QuickTake:

The council’s action marks the formal end for a contentious fire service fee, but long-term budget planning is needed for the years ahead.

The Eugene City Council formally repealed a fire service fee that officials initially intended as a long-term budget solution to stave off deep cuts. 

The council’s 7-1 vote, with Councilor Eliza Kashinsky opposed, came Monday, July 14. The action, while expected, marks the formal end of the fee, which drew widespread opposition from the community and a challenge that would have unfolded at the ballot box in November. The Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce had garnered more than 8,400 signatures to put the fee to voters on the November ballot. 

The repeal means the November vote will not happen. 

“It was definitely middle ground that we reached,” Councilor Lyndsie Leech, Ward 7, said at the meeting.

The council’s Monday vote came after officials passed a budget that includes an 18% stormwater fee increase that will help the city avoid deeper cuts in the next two years to its general fund, which pays for services like the Sheldon Community Center and Amazon Pool. The stormwater fee will free up about $4.7 million in the budget’s general fund during the next two years. It expires in six years.

The council passed the fire service fee in February and it would have generated about $10 million annually — substantially more than the stormwater fee. It came as city officials planned a budget with an $11.5 million gap and looked for ways to avoid deep cuts to city services. 

Councilors who supported the motion to repeal the ordinance said that action came only after a compromise. 

“The solution we have is not perfect,” said Councilor Jennifer Yeh, Ward 4. “But I think it’s all something we can live with.”

Kashinsky, who cast the only vote of opposition, said the fire service fee went through a “lengthy process and lengthy discussion” before the council passed the measure. The fire service fee offered a long-term solution to the budget issue, she said. 

“I am very reluctant to say ‘OK, let’s repeal this,’” said Kashinsky, a Ward 1 councilor.

Brittany Quick-Warner, president and CEO of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, told reporters after the meeting that the group is encouraged by the action and looks forward to deeper conversations about the city’s long-term budget needs. 

“When the chamber initially referred this issue to the ballot, it was never about one single fee,” Quick-Warner said. “It was really more about the ability to have a bigger, more strategic conversation about our city’s budget and our fiscal sustainability.”

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.