With city budget cuts looming, Jan Spencer shares vision for NLC, resilient neighborhoods

Presenter: Jan Spencer offered public comment at the Neighborhood Leaders Council March 25, as the NLC starts discussing city budget cuts and the future of the neighborhood program. He says it’s in the NLC’s best interest to become self-sustaining, and to expand its preparedness training to include permaculture.

[00:00:20] Jan Spencer: What I am proposing is a citywide network. I see important city programs like Neighborhood Watch, like Community Emergency Response Team, otherwise known as CERT, and Map Your Neighborhood.

[00:00:38] And I know Randy Prince has had these ideas and I know Randy’s had an interest in preparedness for decades and Randy’s a very good guy. I like Randy. So this is in no way any effort to try to poach on his space. These are all excellent programs, and what my interest is, is to add a resilience and a permaculture overlay to that stuff.

[00:01:08] Just add an hour of classroom time, explaining the value of grass to garden, of rainwater catchment, of passive solar, even active electric solar, and edible landscaping.

[00:01:26] The whole idea expands enormously. These kinds of home production ideas, which a small but appreciable number of people are already doing that stuff in Eugene, and a small but appreciable number of people are doing that kind of stuff all over the country. This isn’t rocket science. People are motivated partly because it’s preparedness.

[00:01:50] Presenter: Neighborhood organizations are well-positioned to involve the area’s many talented residents in improving our quality of life. Jan Spencer:

[00:02:00] Jan Spencer: The city says engage the expertise and the talent we have in our community to address all these kinds of problems.

[00:02:09] They sent out a survey to 1,500 people, you know, they had a survey with their strategic planning goals and maybe 1,500 people responded. And that’s good. But is that really tapping into the talent and the expertise? The city doesn’t have time to do that. They don’t have the money to do this kind of stuff.

[00:02:33] And in my opinion, what I’m advocating, the city shouldn’t be doing this stuff anyway. It ought to be, people get off their butts and meet their neighbors and look after their own best interests.

[00:02:49] And the city can support and encourage that, and absolutely, that’s welcome. The neighborhood associations are perfectly located to do this. This could attract, I think, a lot more people into being involved in their neighborhood associations.

[00:03:07] There’s a very much as much of a social component to this as, ‘Let’s grow some vegetables and catch some rainwater,’ because my ideal is that people start taking their fences down and they start creating microsuburban ecovillages.

[00:03:27] And when I talk about what could this network do, there could be site tours all over Eugene to see these properties that are doing this kind of stuff. We’ve had site tours over the years in about 12 of Eugene’s 24 neighborhoods. This network could organize site tours.

[00:03:50] And the network could help promote a site tour in Friendly neighborhood, a site tour in Laurel Hill, East Blair Housing Co-op. I’ve done a lot of site tours at East Blair Co-op because the co-op owns about eight properties and they can synchronize the land use of those eight properties in the best way possible for all the people who live at the co-op.

[00:04:16] What East Blair is doing in their own way, here in middle-class suburbia, people could apply those same sort of ideas and they could reduce the amount of money they have to spend. They could reduce their ecological footprints. They can improve their safety and security. They can have healthier food to eat. They can have healthier interpersonal neighborly relations.

[00:04:43] This is the bigger picture for this network.

[00:04:48] Presenter: Preparedness programs could bring in speakers on growing and preserving food. Jan Spencer:

[00:04:54] Jan Spencer: The network could also organize important educational presentations, you know, like: How do you set up a water catchment system?  You know: How do you store fruit and vegetables?  I mean, and there’s also entities in Eugene that already teach good stuff that nobody knows about, like the master gardeners, like the school garden project. So this network could also identify these entities, these organizations in Eugene that are already allies for doing all this stuff.

[00:05:41] So the network doesn’t have to do everything at all. What it does is it identifies all the good stuff, permaculture, you know, community gardens, all kinds of stuff. Find out about groups of neighbors who are doing this stuff and they can explain how well this works: setting up a tool share, reducing ecological footprints, learning civic culture, learning how to communicate with other people.

[00:06:10] I have an ecological and social interest in this too. Our society is nowhere remotely sustainable and I would have, let’s say, reservations about it even if we didn’t have climate change and all the other stuff, because in my opinion, it degrades human potential massively.

[00:06:32] And that’s why we’ve got so many problems, because people are more distracted, you know, by the media and shopping and all that. I want to hear them say: ‘Well, where do all these problems come from?’ That’s not what the city talks about. That’s what this network can talk about, or at least part of it can.

[00:06:57] We got all these affordable housing and budget crisis just ongoing and drugs, all this stuff. Where do these problems come from? And that’s what needs to be a part of the civic conversation.

[00:07:12] Presenter: How can people get involved? Jan Spencer:

[00:07:15] Jan Spencer: I would encourage people to find out what neighborhood they live in and contact their neighborhood association. On the city website, you can find out what is your neighborhood and you can contact your neighborhood chair and say I’m interested in this resilience preparedness stuff.

[00:07:35] I have a website also, SuburbanPermaculture.org, and people can contact me through my website too.

[00:07:44] Presenter: With public comment at the Neighborhood Leaders Council, Jan Spencer suggests a future for the neighborhood program that can engage the talents and expertise of our neighbors. For more, see Jan Spencer’s website at SuburbanPermaculture.org, and your local neighborhood association.