City passes budget with no amendments

Despite nearly three and a half hours of public comment calling for defunding police

Eugene city council passes budget, no amendments

On Monday night, the Eugene City Council held a public hearing and took action on the fiscal year 2021 budget. At the end of the night they unanimously passed the budget with little commentary.

This was despite the dozens of the callers and what the city council said was hundreds emails telling them to defund the Eugene Police Department. Only one of the person left a comment in the 3.5 hours in favor of the budget, and he still noted how the council could make changes in response to their consternation that they had a tight legal timeline for passing the budget. Of the people that left comments in favor of defunding EPD, many cited BIPOC Liberation’s Collective’s demands or the community petition calling for diverting 30% of EPD’s funds to CAHOOTS.

https://instagram.com/p/CBrt–DlzPD/

Council pushed off comments to change the budget by saying they will be holding a work session on July 20 to discuss reforms to the police. Earlier in the day six of the eight councilors put out a statement signaling a similar message of wanting to funnel the work into a task force.

4J school board place fate for SROs to end of year

Rallies, write-ins, and sit-ins led up to Wednesday’s 4J School District boar hearing calling on the district not to renew its contract with EPD and kick SROs out of schools. The board was initially offered a 1 year contract extension with the EPD by the superintendent, but through amendments by Martina Shabram ended up with a contract that goes through December 31 with a 30-day escape clause. Additionally the motion stated that any new proposal could not include SROs stationed at schools. However, it should be noted that the proposal leaves open the gap of continuing a contract with EPD after December 31 with SROs stationed out of the district office.

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The week ahead