In the April 27, 2018, issue of the Register-Guard, Eugene resident Scott Bartlett writes in a letter:
Measure 20-283, for an elected city auditor, offers Eugeneans our loudest message to City Hall. Oops — well, we used to have a City Hall before it was replaced by an empty crushed concrete pit, fanning city offices throughout town at $1.3 million taxpayer funded rents per year.
A forlorn empty square block exists where once stood a magnificent 100,000-square-foot imaginative and welcoming governmental complex. World-renown Turner Construction estimated that it could have been affordably rehabilitated, but other agendas were at work.
More than 13,000 Eugeneans, playing fairly and by the rules, signed Measure 20-283 petitions circulated by volunteers who honored Oregon’s hallowed initiative process. They deserved a clean vote.
Measure 20-287, by contrast, was a last-minute effort by political insiders to muddy the waters and toss out malodorous, disingenuous and distracting red herrings about “affordability.”
We should look no further than that empty gravel pit to resolve any question over which measure to support.
Measure 20-283 sends a message that will be heard.