Chamber, public ask to be part of city budget process

Presenter: The Eugene Chamber of Commerce explains why it helped block the city’s $10 million service fee until the voters decide. After the former mayor voted to close revenue meetings to the public, the Chamber is now asking to be part of the process and part of the solution. Speaking at the Neighborhood Leaders Council March 25, Chamber President and CEO Brittany Quick-Warner:

Brittany Quick-Warner (Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, president and CEO): I just want to talk a little bit about the Chamber’s perspective and the decision to refer this fire fee ordinance to the voters.

[00:00:31] Our chamber has a really long history of supporting tax initiatives in this community, including levies and bonds for the library, for the parks, for the schools—4J, LCC.

[00:00:43] I’ve been at the Chamber for 13 years and there hasn’t been a single tax that we have not actually come out in support of, including the public safety payroll tax that the city passed a handful of years ago, after we worked with them to urge that that went to a public vote, eventually in their process.

[00:01:00] So when this fee came up, we actually spent a lot of time providing feedback to staff—over the last almost 11 months now—and expressing our concerns. So we participated as wholeheartedly as we could in that process, the opportunities that we were given to do so. And we were pretty public about some of the issues that we felt this fire fee did not address in the way that it was proposed.

[00:01:23] We testified back in November in public comment suggesting that the city maybe take a different, a little bit more transparent approach. The public in general and the conversations that we’ve had with folks who have signed this referendum suggests that calling it a ‘fire service fee’ does not feel transparent to the community when they have been very actively talking about, you’ll hear the opposition talk about how ‘We need this fee to save our libraries and to save our parks and to save our animal services.’

[00:01:50] That is part of the problem, is that we didn’t have to call this a fire service fee. We could have called the city service fee. We actually made that recommendation back in the fall, as a possible solution to this conversation.

[00:02:01] So ultimately it was about transparency. And then having a fee that goes on indefinitely with no limits on what City Council could increase it without any kind of weigh-in from the public, it just fundamentally is against some of the values that we hold as an organization.

[00:02:18] We believe that voters should have an opportunity to weigh in on the things they have to pay money for.

[00:02:22] It was a long, in-depth sort of conversation with the city when they passed the public safety payroll tax, that they would eventually send that to the voters. We asked for it to be done immediately. The city wanted to not do it. They came back and said ’10 years,’ we settled on seven, 2027 we will vote on that public safety payroll tax.

[00:02:39] It’s about $25 million that our community, I think, is at risk of losing now because of the way that the city has approached this conversation.

[00:02:47] So, we just are desperate for a transparent and a fiscally responsible process. Our Chamber has wanted to be and attempted to be involved. People have applied to be on that Budget Committee, have unfortunately not been selected.

[00:03:01] And so we’ve been paying attention and weighing in and engaging, and that’s part of the conversation I wanted to seed today is that the city has a couple concepts that they’ve put out of what that $11.5 million of cuts would look like. But that’s not actually the process that our community goes through. The city manager will propose a budget and the Budget Committee has an opportunity to influence what that looks like.

[00:03:22] It’s done every single year. That way there’s public comment, there’s opportunity to weigh in. We have done so in the past. We have seen a lot of the folks who have come year after year who have to advocate for the library or the parks, or the animal services because we have a structural budget issue and this fire service fee does not solve that.

[00:03:41] We are kicking the can down the road on an issue that we have got to figure out how to solve long-term and fundamentally for our budget. It doesn’t mean that it has to be 100% cuts either. That’s never been our argument. We just want to have a comprehensive conversation where we’re looking at cuts and potential revenue together, and then we’re doing it more strategically.

[00:04:01] The revenue committee didn’t even consider what the community safety payroll tax element would be in this conversation with the fire service fee. (We) talked to multiple people on that committee that said, ‘Yeah, we didn’t really talk about that.’

[00:04:12] So now we are at risk of losing $25 million because the public is not trustful in the process, in order to save this $8.5 million of $10 (million) with the fire service fee adding some funding for fire. So we’ve just got to be more transparent, more responsible with these conversations.

[00:04:30] It’s hard. We’re not saying it’s going to be easy. And we absolutely want to be a part of that process. So we are not saying, ‘Someone else go fix this.’ We are saying, ‘Let’s sit down and have this conversation together and actually dig into both sides of the budget.’ That’s how we have to do this at home in our own families. It’s how our businesses have to do it. And so we really want to see the city be able to do that as well.

[00:04:49] And we want to be a part of the process and a part of the solution. Unfortunately, we just feel like this missed the mark.

[00:04:55] And Council has an opportunity, so it’s certified for the ballot. It’s on, most likely, April 9, City Council will reconvene and talk about what happens next. So they could send this to the ballot November, which is what’s qualified. They could have a special election in August. They could decide to repeal this ordinance and replace it with something else.

[00:05:14] So we are actively in conversations with them about what some different options could look like, and we want to be a part of that process and we want to be helpful in providing solutions and options for the city.

[00:05:25] But it just got to a point, I will say, we also strongly urged the city to put this to the voters themselves. We were very transparent in the fact that if they didn’t do that, that we had heard enough people who are frustrated about it, that we anticipate a referendum process initiating. And so we were very upfront about that. So we’ve been trying to be as open and public and transparent about this as possible.

[00:05:47] Definitely we are not in a situation where we want to cut our libraries or cut our animal services. That’s not at all what this is about. This is about a bigger, more comprehensive, long-term budget solution, that we want to be a part of.

[00:05:59] Presenter: That’s Chamber President and CEO Brittany Quick-Warner speaking at the Neighborhood Leaders Council March 25. A fee supporter was on the agenda but did not attend the meeting. We’ve reached out to offer equal time.

[00:06:13] With elections officials certifying the required number of valid signatures March 24, the city manager will present the referendum to the City Council April 9. In addition to setting an election date, the Council could choose to repeal the fire fee; urge adoption or defeat; or offer an alternative measure on the same ballot.

Audio and video recordings from the March 25, 2025 NLC meeting shared by community contributors with consent of the speakers.