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After the closure of the county’s armory warming shelter, the homeless have few choices but the county jail now. Eugene Acting Police Chief Pete Kerns told the City Club last month that arrest and the jail is where “many†homeless mentally ill people wind up. “It’s a dry warm place where they can get warm meals and some treatment,†he said. Continue reading
Remember all the hype last fall in The Register-Guard and local TV news that crime downtown was frightening people away from the Eugene public library? Library visits were up 21 percent last year, the largest increase in five years, according to the library’s recent annual report. Continue reading
Twenty-one Roosevelt Middle School students biked to school today to save the world and perhaps win a prize, according to Freiker. Continue reading
The big federal stimulus is trickling down to a big local disappointment. “Eugene has a list of over $200 million in ‘ready to go’ projects that fit the stimulus criteria,†Mayor Kitty Piercy said in her state of the city speech in January. “We expect these projects, if funded, could create 4,404 well-paying jobs by the end of next year–with an emphasis on green industry.” Continue reading
Eugene will get half as much federal stimulus money per citizen as Springfield under an allocation approved unanimously today by the Metropolitan Policy Committee. Eugene will get $3 million for road preservation projects while Springfield will get $1.7 million. The money will create an estimated 30 jobs in Eugene and 17 in Springfield. Continue reading
Sad news for Bijou fans: Boo, the enormous, ever-present theater cat, died this weekend. “She would have been 23 on the 17th,” says Joe Lewis, whose exact job I am unsure of but who, as far as I can tell, is the Bijou’s general does-everything-what-needs-doing kind of guy (the R-G last referred to him as the “administrative assistant,” but that sounds less fun). Continue reading
Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, the state and the Oregon Toxics Alliance have planed a town hall meeting on the planned gypsy moth spraying over a large swath of south Eugene. Here’s the press release: Mayor Piercy Co-Sponsors Town Hall on Gypsy Moth Spraying Panel Members Will Provide Information and Respond to Questions, Comments from the Public Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:00-9:00 p.m. Eugene City Council Chamber, 777 Pearl Street Continue reading
News of a whale washing up on the beach at Devil’s Elbow has given the media an excuse to talk about video of ODOT mistakenly blowing up a previous whale. So…here’s the old video, seen 1.3 million times on YouTube: Continue reading
The Eugene City Council voted unanimously to consider delaying the imposition of pending street assessments to look for a fairer way to finance the projects. Continue reading
The Eugene City Council voted unanimously to send the recommendations of a subcommittee on the Police Auditor to a public hearing. Continue reading