City/County Road Partnership & Proposed County Capital Project Partnership

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~, JONES Eric R From: JONES Eric R -went: Thursday, January 25, 2001 5:32 PM '~: LYLE Les A; LANKSTON Jeff; CARLSON Jim R; BROWN Dan; STEIN Eileen; HILL Larry K subject: Lane County Roads Advisory Committee Here's a summary of the discussion by the Lane County Road Advisory Committee (LCRAC) on Wednesday, January 24, on the allocation of additional county road funds (aka capital project partnership): Present at the LCRAC meeting were commissioners Anna Morrison and Bill Dwyer, citizen members Leo Stapleton (west Lane, chair), Jack Radabaugh (Springfield but lives in Harlow Road/Eugene, vice chair), Tom Poage (north Eugene), Ken Engleman (east Lane), Sky Chamard (at-large) and Mary Wirtz (at-large), and staff members John Goodson (last day on the job is 2/28), Ollie Snowden, .and Mike Russell (CIP coordinator). The south Eugene LCRAC representative, Rex Redmon, was not at the meeting. Proposed Criteria Ollie handed out cone-page memo outlining "proposed criteria and discussion points for capital project partnership." By way of introduction, Ollie suggested the county may receive around $20 million in additional road fund revenue over the next five years, based on a lot of fairly conservative assumptions (road/school split, county/county split, prudent reserves, etc., etc.). The sixth year of the funding from the Rural Schools Act isn't proposed to be programmed at this time, to allow a "cushion" if the act isn't renewed. Ollie's proposed criteria: 1. Public Road -- projects must be a public road, with priority to improvements on arterial/collector system within the county. 2. Funding --Similar to criteria for Community Development Fund, share of costs and/or leveraging other funds as a criterion, matching funds in materials, equipment, cash. 3. Control of work -- Control of work to be conducted by the county, includes design engineering, field engineering, award and administration of contruction contracts. (But he also commented that having Lane County doing the work is "not cast in stone.") 4. Timeline -- Project should be deliverable within six years. 5. Project justification -- Is the project related to safety or capacity. Je's discussion points: • Should the philosphy be toward large signature projects or smaller profile projects? • .Should there be distribution by commissioner district? • The Board has indicated that it would like some city involvement in the development of capital project partnership criteria. • Ollie believes that using county money to fund projects on the state highway system would respond to ODOT and the Oregon Transportation Commission, who are "critical" of Lane County's willingness to invest in the regional transportation system. The Real Discussion The letter from the mayors of the 12 cities in the county was given to the LCRAC members. In general, there was a lot of city (especially Eugene) bashing: • Tom Poage -- "I'd like to see us not give the money to the City of Eugene but let the County do the work because we know the money is going to the job, not for administration or the (Eugene) public works director's fund" • Bill Dwyer -- "With Eugene we had a lot of problems with Ayres Road. Now with Springfield and the other cities, that's a different ballgame." • Sky Chamard -- "There's been no accountability for years. We asked our public works director twice for a report, and we never got anything." • Mary Wirtz -- "The cities don't understand that Lane County doesn't have a bottomless pit of money. We went through that assessment thing with Eugene, and no one can account for that money." • Anna Morrison -- "The cities pleading at the 11th hour is not appropriate. It's not our responsibility to maintain city streets." Initial Ideas about Criteria • Bill Dwyer wants to build the Pioneer Parkway extension (current estimate is $8 million, with about $2 million in hand) • Anna continues to advocate for improving local access roads (Bill Dwyer is very opposed) • Ollie would like to see the funds "solve significant safety and capacity problems" (he suggested Pioneer Parkway and Beltline Road (Roosevelt to West 11th) as examples of signature projects. • Tom Poage suggested a warrant system for choosing projects (e.g., ADT, accident rates). He was very supportive of the money going to the populated areas, and suggested Beaver Street as a project he'd like to see funded. • "It's all about moving people" was a popular phrase.