On April 18th, the city of Eugene released the proposed budget for the fiscal years 2025-2027, revealing plans to cut funding for the Eugene Public Library, Greenhill Humane Society, Sheldon Community Center, Amazon Pool, and other public services and infrastructure. Notably, there were no funds allocated for a Cahoots-like program for mobile crisis response, igniting disappointment and outrage from community members who had shown up en masse at the April 14th city council meeting to advocate for the resurrection of the Cahoots program after its closing on April 7th.
Public comment sessions were held at the budget deliberations and hearing on the 14th, 21st, and 28th of May 2025. Cumulatively, these public meetings were just shy of twelve hours long. Community members filed into the shiny new City Hall building on the riverfront, through the metal detector, to each dutifully sign up for a 2.5 minute comment to make their voices heard to the city officials and lawmakers.
The roughly one hundred residents who gave public testimony spanned the emotional gambit: angry, fearful, frustrated, anxious, outraged, terrified, concerned, pleading. Many spoke with conviction and deep experiential knowledge, having devoted time and energy into researching the budget, the context that led to the deficit we are now facing, and offered many ideas for solutions that did not rob the community of essential infrastructure and social services. Primarily working class people forfeited hours of their weekday evenings to plead with city politicians to consider letting them keep the animal shelter, community center, and full service hours at the public library, and to bring back or replace the CAHOOTS crisis response program.
On April 28th, the budget committee voted in the meeting to recommend that the City Council adopt a modified version of the budget, which re-allocated funds for many of the programs and services that had been cut, including Amazon Pool, Greenhill Humane Society, Sheldon Community Center, and the Eugene Public Library. In the same meeting, there was also a resolution passed to, "Recommend the City Council direct the City Manager to investigate how the alternative response program with CAHOOTS-like services could be provided and identify potential sources of funding for approximately $2.2 million annually, including potentially reallocating existing Community Safety Payroll Tax funds, and bring back the results before the end of October.”
In some ways, this show of community force resulted in measurable success. Many of the services under the chopping block were spared, and the city manager has been instructed to investigate sources of funding for a CAHOOTS-like service. After countless hours of community research, organizing, strategizing, discussion, waiting at meetings for a chance to speak, and crafting and delivering poignant speeches about what matters most, some of the programs poised for execution will probably be spared (a final vote will take place June 23rd).
When people, in good faith, pour out their energy to save basic services that were needlessly threatened, can those making the threats really be credited for “saving” them? In a city where ICE has been detaining people at their required immigration appointments and denying access to legal support, the police budget has swelled to a resounding 37% of the city’s general fund, and federal funds to affordable housing and social services are being withheld, questions arise :
Why are city officials and law-makers requiring constituents to expend massive amounts of energy to “ save” access to fundamental infrastructure? Could they have failed to realize that families want pools and childcare in the summer, or earnestly believed that animal shelters and mobile crisis care had somehow become obsolete? Manufactured budget crises must cost more than the invaluable resources of the good people that rise to address them; the price must be the faith that the people had in the State to act in their best interest.
Accompanying quotes and character sketches drawn from the public comment sections of the recent city of Eugene budget meetings. They are all public record - but if your image or words appear in this article and you'd like them removed, reach out to
“There is already so little representation of marginalized communities. In our community that is primarily white, with leaders that are primarily white, and people making decisions that are primarily white, I am asking how and why is the city recommending such reductions and elimination of vital resources and opportunities for communities who don’t look like you?” -Kianna, in response to the elimination of the Human Rights Committee’s grant funding for multi-cultural groups.
“The decisions you make here have ripple effects. For criminal trespass in the second degree… we have seen a dramatic increase with more than three times the number of cases opened this year than last. You are affecting people that are mentally ill, people who are unhoused. You cannot incarcerate your way out of a mental health crisis.” -Reid, Training Director at Public Defender Services of Lane County
“When we look at what keeps communities safe, and what we actually need, the policing is not the answer to everything. We need CAHOOTS. We need Greenhill. We need a library. The legacy of CAHOOTS inspired programs all over the nation. It’s one of the things that makes Eugene great. We can choose kindness, and we have to, because everything else is falling apart and community is what keeps us together.” -Jules
“Never forget that the city threatened to gut our community needs… We are presented with bearcats instead of books, drones instead of dog shelters, guardian towers instead of housing, and harm instead of health. Plus, EPD will continue their war on mutual aid, local demonstrations and labor struggles so that we can’t even help ourselves.” -Kamryn