City/County Road Partnership & Proposed County Capital Project Partnership

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JONES Eric R From: JONES Eric R Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 4:05 PM ' LYLE Les A; LANKSTON Jeff; HILL Larry K; BROWN Dan; STEIN Eileen :,abject: LC RAC meeting of 2/15/01 Most of you were either at the Lane County Roads Advisory Committee meeting on February 15 or received a verbal summary from me today, but here, in a nutshell, are the cogent points from the discussion: Public Comments I spoke briefly about several handouts I provided to the committee -- a table showing recent road fund projects in Eugene (LCroadfund.xls, below), a comparison of how costs are charged to capital projects in Springfield, Eugene, and Lane County (Eugene.Springfield.County.comparison.wpd, below), and maps showing the age of Eugene's arterial-collector road system and comparing the 1994 and 1999 reconstruct lists. Dan Brown stated a new criteria at the request of Springfield elected officials: if a project is within a city or its UGB, the county should look for "unanimous endorsement" of the project by that city's council before committing money to the project. Dan said this would help the county keep from taking sides on a controversial project. Eleanor Mulder and Howie Bonnett spoke about the importance of maintaining the regional road system within Eugene. Commissioner Dwyer asked how much a Eugene library card cost, and Howie responded that he didn't know the exact amount but that it was based on the cost of operating the library, not on capital needs. Dwyer asked what Eugene's tax rate was, and Eleanor responded -that she didn't know the exact rate but that property tax money was not spent on the road system. Dwyer later characterized a TUF as "overloading mom and pop utility bills that folks can't even afford to pay right now." Committee Comments John Goodson commented that funding for the County/City Road Partnership Agreement was set a level sufficient to allow the cities to overlay regional network roads at least once every 15 years and that "other cities have been doing a better job." He also noted that "some cities" haven't been forthcoming on reports, as requested. Goodson later specified that ~• gene had failed to provide a report requested by Commissioner Sorenson in February 2000. Committee members geared to favor a modification of future IGAs that would clearly identify the type of report required and the consequences of failing to report. RAC member Rex Redmon asked about the comparison of city vs. county engineering costs, and Ollie Snowden replied that the county is "very competitive" but has never done any comparisons. He said the county gets excellent bids prices because of a "philosophy of shared risks, where not all the risk is placed on the contractor." Considerable committee discussion then ensued on criteria. Dwyer suggested a criterion based on involvement, in which the ideal project would involve the county, the state, the federal government, the cities, and the private sector. Redmon suggested that using funds to provide access to rural recreation areas might increase county revenues and also would be consistent with a new federal goals of managing forests for recreation. Jack Radabaugh said he "feels oppressed by urban transition" and suggested that a "new urban transition agreement" could be crafted through the criteria. He acknowledged the cities' "maintenance deficit" and asked the committee to consider what part, if any, of the new funds should go to maintenance versus modernization. Tom Poage argued that including OM&P in the new federal money would "lull all of us into thinking that that's been taken care of," when, in fact, there's no guarantee that the RS & CSDA funding might not be reauthorized in the future. He suggested that the existing funding for the County/City Road Partnership is much more stable and may be a reasonable source of funding for cities' OM&P on the regional system. In a brief discussion about raising the cities' annual share to $5 million, Mary Wirtz appeared to speak for the majority when she said "that's not going to happen." Ollie said increasing the funding to the $5 million level would take out about $12.5 million of what he figures will be $20 million on new federal revenue. Several members asked about salmon protection, and Bill Dwyer suggested those needs could be met with Title 2 money and not have to come from the road funds. At the conclusion of the meeting, members asked LCPW staff to put together a master list of criteria, including criteria from !' ,county's CIP process, the criteria in the Community Development Road Improvement Assistance fund, the 2/7/01 no from Eugene and Springfield public works directors to Ollie Snowden, and committee comments. NextNext Steas