Budget Meeting Minutes 05/11/05 - Laserfiche WebLink

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and that being in the CIP does not guarantee funding. He concluded by saying the Multi-year financial Plan is a wish list, while the CIP is interest laden. Mr. Pape noted that the City had facilities .reserve funds set aside to construct a' public safety facility and that the public had rejected such a facility three times. He commented-that the City needed the Public Safety Building and a new City Hall and it also needed to fix roads: He pointed.out that the Lane Board of County Commissioners had asked the City to be clear in its priorities and demonstrate those priorities through action. He wondered if the City should place less funding in that reserve and place more funding in transportation operations and maintenance. He did not want to let the infrastructure go, but it was challenging in the face of a $94 million backlog of road preservation and maintenance projects. He suggested that more public dialogue be solicited regarding these priorities. Mr. Poling asked, regarding the transportation project for River Avenue, if it had been the one discussed in a work session at which the council had been informed that much of the work would be paid for through a local improvement district (LID). City Manager Taylor affirmed that it was. He clarified that the matter would be before the council later in the spring. He asked Mark Schoening, city engineer for the Public Works Department (PWD), to provide further details about the project. Mr. Schoening stated that funding for River Avenue was approved in the FY04 budget. He said adoption of that budget initiated the LID and provided the up-front funding to do the design work. He further elaborated that when a budget was adopted for a project it included a combination of funding sources,-one of which could be assessments to area residents. In this case, he explained, the funding portion that would come from assessments was essentially loaned from an assessment fund and then when the LID assessments were levied, the fund was reimbursed. Mr. Carlson said the available funding source for the River Avenue project was from a combination of systems development charges (SDCs) and assessments from the LID. He added that assessments were never levied until the costs were fully known. Ms. Taylor said that she agreed with Mr. Pape that some of the Facility Reserve funds should be used to help preserve local roads. She asked how much funding indicated in the CIP would be committed upon adoption. City Manager Taylor responded that the CIP is a Capital Project Program plan. He called the CIP "prudent fmancial management" of long-term capital assets as it created the presumption that the City would do its level best to move forward and made a.higher presumption for new projects that had not been reviewed through the two-year CIP process. He stressed that the CIP provided a plan, some discipline, and a presumption that funded projects had come from. other more long-term planning documents that were rated against one another and put into order. Many of these projects take years to accomplish. In the appropriate year, some of the projects, with identified revenues, were then made as recommendations to the Budget Committee and the City Council for actual appropriation in the Capital Budget. Ms. Rygas remarked that the issue at hand was.not whether the CIP was a good idea, but rather how it was laid out. She thought the projects proposed for the first two years were well-grounded in planning and need, but the projects that were farther out than two years were not adequately differentiated for the members of the public. She said the current format sets up a difficult situation. When do the out-year projects get an in-depth review? When is it appropriate to pull out particular projects? She stated that projects gain a momentum as more years pass. She asked how the Budget Committee could take a look at MINUTES-Eugene Budget Committee February 22, 2005. Page 4