- Are we "mining" the new people who have come into the community to swell the volume of business which we do here?
- Are we planning to make this a BETTER city in spite of the fact it is "bigger?"
We view this growth with gratification, and some dismay. Time is pressing. Will this community be better as it grows
bigger? Will it be the best? We can make the answers.
Mr. Tugman offered, March 14, a full list of projects involved in the county's postwar plans. He mentioned, "at random," underground conduits for power and telephone line; sewage disposal; Amazon creek drainage; flood control dam; extensive parkway projects; super-highway construction; Ferry street bridge; short road to tidewater; tax and conservation program; new city charter; adequate school, public health, and hospital programs.
Four days later (March 18) there appeared an editorial urging specific projects to constitute a job stockpile for postwar days. This constructive article, listing projects some of which already have received the public's OK, follows:
The people of Lane county should have a stockpile of at least $5,000,000 in county, city, school district and special district projects ready for action when the 5,000 people now away in various forms of war service come home from war . . .
As New York's Commissioner Robert Moses has pointed out, nobody knows how far federal relief will be available or how fast it will be available. Uncle Sam is fighting a war. It is going to take him some time to get reorganized after the war. The burden of having projects ready to go falls properly on the home communities in the first year or two.
How much need there is for intelligent PLANNING NOW may be seen from the random table of projects on which a little preliminary work has been done (although not one of them is ready for final action):
- New Eugene High School .. $ 500,000.00
- Amazon Drainage (district) 75,000.00
- Sewage disposal, Eugene 150,000.00
- Swimming pool, Eugene 50,000.00
- Ferry street bridge, county -150,000.00
- City county building -500,000.00
- County roads, bridges (extra) -200,000.00
- TOTAL - $1,625,000.00
.....
A special 2-mill county levy would accumulate close to $100,000 a year, $500,000 in high school site. A 5-mill city levy would accumulate close to $70,000 a year or $350,000 in five years and a similar school levy would raise slightly more than that amount. But, as old debt is paid off even these seemingly heavy levies would be less than requirements for debt, and cash raised and ear-marked for well planned projects would save taxes on future debt, because borrowing and borrowing and bonding could be
