Stream Corridor Acquisition Memo

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Council rescinded its support for a user fee increase to fund an enhanced acquisition program. The acquisition program was scaled back to a budget of $150,000 annually. As of July 2003, 36.3 acres of stream corridor had been acquired for $962,000, and negotiations were underway on an additional 10.5 acres with an approximate value of $470,000. An additional 113 acres remained to be acquired, at an estimated value of approximately $4 million. Lead responsibility for developing and implementing the stream corridor acquisition plan resided with PW Engineering though March 2004. With the elimination of the Water Resources team, lead responsibility for implementing the plan was transferred to POS/Parks Planning. PWE continues to provide acquisition services (Russ and Lloyd). October 20.2005 Council Worksession At the October 20, 2005 worksession on the stormwater permit and program developments, the City Council expressed approval for the additional stormwater permit related funding needs identified (the main topic of the worksession). Council had a lengthy discussion about stream corridor acquisition and requested that staff bring back "a stream corridor acquisition program analogous to that in effect before cuts." The intent was expressed by one Councilor as "brushing off' the old study that was approved by Council and bringing it back to them for consideration again. The follow up stream corridor acquisition worksession is scheduled for January 23, 2006. Council packet is due by January 16tH - At a minimum, it is staff's opinion that the "priority stream corridors and acquisition sites" map should be updated to identify sites already acquired under the acquisition program. Also, the sites no longer available or desirable to acquisition should be removed from the map. Unit costs and total costs should be updated, and based upon duration of time for implementation, the impacts to stormwater user fees determined. This would be the minimum needed to respond to the Council request. In updating the map to reflect sites already acquired and those no longer available for acquisition, what will be left on the acquisition map are some specific stream corridors in the south hills, in the Amazon and Willow Creek basins. These remaining acquisition sites would be a small subset of the Goa15 sites. These remaining acquisition sites would also be a small subset of the water quality-protected waterways sites. .Discussion points for Policy team meeting Policy team direction is needed at this time to allow adequate time for packet and meeting preparation. Some questions to consider include: 1. Who is the appropriate staff person to take the lead on the January worksession? 2. In the context of the CIP and the stormwater program as a whole, how narrowly or broadly should we respond to the Council request? Possible options {from narrow to broad) include: • Respond to the specific request only, doing only the minimum updating described above.