‘Get enough people to say yes’: Alan Zelenka’s two decades on Eugene City Council

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Alan Zelenka’s favorite New Yorker cartoon depicts two dapper greyhounds drinking cocktails at a bar. “It’s not good enough that we succeed,” one tells the other. “Cats must also fail.”

The Ward 3 Eugene city councilor said the cartoon is a reminder of exactly how not to approach working in local government, and a reflection of what he finds troubling about today’s national politics. The sentiment was partly why, after 20 years in office, Zelenka in early March decided against running for reelection and will step away from the council when his term ends next year.

“We will be headed into a period of tight budgets and a lack of resources, and that will make it difficult to take positive action,” Zelenka, 66, said in March as part of his retirement announcement. “At the same time, I fear for the future of our great country and community. We have become an incredibly divisive society, pitting neighbor against neighbor.”

Zelenka told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the optimism he felt in 2006 when he first ran to represent Ward 3 — an area encompassing the UO campus and the Fairmount, Laurel Hill and South University neighborhoods — has given way to a more cynical political climate. But he still believes his two decades in office produced meaningful results.

He described his “hallmark achievement” as successfully fighting for citywide paid sick leave in 2014, along with former councilor Claire Syrett and then Mayor Kitty Piercy, a proposal that he said required coalition-building and overcoming opposition in the business community. 

“That was really hard to do,” he said. 

Also in 2014, the councilor, who works from home for the Oregon Department of Energy, authored the city’s Climate Recovery Ordinance, a plan to reduce the city’s output of greenhouse gasses. Eugene was among the first cities in the country to put its carbon reduction targets into law, KLCC reported advocates as saying at the time. The climate action plan corresponding with the ordinance is about two-thirds complete. 

“It was the first time anybody in the country, any city, had created a climate goal, but then also said, ‘You have to come up with a plan to implement, and if you don’t, if you can’t fully implement it, you have to buy some offsets to make sure you fill the gap,’” Zelenka said.

Zelenka said he was at the “vanguard” of Eugene’s early days mitigating homelessness, having made the initial 2013 motion to initiate a microhousing project that became known as Opportunity Village.

“The ideas bubble up, you help craft them, but you have to sell it, you still have to put structure to it,” he said. “Then you have to get enough people to say yes. It takes a lot of effort. … They always say, ‘What’s the hardest thing about being a councilor?’ I say, ‘Getting everybody to go that way.’”

Syrett, who served alongside Zelenka on the Budget Committee and the City Council, said Zelenka was steadfast on the “social imperative” of paid sick leave even when facing opposition, which she admired as a new councilor at the time. (Advocates gifted them a poster of Thelma and Louise featuring cutouts of their faces to celebrate the achievement, she said.)

“He’s one of those people who brought kind of both his heart and his head to the work,” Syrett said, describing Zelenka as “cerebral” and a pragmatist.

Zelenka said he’ll miss the free food — councilors get catered dinner, like Italian food from Pastini, before their evening meetings — and the candy, which staff dole out in bowls by every councilor’s seat in their City Hall chambers for snacking during meetings.

He said he’s looking forward to spending his weekends reading books, not poring over meeting packets for hours. Zelenka also keeps tabs on his own neighborhood; his wife, Susie Smith, chairs the land-use committee for their neighborhood association, Fairmount Neighbors, and he has recently been vocal in his opposition to university development planned for the area.

“It does take its toll,” he said. “When I talk to people who are thinking about being on council, I go, ‘Look, you got your work life, got your family life, you got council? There’s this triangle, and it’s always catawampus. One of these is demanding too much, and the other two suffer.”

He said he wishes schools brought back lessons in civics, including how local government budgets work, and that the council’s public comment periods weren’t the “same people saying the same thing over and over again.” He said the public’s understanding of the city’s function is “woefully low,” meaning councilors are “constantly reeducating,” and in some cases, educating.

“Often people will say, ‘You didn’t listen to me,’” Zelenka said. “I say, ‘No, I listened to you. I disagreed with you. That’s not the same thing. What you really meant to say was, “You didn’t do what I wanted.”’”

Councilor Randy Groves, who has served alongside Zelenka for about five years, said he appreciates how Zelenka comes prepared for meetings, and considers him the council expert on energy and the climate, though they don’t always agree on issues. 

“It’s always been a respectful relationship,” he said, adding: “I do think there needs to be a certain level of turnover on council, just to keep it fresh and make sure we’re getting as many voices from the community that we can.”

Zelenka has endorsed union leader Jennifer Smith in the race to succeed him, voicing worries about the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce’s “undue influence” on opponent John Barofsky.

Despite his own decision to step down from the council, he encouraged other local leaders to play the “long game” by reaching compromises and avoiding divisive politics. 

“If you’re thinking, ‘I’m going to do this, it’s got to be my way or the highway,’ you’re going to fail,” Zelenka said.