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This election, Lane County voters will decide whether to remove decades-old language from the county’s governing document.
Last year, Lane County commissioners asked a committee of volunteers to help modernize the charter, which is a document similar to a constitution.
The commissioners sent three of the committee’s suggestions to voters, who have the final say.
Morgan Munro, one of the volunteers on the committee that drafted the charter updates, said the repeals remove restrictions for an income tax the county has never collected and a spending limit for property taxes the county no longer controls.
She said county employees are required annually to adjust the spending limit - despite it having no bearing on the county’s budget.
“Because the tax structure has changed in our state, it's essentially a superfluous calculation,” she said. “But because the charter says you have to do it, county employees for the last almost 40 years have been doing this calculation every single year because the charter says they have too.”
The third repeal would remove rules for how the county manages East Alton Baker Park, which it no longer owns. Specifically, it banned the county from ever turning the park into a golf course. The land now belongs to the city of Eugene and Willamalane Park and Recreation District.
“Having rules about things that the county no longer does and cleaning at the charter so we can put to bed some of these pieces that might be considered historical artifacts is at the heart of the three repeal measures,” Munro said.
Lane County voters will also have an opportunity to weigh in on a charter amendment that would rewrite the county’s redistricting process, adding and removing language. That proposal was not written by the county’s charter review committee and was submitted by an outside party this summer. The charter review committee reviewed, but did not recommend that proposal.
This story was updated on Oct. 18 to include additional information about the redistricting proposal.
