Eugene Weekly

 • As we go to press this week, we don’t know who Gov. Kate Brown will appoint by Aug. 1 to be Lane County’s first female district attorney. We do know that an election for the tough job will be held in May 2016 and the incumbent, either Patty Perlow or Kamala Shugar, will have a whopping advantage. Hopefully, the unfair political attacks against Perlow for her very subordinate role in the taping of a Catholic confessional decades ago was not a factor in the governor’s choice. Continue reading →

• Looks like Eugene’s urban growth boundary will be expanding onto farmland in order to accommodate future industrial growth, along with some parkland and school land. The majority on the City Council this week gave a nod to the expansion, and it goes now to city and county planning commissions and public hearings. Why do we continue to develop and pave over prime farmland when such lands will become more valuable, even critically so, in the future? Continue reading →

• As we predicted, the Eugene City Council this week revived the Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption program, aka “tax breaks for the rich,” but at least it has some redeeming qualities. The council was under threat from Brian Obie and other developers that they would abandon their downtown housing plans without the tax breaks, but we’re not convinced they wouldn’t build anyway. Think about it. If you were a developer, wouldn’t you try to leverage every advantage possible to maximize your return on investment? Continue reading →

• MUPTE may be going to the voters if the Eugene City Council votes to revive it this week just after we go to press. Opponents of the controversial Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption program were planning to submit initial paperwork to the city clerk this week for two citizen initiatives. Chief petitioner is Paul Conte. Continue reading →

• Civic Stadium’s fiery destruction this week is a shocking loss for our community and this disaster is particularly painful since so much money, time, energy and love went into saving the beloved grandstand from the bulldozer. We see on social media that the news of Civic’s destruction went around the world and generated a collective “Oh, no!” from thousands of people who for generations have watched the games, played football or baseball on the field or worked in and around the property. Where do we go from here? Continue reading →

• The death last week of nine people at the hands of a racist in a Charleston, South Carolina, church that was founded by Denmark Vesey, a man killed for planning a slave revolt, is not unthinkable or unspeakable, as an excellent essay in Esquire by journalist Charles P. Pierce points out. Someone did think to sit through an hour of Bible study and then kill a pastor and his parishioners. Someone did think to sell Dylann Roof a gun, someone did think —  and talk and act —  to ensure the Confederate flag flies over South Carolina’s Capitol. Continue reading →

• Fans of Eugene’s Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption turned out to voice their support at the Eugene City Council meeting June 16 in a repeat performance of an unofficial MUPTE public forum June 8. The council will meet again on the topic July 8. We predict the 10-year tax breaks for developers will be reinstated with some added restrictions, but probably not enough restrictions to deal with our chronic need for affordable housing. We question some underlying assumptions about MUPTE. Continue reading →

• This week marks a changing of the guard at The Register-Guard, and outgoing Editor and Publisher Tony Baker wrote a farewell column in the daily’s Sunday Commentary section May 31. The column was clearly intended to diminish fears that new Editor and Publisher N. Christian Anderson III will oversee the kinds of changes at the R-G that he and the Advance Publications chain implemented at The Oregonian, taking the venerable Oregon daily and turning it into a pitiful tabloid. Continue reading →