It was a quiet week for council without any council sessions. That time freed up some opportunities to make other connections.
I began the week with a constructive conversation with Dr. Patrick Leudtke, Senior Public Health Officer for Lane County. We’re beginning to frame our conversation about a permanent shelter for homeless members of our community as an important way solve a present and future community health crisis. Benton County has seen an alarming increase in Tuberculosis in the last year; and San Diego, CA is facing an outbreak of Hepatitis A – both because too many folks are living without shelter, sanitation and healthcare. This needs to be part of our thinking about how and why to stabilize people’s lives.
On Wednesday, I traveled to Corvallis for a board meeting of Oregon RAIN, the umbrella nonprofit for our Eugene Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network (RAIN). The promotion and support for start up technologies is creating jobs and new industries across the state, and Eugene’s investment in RAIN is key to that growth.
The impact of this work was on full display on Thursday at the Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Summit, where the synergies of our expanding tech and food sectors were on full display. We have high hopes for the interaction between the UO’s new Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and our locally grown businesses.
And today, I joined a crowd for the biannual BRAVA breakfast in the Hult Center lobby. The keynote address by Clayton Lord, vice president of local arts advancement for Americans for the Arts, focused on placemaking and incorporating the arts and artists in all of our thinking about public spaces.