New gas tax will drive local road repairs in coming weeks.

Byline: CITY BEAT/EUGENE By Edward Russo The Register-Guard

With the recent steep increases in gasoline prices, Eugene motorists may not have noticed the two-cents-a-gallon rise on Friday.

The latest change reflected the city's gas tax increase taking effect, bringing the city's total tax to a nickel per gallon.

Add the $1.45 million from the extra pair of pennies over a year's time to the $2.175 million that the three-cents-a-gallon tax generates, and the city will collect nearly $3.6 million annually from people who purchase gas in Eugene.

What will residents get in return?

Much of the money will be used for seven street repair projects in the spring and summer, part of an attempt to deal with a backlog of street work estimated at $93 million.

The City Council approved the two-cents-a-gallon increase in January, which will allow more work to be done this year than in previous years, said City Engineer Mark Schoening.

"We would do the same streets, but it would have been done over a couple of years instead of being able to do them all this summer," he said.

The first project, 28th Avenue between Friendly and City View streets, will start in a couple of weeks, public works spokesman Eric Jones said.

The other repair jobs to follow: Crescent Avenue from Coburg Road to Tulip Street; Chambers Street from Eighth to 11th avenues; Kevington Avenue from Brittany Drive to Warren Street; City View Street from 11th to 18th avenues; Bertelsen Road from Royal Avenue to Roosevelt Boulevard; 11th Avenue from Pearl to Charnelton streets.

All together, 12 lane miles - not 12 miles - of streets will be repaired, the most since the city imposed the gas tax in 2003.

Newspaper article

intrigues councilor 

One of the City Council's priorities in the next year or two is to help the homeless.

An article on the subject in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper caught the eye of City Councilor David Kelly, who was in San Francisco two weeks ago at a planning conference.

The article describes how a broad range of residents are stepping forward to help welfare and housing specialists sign up homeless people for services that can get them off the street.

"What began in October as a 200-person corps of virtually all city employees who answered the mayor's request to pitch in on their own time has evolved over six months into the makings of a genuine civic movement, drawing not just on government staff, but also nonprofit social services agencies as well as real estate agents, teachers, lawyers, carpenters and other ordinary folk," the Chronicle reported.

Kelly, who represents part of downtown and all of the University of Oregon area, found the article interesting enough that he sent copies to other members of the council and Mayor Kitty Piercy.

"Yes, I'm interested in having us consider something like that," he said. "I have no idea how it would fit ... here, but I would like to talk to knowledgeable local social service agencies about an idea like it."