Budget committee urged to consider neighborhoods’ return on investment

Presenter: Back-to-back public comments at the Budget Committee May 14 ask the city to keep funding the neighborhood program. From Jefferson Westside and Southeast Neighbors, Sandra Bishop:

[00:00:09] Sandra Bishop (JWN, SEN): My name is Sandra Bishop, and I am here to give you a bit of a solution. And that is, I’m here to talk to you about how to avoid costs. And I want to go over two points today, I’ll do my first point briefly first.

Number one, open your budget process. Open your Budget Committee. You’ve been doing the Budget Committee appointments the same way for many years. It’s not worked very well. You need to have a wider representation on this Budget Committee. So there are ways to do that.

[00:00:45] The second thing is: I want to ask that you not cut the support for neighborhood associations. It’s less than $150,000 in the budget for the actual expenses that go to neighborhoods or the money that goes to neighborhoods that are recognized by the city to be used by the neighborhoods, plus one staff or 1.5 staff people. So look very carefully at the rate of return.

[00:01:19] I’m here speaking tonight as an individual. I’m not representing the neighborhoods. But I’m on the Jefferson Westside neighborhood board. I also am active in the Southeast Neighbors.

[00:01:32] And if you look at what the neighborhoods do, you’re going to see that you can avoid a lot of costs. The, simply the maintenance of parks that the ‘Friends of Parks’ groups do through the neighborhoods is a huge investment that the city doesn’t have to make.

[00:01:51] The neighborhood group also designs and mails out newsletters that go to every address in town. You’re paying the cost, but you have professionals that are ‘volunteers’ designing those.

[00:02:03] So there’s matching grants; that $120,000 includes the matching grants. You’ve got a tree inventory that was done, you’ve got safety equipment that was given away, so please, look carefully at what the neighborhood money is doing and don’t cut it.

[00:02:23] Presenter: From Laurel Hill Valley, Tom Bruno:

[00:02:26] Tom Bruno (Laurel Hill Valley): I’m Tom Bruno. I was going to talk a little bit about neighborhood, and it’s interesting, that we both came back-to-back. But the city provided $120,000 for mailings to the neighborhoods. Now a lot of people don’t realize there are no cell phones, there are no internets in a lot of the neighborhoods and this is the only way information gets transmitted.

[00:02:53] We had an outstanding meeting with Chief Skinner. (Councilor) Alan (Zelenka) gave a fantastic briefing on the fire fee and those informations were collected and passed back to the neighbors.

[00:03:08] Now: In the case of Laurel Hill Valley, we have probably the most land that has to go through a process with land use. If we cut out those mailings, then I’m going to challenge all the councilors: How are you going to comply with the land use requirement for neighborhood meetings?

[00:03:30] This is our means of communications. Now, in the case of Laurel Hill Valley, we’re donating over 2,000 hours with city parks to build a nice bike path and nice walking path for Moon Mountain.

[00:03:48] There is a lot of cost avoidance and what I’m asking you for is maybe $120,000 to keep and protect our ability to communicate with our citizens. I’m going to tell you, the presentation by both Alan (Zelenka) and (Police) Chief (Chris) Skinner and the city staff to our neighborhood meeting was one of the highlights. And that’s we got the most feedback from our neighbors, saying, ‘We need more of that.’

[00:04:20] So I’m just going to tell you, I was a co-chair of Laurel Hill Valley, I sit on the Neighborhood Leaders Council, and I would just offer to say: You have volunteers. Now I know Alan was an old water polo player. He could probably be a lifeguard out there and help. I was a lifeguard in my days.

I have time and I would like to be able to volunteer it, but we got to be able to communicate back and forth.

[00:04:47] Presenter: Two representatives of Eugene neighborhood associations speak at the Budget Committee May 14. They ask the city to continue its modest funding for the neighborhood program.

This story produced by John Q for Whole Community News, reporting on neighborhoods and nonprofits on KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks community radio.