP wound up in court (Judge Hogan has a well deserved reputation of hostility to environmental lawsuits). He was the emcee for the “West Eugene Charette”, an intergovernmental meeting of the City, County, State and Federal governments discussing how to keep the failed project alive (the report from the “Charette” was a consensus to cancel the WEP, although that promise was not implemented for several more years). I was not welcome to participate in the Charette, but since the public was allowed to observe I sat in the back and watched -- and asked Judge Hogan about the potential conflict of interest of presiding over an effort to salvage a failed project if the WEP ever was in his courtroom. His response to me was to promise to recuse himself. Around the time of Hogan’s promised recusal, I found out that ODOT had quietly decided the strongest transportation law no longer applied to the Porkway. Section 4(f) of the 1966 Transportation Act prohibits federal funds for transportation projects built through parks if there is a “prudent and feasible” alternative. 4(f) has probably stopped more stupid roads than any other Federal law, and was an insurmountable obstacle for the WEP, since it would decimate valuable parkland that protected extremely rare natural habitat. ODOT asked the Oregon Department of Justice for a legal opinion to claim that the BLM’s West Eugene Wetlands supposedly did not qualify for 4(f) protection, and then kept this determination partly secret. It was publicly exposed when I called the Project Manager to discuss the status of the pending approval, and while talking about 4(f) I was told that this important law no longer applied. I publicized this attitude, and eventually ODOT and Federal Highway Administration backed down and admitted that 4(f) really did apply. Note that 4(f) is a law that protects public parks, the law applies to parkland that has rare habitat and to parkland that merely has a swing set. The Clean Water Act is the primary law that regulates permissible destruction of wetlands. My legal analyses and the WETLANDS alternative were privately acknowledged as competent by nearly every government agency involved with the potential approval of the Porkway. However, this quality work was insufficient to be welcomed into the West Eugene Collaborative, a committee composed of bureaucrats, politicians, business leaders and other elites who tried to design their own alternative to the failed WEP project. The West Eugene Collaborative report “A New Vision for West Eugene” is the result of two years of committee meetings, subcommittees, contractors, public staff time and numerous drafts. The final report recommends that West 11th be completely reconstructed with local and through lanes along with work on other nearby roads -- which would require demolition of every business currently along the sidewalk.
WEC would be more expensive than the West Eugene Porkway The WEC’s price tag would be between $180 million and $250 million, more than the highest official estimate for the West Eugene Parkway of $169 million. One of the reason why WEP opponents objected to the highway was the tremendous waste of money, since there are simpler, cheaper solutions .
In other words, because there are other boondoggles wasting public money throughout the region, it is acceptable for there to be yet another black hole for our resources.
No matter how cynical you get ... I was extremely skeptical of the WEC process from the beginning, especially given the contortions its organizers used to ensure that no one who had publicly opposed all of the WEP would be welcome as participants. An initial concern was that the WEC might be used to provide cover for building the eastern half of the Porkway, since that section did not have the legal problems of the western section (except for the legal requirement to avoid “segmentation” of large destructive projects into smaller pieces to avoid approval of the full impacts). This concern was heightened during the March 2008 “Design Storm” workshop, where WEC members created a map of potential components that included building the eastern half of the West Eugene Parkway. The March 2009 Final Report does not include building the WEP through Bertelsen Nature Park. Page 20 seems to suggest the possibility of extending Stewart Road westward to Beltline (the quality of the map in the report is too small to be precisely legible). The report is deliberately vague about the details, but the only logical connection for Beltline would be the same location as the proposed WEP / Beltline interchange, and the proposals for aligning cross streets for West 11th Avenue would presumably apply to a new connection to Beltline highway -- which would make a road through Bertelsen Nature Park more likely as part of the WEC proposal. Transferring the ODOT and City owned parcels purchased for the WEP to the BLM for conservation and restoration would prevent this possible revival of part of the Parkway, since including these parcels into the surrounding Bertelsen Nature Park would give them 4(f) protection.
Even I, as cynical as I am about government committees and the WEC in particular could not have imagined that the final report would recommend a more expensive proposal than the overpriced WEP.
May 2008 letter to the editor - not published by Eugene Weekly
Crandall Arambula: why most WEP opponents were not welcome at WEC In the summer of 2002, a group of WEP opponents approached Portland architecture firm Crandall-Arambula to help flesh out suggestions for the WEP alternative. This good intention quickly morphed into a political disaster for WEP opponents. While the principle in this firm had ties to 1000 Friends of Oregon, the firm was also working for real estate speculator John Musumeci on his plan to relocate Sacred Heart hospital to the McKenzie River floodplain (something that was kept secret from the WEP opponents). Despite several excellent briefings, the firm (Crandall Arambula) chose to ignore the stated position of the group of opponents, and developed a series of different designs for a new option for the WEP. They had been tasked to help illustrate an alternative TO the highway, not an alternative route of the highway. The first round suggested a "half WEP" option that had already been rejected through the Environmental Impact Statement process as twice as illegal (federal law prohibits this sort of "segmentation" of approving roads). A subsequent redesign crafted a WEP route with nearly twice as much mileage as the option that ODOT was promoting. It is hard to believe, but this new option would have had more ecological and social impacts that the version "we" were supposedly trying to stop. (This new option would have paved over more acres of wetlands, cost more, clearcut more forests and would have gone through the Royal Blue Organic blueberry farm.) The reason to cite all of this history is that the WEP opponents who opposed this disaster were shut out of this process. The one input that we were allowed to have was to point out that the Crandall Arambula team had proposed replacing a cemetery with a commercial shopping "development" -- that proposal was quietly removed just before publication, which is proof of their incompetence and refusal to look at any maps of the area to see what was in the path of their proposal. If the promoters of the WEP had tried to create an "alternative" to the WEP that was deliberately designed to undermine the pro-environment side in federal court, they would not have been able to craft a version worse than the Crandall Arambula option. At least our split on the West Eugene Parkway happened before we got to federal court, since if the "Crandall Arambula" proposal had been adopted by the plaintiffs (the environmentalists) while sueing the Federal Highway Administration, an attorney would have to stop their representation since the positions of Mary O'Brien, Rob Zako and Rob Handy in promoting the worse WEP version "Crandall Arambula" were completely incompatible with the opposition to building any part of the WEP that many of the other WEP opponents had. The only “WEP opponents” and “environmentalists” allowed on the Collaborative are those who either supported the Crandall Arambula report, or those who did not publicly oppose it.
The surreal details of the Crandall Arambula report, including maps, are listed at
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others John Huyler of the Osprey Group, the lead contractor for the WEC, told me that it was very well presented when he interviewed me as part of a community scoping process to determine the feasibility for the WEC. However, that interview happened only after complaints from numerous community members that some voices were being vindictively excluded and after Mr. Huyler had already written his report about the WEC’s feasibility. Before the WEC had its first meeting, Mary O’Brien, the core catalyst for creation of the WEC, told me that the WETLANDS alternative had “brilliant” analysis. But I guess I’ll never be forgiven for being right about the Crandall Arambula worse version of the WEP, so I won’t be welcome at these sort of planning meetings. A number of long time observers of environmental policy privately told me that it was actually an honor to be banned from participation -- it meant I didn’t have to attend a lot of boring meetings. As Groucho Marx said, I wouldn’t want to be part of a group that would have me as part of it.
Mayor Kitty Piercy and Mary O’Brien did not want broader input
Two Flavors of Elites (Liberal / Conservative), but who’s from West Eugene? The "WEC" is a committee set up in 2007 ostensibly to look at solutions to West Eugene traffic and land use issues. It is composed of friends of Mayor Kitty Piercy, selected business elites, some governmental staff and elected officials (City, County, State, BLM). The Osprey Group consultants are the facilitators of their meetings. No neighborhood associations from west Eugene are participants, and no environmentalists who opposed the Crandall Arambula worse version of the WEP were allowed to participate. Most of the WEC participants live east of Chambers Street, and the largest concentration live near Hendricks Park, on the opposite side of town from west Eugene. While none of these participants should be excluded due to geography, since the issues involved impact the whole metropolitan area, it would have been polite to invite Eugene’s 8 neighborhood organizations to participate from the start. Several WEC participants privately agreed that the guest list was too exclusive, but these private opinions did not result in constructive change for inclusiveness. Inviting friends of the Mayor plus members of the Chamber of Commerce is not the same thing as involving a diverse range of opinions and expertise -- especially since none of the participants seemed to have much interest in the energy issues that will define the ability of any projects to be built as we pass the point of Peak Oil.
Eminent Domain The WEC report does not mention the issue of Eminent Domain, which would be needed to build most of the West 11th “Boulevard.” Most of West 11th Avenue is already built out to the maximum right of way, so there is no room for local lanes, a Bus Rapid Transit line or any other expansion of the road’s cross section. It is difficult to understand how a group of seasoned political operatives, government planners and elected officials failed to even hint that dozens of existing businesses would probably need to be removed for their recommended reconfigurations. This would be more disruptive than the shifts proposed by the WEP. If they really believe that these relocations are worthwhile, they should be willing to admit that they would be necessary.
Big Boxes and Land abUse The WEC report has nice boilerplate language about the eventual construction of mixed use development along West 11th, with a goal of 10,000 residential units along this route. However, during the two years of these meetings, the City of Eugene chose not to take actions to make this goal easier to accomplish. Numerous cities across the country have passed laws to restrict or prohibit excessively large big box stores that suck economic vitality away from local business. A law in Hood River, OR was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court, paving the way for other Oregon cities to take action. Unfortunately, Eugene has declined to take this sort of step, apparently hoping that claiming to be the “world’s greatest city” and America’s greenest city would be a substitute from passing laws that would give these public relations slogans some enforcement powers. During the years of WEC committee meetings, the City allowed Office Depot and Lowe’s to open along West 11th, eliminating these areas as potential mixed used developments. Office Depot and the adjacent Applebee’s franchises were built directly along the sidewalk, precluding future “boulevard” widening of West 11th if eminent domain is not to be used. One of the many wasteful practices of the failed paradigm of suburban sprawl is the assumption that buildings can be quickly built and then torn down to be replaced with another ugly structure. This “recombinant architecture” assumes endless natural resources to build temporary buildings. This attitude is running into the finite limits of quality lumber, increasingly expensive energy inputs for concrete and steel manufacture.
Financial Crash? Peak Oil? What’s that? During the WEC meetings, the ease of getting financial capital got much more difficult, but there is no mention of this problem in the WEC report. Perhaps WEC members are correct in presuming that the crisis is merely a temporary, cyclical recession that will ease with the application of correct monetary policies, but there is a sizable body of evidence that the global financial crash is a permanent condition.
The only hint about Peak Oil in the WEC report is from the following section:
First, Eugene is heavily polluted with industrial emissions that concentrate here at the southern end of the valley, especially during the dry summer. We are a non-attainment zone for particulates, and our air is also full of formaldehyde from plywood manufacture and many other poisons that are detrimental to health. Our famous and notorious grass seed industry generates obscene amount of pollen allergens in the spring and vast clouds of smoke in the summer. Timber companies are still allowed to spray 2,4-D (Agent Orange) from helicopters in the hills around Eugene, including in the McKenzie River valley, where Eugene’s drinking water originates. This weak mention of climate change bypasses how stable climate patterns are needed for large scale agriculture. It is also possible that the Willamette Valley will see continued increases in climate refugees from other parts of the country, especially desert regions such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and southern California -- that is the only “growth” that seems realistic to plan for. Feeding the current population, whether or not we have climate refugees, should have been the top priority for the WEC, not how to draw up an architectural wish list to spend a quarter billion dollars that does not exist.
The most important question facing the human race is how we respond to the interconnected crises of Peak Oil, Climate Change, overpopulation, and resource conflicts. How we use the remaining oil will determine what the “post carbon” society will be:
The global crises of the end of cheap oil and the start of climate change require global levels of solutions (relocalize everywhere). We are not merely at peak oil, we are at peak technology, peak money, peak communication. Real solutions would require us to redirect the energy, talents, resources of global capitalism, the military industrial complex, universities, media and other pillars of our society. We have enough resources and talent to shift civilization to create a peaceful world that might be able to gracefully cope with the end of concentrated fossil fuels, or to create a global police state to control populations as the resources decline. We don't have the ability to have a peaceful world while embarking on a World War over the last of the fossil fuels that power civilization. This is a simple question that has a complicated answer - since these decisions were not made democratically. Understanding why civilization did not respond to the warnings of resource depletion decades ago is needed if a shift toward sanity is still possible at this late date. We are not "addicted" to oil -- the modern world is completely dependent upon it for our industrial agriculture systems, our transportation networks, and the global economy. Addictions are things you can give up -- but oil runs our civilization. Peak oil, minerals depletion, deforestation, depletion of fisheries, soil degradation, toxic and nuclear waste, declining per capita food production, desertification, climate change, ultraviolet radiation increases, overpopulation, declining natural gas extraction, the limits to growth on the electric grid and other "critical infrastructure" -- these and many other facets of our overload on the planet are natural limitations on the cancer-like endless growth of industrial civilization.
All civilizations are ultimately dependent on natural resources. We are dependent on oil for our civilization to function - it is not an "addiction." If we stop using fossil fuels our industrial civilization will collapse and the ensuing chaos could lead to global wars that would wreck the biosphere. If we continue to use fossil fuels, the pollution will continue to foul the world and create more resource conflicts. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Solving these problems is the greatest challenge ever faced by our species. There is a possible, positive future after Peak Oil, but the blind faith in technological exuberance is not going to get our society to make the substantial shifts to relocalize production, live much more simply, and take responsibility for our bioregions.
Peak Traffic: As the world passes the peak of global petroleum production, gasoline prices are likely to increase to the point that traffic demands on roads will be reduced. While it is impossible to accurately predict the price of fossil fuels five, ten, or twenty years in the future, it will be surprising if gasoline is not rationed on the downslope of the Peak Oil curve (either directly by ration cards or indirectly by pricing it out of reach of many who currently consume it). US federal transportation law requires that new federal-aid highway projects consider the traffic demand twenty years in the future -- so the reality of Peak Oil and climate change means that the continent wide rush to build more bypasses, wider bridges, Outer Beltways and NAFTA Superhighways will not be needed.
It is likely that within five years - in 2014 - traffic congestion everywhere will be reduced no matter what recommendations are implemented. Peak Oil will be even harder to ignore half a decade from now, since the impact of the decline of the supergiant oil fields (Cantarell in Mexico, Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the Arabian / Persian Gulf) will accelerate oil price volatility, with associated financial chaos. For more detail about Peak Traffic and its impact on transportation planning, please visit www.road-scholar.org
WETLANDS Alternative recommendations The WETLANDS alternative is detailed at Here are a few of the highlights: In 2002, the WETLANDS alternative proposed two options based on whether Peak Oil was here or near. If Peak Oil was imminent, then there would be no need to widen Beltline to four lanes between Roosevelt and West 11th (which was approved in a 1995 Environmental Assessment). Peak Oil means Peak Traffic, and also likely trigger a crash of the financial system based on exponential growth and compound interest (as happened in 2008). This more modest option would still be able to add turn lanes at West 11th and Beltline, along with other safety and efficiency upgrades. But if Peak Oil would still be a number of years in the future, then traffic levels on Beltline would require the “Phase 3” upgrade (four lanes), with the proposed WEP interchange moved to Roosevelt Blvd. For West 11th Avenue, fixing the most congested intersections would probably require adding a few turn lanes, a cheap and effective way to speed up through travel and separate turning movements from higher speed cars. One ODOT official privately estimated a few years ago that this would cost about $2 million -- roughly the amount that ODOT spent to “study” the Porkway after they agreed to cancel it at the June 2001 West Eugene Charette. Some very minor property acquisition would be required in a few places, although no buildings would probably need to be demolished. This would not be as fancy as a “multi-way” boulevard but it would be possible to build it quickly, without the need to pay consultants for endless studies (perhaps the reason why the consultants don’t push for its implementation). The money could have been diverted from the $17 million that was reallocated away from the WEP after the Federal Highway Administration canceled the highway in 2007. $2 million for a complex transportation project is very cheap. it is very interesting that the City has shown so little interest in actually building any turn lanes, perhaps if they hold more committee meetings to discuss why they are a good idea somehow these additions will materialize in the roadway. The recent construction of a coffeeshop on the northwest corner of 11th and Chambers shows that the City planners did not consider the need for turn lanes on busy streets when granting construction permits. The WEC report does suggest they looked at the possibility of extending First street from Seneca to Highway 99, which was part of the WETLANDS alternative. WETLANDS further recommends that this connector be extended to Second and Garfield. The relocation of the EWEB maintenance yard and headquarters to the West Eugene Wetlands will increase Roosevelt Blvd. traffic and reduce employment in the downtown core. This relocation is also a means of facilitating the further spread of Eugene beyond the current Urban Growth Boundary, since building new subdivisions would require new substations and other electrical work. EWEB’s future substation on Green Hill Road just south of the CORP train tracks suggests plans for this future UGB expansion. The WETLANDS alternative never had a professional land use or transportation review of its recommendations. However, several experts at various levels of government did provide critical input and feedback. There were even planners who are pro-WEP who made constructive criticism that made the alternative stronger. Curiously, none of the WEC participants ever chose to provide any input into the WETLANDS process. It is likely that most are aware of its existence, and some have even privately made compliments, although never in public and certainly not in the official reports from the West Eugene Collaborative and its Osprey Group consultant. At the start of the WETLANDS alternative, two of the WEC participants (Deborah Noble and John Allcott) offered $1,000 and $4,000, respectively, toward having a professional land use analysis on WETLANDS. But these offers were withdrawn in favor of a fruitless series of professional mediation sessions between Mary O’Brien and myself, among others -- sessions that never provided an answer to the question “why did they propose a much worse version of the WEP and then exclude those who didn’t want to build a worse WEP from their process?”
Psychology of Denial George Orwell wrote a short story about watching a man in Burma being led to the gallows -- who walked around a puddle to avoid getting his shoes wet as he was about to be executed. This parable about denial suggests that severe crises are often difficult to accept psychologically. Similarly, the WEC report recommending a quarter billion dollars for an overpriced boulevard on what is probably Eugene’s ugliest street is symptomatic of extreme denial about the reality of the financial meltdown triggered by Peak Oil. I hope that future efforts to “bring the community together” will focus on tangible needs that we are likely to have on the downslope of Peak Oil -- food, shelter, education, local currency -- and that a diverse range of voices will be welcome, rich and poor, Democrat / Republican / Green / Libertarian, town and gown, neighborhood organizations, and even people who aren’t schmoozers with politicians and bureaucrats.
The "WEC" is a committee set up in 2007 ostensibly to look at solutions to West Eugene traffic and land use issues. It is composed of friends of Mayor Kitty Piercy, selected business elites, some governmental staff and elected officials (City, County, State, BLM). The Osprey Group consultants are the facilitators of their meetings. No neighborhood associations from west Eugene are participants, and no environmentalists who opposed the Crandall Arambula worse version of the WEP were allowed to participate. After over a year of criticism about the exclusive nature of the WEC, which several participants privately told this writer that they agreed it was an omission, in September 2008 two of the neighborhood organizations were allowed to join the Collaborators for their final meetings. Perhaps in another few years the rest of the West Eugene neighborhood organizations will be allowed to participate, too. see the map prepared by the Collaborators at: "transit on WEP route" The graphic is hard to read, and certainly not a final proposal, but looks like some people didn't learn from previous mistakes. Crandall Arambula was the 2002 proposal to reroute the WEP and build 10 1/2 miles of roadway (ODOT wanted 5 1/2 miles). It would have gone through more wetlands, more forest, farms, homes and would have cost more than ODOT's version. Federal highway law prohibits building federal aid transportation projects through parks if there is a "prudent and feasible" alternative, and requires that the least damaging alternative be selected if parkland is involved. Offering an alleged alternative with greater damage merely makes one look stupid in court, it does not help prevent anything other than sanity. No wonder that Kitty Piercy refused to protect the City of Eugene owned properties as parkland now the WEP is supposedly dead, since that protection would also block a federally funded bus route through parklands, as shown on the map of the "collaborators." It is not a surprise that the West Eugene Collaborators didn't want anyone in their clique who actively opposed the 2002 effort to sell out the WEP campaign, since there would be vocal opposition to paving an express bus route through the wetlands (which makes no ecological or transportation sense). It seems likely that rising oil prices are going to make these sorts of endless planning processes moot in the near future. The money wasted on the Collaborators would be better spent thinking about how the region will cope with oil rationing and other emergencies caused by the end of cheap oil.
"Stakeholder" is a public relations term that is a substitute for "citizen," technically, a "stakeholder" is a person who holds the "stakes" (bets) of a gambler in a casino. Perhaps it is a subtle way to acknowledge that citizens who participate in these sort of governmental planning processes are gambling that their concerns might be taken seriously. There is no definition of who constitutes an interest group (or "stakeholder" or "survey stake holder"). If it only refers to the membership of the WEC, then it excludes the neighborhood organizations of West Eugene (groups officially recognized by the City of Eugene). There does not seem to be any interest at the WEC in addressing the serious energy crises that Peak Oil is going to have on the region's functioning - planning how to build more roads and/or bus lines without looking at energy shortages is an enormous missed opportunity. The only groups represented at WEC that have membership beyond a handful of people are all pro-WEP business interests. There is no grassroots community or environmental representation.
www.designcommunity.com/pipermail/wec/2007-October/000026.html PIERCY Kitty Kitty.PIERCY at ci.eugene.or.us
http://wiki.eugeneneighbors.org/wiki/WEC_members WEC members - April 2008 33 members total, including:
There are eight neighborhood organizations -- officially recognized by the City of Eugene -- that are in the area of west Eugene that the "Collaborative" is looking at for road, transit and zoning changes. None of them were invited to be part of the WEC, although after a year of criticism about this exclusion the WEC may be willing to consider a more inclusionary approach. Active Bethel Citizens, Churchill Area Neighbors, Far West Neighborhood Association, Jefferson Westside Neighbors, River Road Community Organization, Trainsong Neighbors, West Eugene Neighborhood Association, and Whiteaker Community Council would all be directly impacted by any WEC decisions that become adopted policies. A co-chair of the Neighborhood Leaders Council is part of the WEC, but he lives in the easternmost part of the City. One of the other neighborhood associations has told this writer that he has not provided detailed feedback (or requested detailed input) about what the WEC is doing. While these issues are city wide and regional in their scope, excluding west Eugene citizens from this process suggests either gross incompetence or a duplicitous agenda -- neither of which are acceptable or democratic. www.designcommunity.com/pipermail/wec/2008-February/000085.html [WEC] Inviting select people to join us in our 'design storming'? Jan Wostmann
[note: this message only referenced four of the eight directly impacted neighborhood organizations, but even those four were not invited to participate. In addition, Mr. Snyder lived west of downtown but was not put on the WEC to represent his neighborhood's association.] [note: the City of Eugene's website generates excessively long web links to reference important pages. Before the website was overhauled by the last set of consultants, weblinks on the City's website were short and easy to remember.]
note: organizations highlighted in bold are in areas under consideration by the WEC but not invited to participate in the discussions
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