PSL invites ‘People’s Budget’ discussion May 18
9 min read
Presenter: As the city enters into three weeks of Budget Committee meetings, voters are being told they must choose either losing favorite services or paying a $10 million fee that will hit hardest on renters and low-income residents. The Party for Socialism and Liberation asks: Are those really our only two options? Rob Fisette:
Rob Fisette: We were seeing this conversation about the fire service fee come up in City Council and then be objected to by the Chamber of Commerce and then all of the work that they were doing to try to fight it and put it on the ballot. And I think, you know, from our perspective, we understand that the system as a whole is the main problem.
We don’t actually have to take this budget crisis for what they’re saying that it is. We don’t even have to take the solution that they’re offering for what they say it is.
[00:00:50] Presenter: In the past, whenever City Manager Sarah Medary and team asked for taxpayer money in levies and bonds, they’d specify an end date, tell how the money would be spent, and share reporting for oversight with the mantra, ‘Promises made, promises kept.’
[00:01:06] But with her final proposed budget, she leaves a new mantra for local government: ‘No promises.’ With no end date, no cap, and no oversight specified for the fee, the Eugene Chamber of Commerce dubbed it ‘the forever fee,’ and helped gather enough signatures to send it to a vote of the people.
[00:01:25] While voters are being asked to side with either the city’s political leaders or its business leaders, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is proposing that residents convene to propose a new ‘People’s Budget.’ You’re invited to bring your ideas to the library this Sunday, May 18. Rob Fisette:
[00:01:44] Rob Fisette: We want to understand the class character of the budget as it has developed over time; the class character of the solution that they’re offering; and what the fight even is between the two most powerful entities in town, the city government and the Chamber of Commerce.
[00:02:00] And then how would we understand the source of the crisis? How would we understand the decisions that have led to this situation? And then how would we frame the solution?
[00:02:12] Because it’s not enough to just critique. We also want to put forward a vision of how things can be different, expand our imagination of what we could actually have, and that kind of led us down this path of ‘The People’s Budget,’ and understanding that if people had popular control over what services we were choosing to fund and at what level, they would make very different choices entirely.
[00:02:37] One of the biggest examples recently is the ending of the CAHOOTS program in Eugene.
[00:02:42] The city in the long run, from a class analysis, will have no interest in maintaining that service. And I think that we saw that develop over the last five years and finally end in its termination.
[00:02:54] It’s a little bit complicated in that it’s not entirely a city-funded service. It’s, like, a little bit private, and a little bit city-funded.
[00:03:01] But I definitely remember during the discussions around the Community Safety Initiative that a lot of those funds are coming from the city through the EPD budget and over to them.
[00:03:11] Even then, when this Community Safety Initiative was passed and put into place, everyone was saying the funding for CAHOOTS is not sufficient for maintaining this service over time, at a level that’s actually supporting the workers who are doing the work. And that’s why there’s such high turnover.
[00:03:28] And we as a city, we can choose to prioritize that at a higher level if we want it to be sustainable. And that was right before it took off massively as a nationwide model, basically, of how to offer alternative response, especially in cases of mental health crisis, you know, rather than sending a police officer.
[00:03:46] And so to see now, just four years later, that service being, you know, totally destroyed, basically, just not even available here in the city of Eugene, where it started—
[00:03:57] But there are a lot of other cuts that are proposed as well that people are quite mad about.
[00:04:02] Presenter: From the Party for Socialism and Liberation in Eugene, Ellie:
[00:04:06] Ellie: One of the things that had been striking for me is just the breadth of the cuts, how there are so many different programs affected and like there are so many people in town that are frustrated. And that’s just the dominant thing that I’m seeing around is, just people being frustrated with all these cuts.
[00:04:19] And I mean, looking into it, I can really see why. I mean, we talked about CAHOOTS, right, getting cut. We’re seeing cuts to the library, Amazon Pool, Sheldon Community Center, to animal services like Greenhill shelter.
[00:04:34] The library, they’re going to be closed on Sunday and Monday, at least that’s the proposal that they’re going to do. It seems like they’re already planning on following through on that. We’ve heard from people, including one librarian, who said that they’ve been given a notice of termination ahead of time, that their job will be terminated in July. And so we’re already seeing the effects of those proposed cuts, as they’re starting to take action early.
[00:05:00] Amazon Pool, they’re saying it’s going to be open this summer, but it’ll be closed permanently starting in October. Same with Sheldon Community Center, which they also provided child care. So that’ll be a loss of a source of child care for community members.
[00:05:16] The list of cuts to Greenhill specifically, they’ve put out an email and a call to action that they’ll no longer be able to impound animals in situations where they have bitten people; where the owner is arrested or experiences a medical emergency; for stray animals that are posing a traffic or safety hazard; animals that are abandoned on public property or at businesses; or when animals are the victims of abuse or neglect from their owners.
[00:05:47] They won’t be able to bring stray animals in that are sick or need health care. They will lose the ability to do centralized animal lost-and-found reporting, no capacity for animal cruelty and neglect complaints, no capacity to enforce rabies mandates or investigating bites and other potential issues.
[00:06:01] It’s a lot. And, you know, we already talked about CAHOOTS. And that has in some ways been interpreted as like cuts to the police. But they’re specifically in cuts to CAHOOTS, cuts to the animal services, and cuts to public records reporting. So yeah, it’s a cut to the police budget, but it’s specifically a cut that will make it harder for the public to access police records.
[00:06:27] That’s where it’s really important to zoom in on not just who is getting cuts, but what they’re cutting and how those cuts are going to affect the people of Eugene.
[00:06:36] Presenter: Rob Fisette:
[00:06:37] Rob Fisette: When you cut the library, when you close it for two days, that sounds like you’re harming children and families, which you are, you absolutely are. But also this is a place where people that don’t have a home to go to, like, use this as a space of respite, for things as simple as using the bathroom. You have people who can now no longer use the bathroom inside. And so: What is the impact of that on the public?
[00:07:04] We’ve seen what the impact of that is. A few years ago, (Ward 2 Councilor) Matt Keating came to one of our Southeast Neighbors (neighborhood association) meetings to talk about a case, right? The result was not, ‘We’re going to make resources available for people who need to use the bathroom.’ It’s, ‘We’re going to make it an offense to park your RV in this area.’
[00:07:24] And so understanding the class character of all of these cuts they’re proposing is really essential to kind of seeing what line they’re advocating and how they’re treating, like, the actual working people of the city.
[00:07:37] So with all that said, to put forward that positive vision, we have our upcoming People’s Budget event on May 18 at 1:30 p.m. at the Public Library. So that’s on a Sunday, that’s on a day that they’re proposing to close the library in the future.
[00:07:54] That will be there holding this People’s Budget event where we’re inviting people to come to talk about a budget that is centered around the people’s needs of the city of Eugene . We want people to come with their ideas of what that should look like and talk about that with us so that we can put together a proposal that would actually meet those needs.
And then we can bring it to the Budget Committee and bring it to the City Council and we’ll have additional calls to action about that.
[00:08:22] But you know, if you can’t make it to the People’s Budget and you have strong feelings, you should by all means be emailing your city councilor and the mayor. You should by all means show up on May 14 at the Budget Committee meeting where there’s going to be public testimony, Budget Committee meetings on May 21 and 28 at 5:30 p.m., bringing public comment to those spaces about what we think the budget should look like.
[00:08:46] And then there’s also going to be a series of regular City Council meetings throughout that time that we’re going to be encouraging people to attend.
[00:08:53] Because it’s just unacceptable to make such a blatant attack on the working people of Eugene in this way. It couldn’t be more blatant. They went with the scenario of cuts option that was deepest and hardest on library, cultural and community services.
[00:09:13] They didn’t have to do that. But that was a choice, and I think part of that choice is like putting a gun to your head to say: ‘You’ll pass the fire fee.’ We don’t accept that either, right? We just don’t accept that choice of like, ‘We’re going to shoot this puppy unless you pass our budget,’ like, ‘We’re going to close the library.’
[00:09:30] They’re just making threats, like, ‘Okay, we’re going to get rid of the things that were struggled for and won and that matter to you most.’
[00:09:40] We view that as a threat and we should be communicating that back to them that we understand the proposal that they made as a threat and that we don’t appreciate threats.
[00:09:50] Our role is to expose what they’re doing and why and because: They don’t have to do that. Had the EPD budget grown over the last three years at the same rate as the Parks and Rec and the Library budget has grown, like there would be no budget shortfall. It’s just that they grew it even more than that.
[00:10:09] Had these MUPTE exemptions not come through, like one or two or three of them, like we wouldn’t be anywhere near this kind of budget shortfall.
[00:10:18] You just have to arrive at the conclusion that the result is the intention, right? And the result is always cuts to the things that people need and use most, and always, you know, a deferral to armed FTEs on the streets and so on. Like, this is always the result. And if this is always the result, then to be honest, this is always the intention.
[00:10:39] The People’s Budget event, I hope will be well attended, and we’ll get a lot of good input from people about what they care about. And then we’ll take the fight from there.
[00:10:49] Presenter: The Party for Socialism and Liberation invites you to the People’s Budget event Sunday, May 18, at the library, starting at 1:30 p.m.
This story produced by John Q for KEPW 97.3, an organizational member of your local time bank, supporting local news right here on Eugene’s PeaceWorks community radio.
