Reading through the 400-page report on “fiscal stability” that an advisory group shared with the Eugene City Council this week, two things are clear about the mindset of business and economic development leaders:
- They desperately want to avoid a repeat of last year’s fire fee debacle.
- They’ve spent too much time making too many mistakes when trying to recruit new companies or help existing ones expand.
The second point is directly related to the first. Businesses pay taxes, and the lack of new activity explains why Eugene councilors are trapped in a multiyear cycle of teasing major cuts to services like pools, parks and libraries, only to pull back when public anger mounts.
It’s hard to read the fiscal advisory group’s report as anything other than a rebuke of the entire process surrounding last year’s ill-fated fire service fee. The City Council’s plan to plug an $11.5 million structural budget deficit put it at odds with the Eugene Chamber of Commerce, which worked hard to successfully repeal it.
Now the city faces a looming $2 million annual gap between revenues and expenses next year, a deficit projected to grow to $10 million in less than a decade. The main driver of this ticking fiscal time bomb is ballooning pension costs for retired employees — costs the city has no control over…