Santa Clara - McDougal Trade (Failed)

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... 1-2M/i1 EUGENE Public Works Parks and Open Space Division City of Eugene 1820 Roosevelt Boulevard Eugene, Oregon 97402 MEMORANDUM (541) 682 -4800 (541) 682 -4882 FAX www.ci.eugene.or.us/parks Date: March 28, 2005 To: Jim Carlson, Assistant City Manager Kurt Corey, Public Works Director From: Andrea G. Riner, Parks and Open Space Planning Manager Subject: Santa Clara Community Park survey Attached are the findings of the recent Santa Clara Community Park telephone survey. They are for your use only— please do not copy or distribute until after the findings are discussed with the Eugene City Council. If you would like additional copies, please let me know. The findings are typical of the project to- date —conflicting and complex. While they do not give us a resounding go -ahead for the land swap, neither do they clearly say we should discontinue this course of action. My sense is that the findings are most helpful if we look at them holistically, with the following key messages underscored: • A majority of people learned about the project from partially or seriously biased viewpoints, i.e., SCCSPOS- sponsored neighborhood meetings and publications and the media (RG and Eugene Weekly). Relatively few people surveyed attended the city- sponsored meetings or learned about the project from the Eugene Outdoors! newsletter. Also, families with children, a core constituent of community parks, are unfamiliar with the project. • The most troubling finding of the survey is that a significant number of respondents who were undecided about the project moved towards opposing the project from the beginning of the survey to the end of the survey, a time span of five minutes. A likely cause and an issue that has challenged staff from the beginning is that this proposal does not translate well into easily understood "sound- bites." Hot button issues, such as annexation, condemnation, agriculture, traffic, development, and developers, trigger responses that are disproportionate with other responses. Even less loaded terms, such as South Hills, City, and the mention of a million dollars seemed to cloud the predictability of responses. • The arguments against the project seem to be based primarily on two fundamental issues: the desire to preserve agricultural land and a general disapproval of development and developers. While traffic and school impacts were also a concern, these were not sited as the major reasons for opposing the project (see p. 17). • Arguments in favor of the project are not as clear, again stemming from the complexity of the project and the difficulty in identifying the multiple benefits of the project. For example, protecting forest and headwater streams was one of the highest rated goals by Eugene residents. However, a similar question about acquiring ridgeline open space was the lowest rated factor in question #30. Obviously, these two goals were not seen as one and the same.