Tonight I’d like to consider the word “public”. It is generally used to refer to the people or citizens of a city, state or country. I am concerned that our public servants (city government, police, etc.) have abandoned the people they have sworn to serve.

Finally giving up all pretense of serving the people, the city is now considering the final privatization of the last “public” area of Eugene, Kesey Square. They have slowly been taking this place away from the public and turning it over to for profit businesses. They tore down the only public place to sit, and rented space to food carts to use during the day.

These food carts fill the plaza with chairs for use by their paying customers, instead of the general public. ( As a person suffering from stenosis, sometimes after being on my feet for 15 minutes, I have to sit down until the pain goes away and I can continue on my way.)

These carts have worked out a sweetheart deal that basically allows them to run restaurants (using public land) without even providing rest rooms for their customers. This gives them a big advantage over other restaurants in the city.

Now the owners of the food carts want Kesey Square to be closed at night so they don’t have to clean up human waste that is left in the square due to the lack of restrooms. This is another direct attack on the unhoused people of Eugene, taking away the one place they can be. Instead of this, the city should ban food carts from the plaza and put in benches and restrooms for the people.

I can think of no public good that can be accomplished by waging a war on homeless people. The city has been spending a lot of the public’s money to do this. I hope soon to see a report on how much this endeavor has cost the taxpaying public. I hope that the city would release this information without requiring the people to file a formal request for these public records. I am especially interested in how much the city spent on the April 4 Whoville closure as well as the accumulated price tag for the continued harassment of the who’s.

Eugene needs at least one place where people can be without being arrested for being there. It doesn’t have to be Kesey Square, but it has to be somewhere.