Eugene residents love their parks. Yet a lack of funding has caused maintenance cuts and kept new parks from opening. Yesterday (Wednesday) the City Council approved having a public hearing on a proposal to collect a fee for parks operations.
The Council voted 5 to 3 to look at changing a city ordinance, allowing it to increase an existing stormwater fee. Public Works Spokesman Eric Jones says the small addition to the monthly utility bill would be an efficient solution:
Jones: “It’s very cost effective because increasing one line charge doesn’t require us to go through setting up a whole new billing mechanism to collect what’s probably going to be a fairly small amount of money each month.”
Jones says if the public agrees to the ordinance change, and the council approves it, then the details of the fee and its structure would be worked out. He says as an example, a one dollar per month increase would generate about a half million dollars for the parks department. Jones says it will be a couple months before a public hearing is scheduled.