5 buttes, 11 hours, 14 miles: Epic day of hiking in Eugene and Springfield

Jennifer Smith's election to Eugene City Council showed the power of workers over corporate influence | Letter to the editor

Jennifer Smith’s declared victory in her Eugene City Council race sent a clear and important message. Ward 3 voters overwhelmingly rejected the local business establishment’s efforts to dominate city government. Residents of Ward 3 recognized that Smith represents our ward’s enlightened values and progressive policy goals. Voters were not fooled by the Chamber of Commerce’s […]

Vision Zero, and a bigger vision for traffic safety in Eugene

The world’s most livable cities tend to perform well not only on safety, but also on infrastructure, transportation, education, health and the overall quality of daily life. Eugene does not need to copy Copenhagen or Vancouver, British Columbia to learn from that pattern. It does, however, need a clearer civic ambition: to become a city where safer streets, better transit, walkability, bike access and thoughtful land use all work together.

When will Oregon leaders turn our public schools around? | Letter to the editor

Joshua Purvis’s column about Oregon public schools, coupled with the recent article concerning the Springfield Public Schools board’s apparent inability to act like a functioning school board, is, to this writer, a terribly sad commentary on the state of Oregon education. I do not live in either Eugene or Springfield, but reading about the craziness […]

How do we restore confidence in Oregon's public schools? | Letter to the editor

I agree with much of Joshua Purvis’s comments in his Lookout Eugene-Springfield column about public school accountability. I would also like to see the comparative statistics about class size between the higher rated school systems and Oregon’s. When our son began kindergarten in Eugene School District 4J, there were 10 students in his half-day class […]

Higher education and the long shadow of Oregon Ballot Measure 5

One tuition increase did not fundamentally change the system. Neither did the next. But over time, the cumulative effect has been profound. Public higher education slowly evolved from a broadly funded public good into something increasingly financed by students.