City councilors get pay raise.

Byline: CITY BEAT / EUGENE by Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

REMEMBER ALL THE hoo-haw about the 31 percent pay raise - to $70,000 per year - that Lane County commissioners granted themselves a couple of weeks ago?

Well, lost in the shuffle was a raise in the pay of Eugene's mayor and eight city councilors. But then, it wasn't quite on the same scale.

The paychecks they received this past week reflected their annual cost-of-living raises, based on an increase of 2.47 percent in the Portland area's Consumer Price Index.

Memo to the City Council: Don't spend it all in one place.

For councilors, the percentage raise translates to $24.70 per month; the mayor gets an additional $37.05 per month.

"It's better than a deduction, right?" Mayor Jim Torrey said.

Stipends of $1,000 per month for councilors and $1,500 per month for the mayor have been paid since last July, after city voters approved the payments - along with an annual cost-of-living adjustment - in November 2000.

City Council President David Kelly said he chose to use a significant chunk of his council pay to enroll himself in the city's health insurance program - the cost of which will rise next month by a considerably higher percentage than the Consumer Price Index.

"So my check will actually be less," he said.

And Torrey pointed out that he won't directly benefit at all from the meager raise. He promised when the payments went into effect that he would donate his check each month to a charity of his choosing - which has so far ranged from the Boys and Girls Club to a fund-raising campaign for the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza to a Romanian orphanage.

"My wife and I sit down and select what we give (the checks) to each month," the mayor said. "That's what I do with mine - so that will be another $37 for those groups."

Street of dreams

There's talk at various levels of local government about naming a street in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

The question is, what street would make the most appropriate tribute?

Centennial Boulevard? Part or all of Belt Line Road? The still-in-the-planning-stages West Eugene Parkway?

City Council members puzzled over the possibilities last week after receiving a letter from Lane County Commissioner Bill Dwyer, inviting city participation in the selection and naming process.

Councilors didn't nail anything down, but they liked the idea of an MLK tribute and seemed to lean toward the prospect of renaming Centennial Boulevard - an important road that links the two largest cities in the county.

The West Eugene Parkway, on the other hand, was a less-than-popular choice.

Councilors remain deeply divided over the proposed throughway that would connect Sixth and Seventh avenues to Highway 126 near Green Hill Road. There's also a fair amount of skepticism about the parkway's prospects, given environmental concerns about crossing the West Eugene Wetlands and the probability of court challenges.

"We should name (the Martin Luther King, Jr., street) for an existing facility," Councilor Gary Rayor said. "So we're sure something gets named."

For now, Rayor and his colleagues have assigned Councilor Bonny Bettman to serve as council liaison to the county Board of Commissioners for the MLK road-renaming issue.

Smoking zone

Don't panic if you spot a wisp or two of smoke rising from your yard, sidewalk or street this summer.

Chances are, it's just the city's Public Works maintenance crews testing the wastewater collection system again.

Crews use smoke to check portions of the city's 750 miles of sewer lines each year, looking for cracked pipes, improper connections or even faulty plumbing.

This year's smoke tests will be done in three areas of town: parts of the Jefferson/Westside neighborhood, the Amazon/Fairmount neighborhood and the Southeast University neighborhood. Residents will be notified by the city before testing begins in each neigh- borhood.

Typically, the nontoxic smoke used in the tests will find cracks in sewer mains or feeder lines, rising through the ground to alert the maintenance crews.

But it also will detect improper hookups - such as gutter downspouts, which are not allowed to be connected to the wastewater systems. And once in a while, it even serves as a warning to homeowners of faulty and potentially dangerous plumbing.

"Occasionally, we do smoke houses," Public Works Department spokesman Eric Jones said, emphasizing that the smoke is not harmful.

"The most common reason is that people don't have the U- or P-traps (beneath sinks or showers) installed correctly," Jones said. "We don't want to smoke a house. But it's better that a little smoke comes out than some toxic gases that could be in the sewer system."

Reporter Joe Mosley can be reached at 338-2384 or by e-mail at [e-mail]