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City Manager Dennis Taylor noted that due to the funding sources available, street improvements could also be done more quickly if the streets were classified as collectors rather than classified as local streets. He said that the neighborhood had trust issues, and he thought it would be best if the design could be established soon and the project funded and implemented to ensure that subsequent staff and councils did not try to change it. Ms. Bettman thought the context-sensitive design standards were a good idea and she hoped the Crest Drive neighborhood could be a test case. Ms. Bettman said that in spite of all the work the neighborhood has done, the staff recommendation regarding the street classifications remained unchanged. She understood why the neighborhood was skeptical about the City's future intent because she had a bad experience working on a transportation project with the City herself while serving as a neighborhood organization chair. She preferred to focus on how the City could get to a level of comfort for the affected property owners. Ms. Bettman thought the City could move traffic and emergency vehicles through the neighborhood and accommodate pedestrians and bicycle safety while protecting property values. Ms. Bettman asked about the percentage of through traffic using the streets in question as opposed to internal neighborhood traffic. Mr. Schoening responded that like in other areas of the community, the City did not consider through traffic, but rather considered average daily traffic. A study of the through traffic would be a much more extensive and expensive process. Mr. Kelly thought there was an ultimate value from a system and funding standpoint to designating some streets in the neighborhood as collectors, but he shared Mr. Meisner's discontent with the three options before the council. He was not ready to designate the streets as collectors at this point because of the trust issue. He found Ms. Bettman's comments about her experience to be instructive. Mr. Kelly said staff stated the street design would be the same whether local or collector, but given the atmosphere in the neighborhood he did not blame the neighbors for saying ~prove it." The City had not reached the point of classifying the streets yet. Mr. Kelly noted the draft administrative rules associated with the design standards were yet to be provided to the council. He suggested that it would be more practical and appropriate for the City to first get the context-sensitive design standards to the public for review and comment and then for the council to adopt them. That would create an official approach to street improvements. Ms. Nathanson believed that the neighborhood in question represented an aberration, not the rule. She pointed out that the City had completed its Street Classification Map with the exception of this area. She believed a street classification was an acknowledgement of reality. Ms. Nathanson asked if the City had ever ~turned back the clock" and decided a street that was functioning by objective criteria as a collector street should be reclassified as a local street. Mr. Schoening could not recall such an instance. Mr. McNeel noted that during the 1999 study, staff had decided against identifying a collector in the vicinity of Orchard, Villard, and Walnut streets because of the peculiar street configuration of the three streets directly parallel to each other. In another case, the matrix values for Garden Way indicated a designation of minor arterial, but the street was deliberately classified as a major collector to deemphasize the route for large traffic volumes, and the City did so by designating Commons Drive and Kinsrow Street as neighborhood collectors and included design options to give residents a choice of routes to use. MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 25, 2004 Page 6 Work Session