CC Minutes - 02/12/08 Joint Elected Officials

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Councilor Poling thanked the commissioners for bringing up the ORS 190 issues. He believed that some of the Metro Plan amendments were “housekeeping” and could be easily addressed, and then the more complex issues should be tackled. He added that he had no objections to making the Joint Elected Officials a regular meeting. Eugene Councilor Solomon appreciated the effort made to bring the three jurisdictions together. She believed it was a legitimate use of time. She liked the “problem-solving tenor” that had been established. Eugene Councilor Zelenka said the jurisdictions needed to focus on transportation planning, the Metro Plan, and public safety. He remarked that the big issue related to public safety was how to pay for it and where the resources should come from. He added that the jurisdictions should also address triage and how they could cooperate. Springfield Councilor Ballew noted that the jurisdictions were against the clock with regard to the changes required by HB 3337. She said they also needed to be in agreement on the TransPlan and the Regional Transportation Plan. Additionally, she agreed that the three jurisdictions needed to address the County’s financial situation. It seemed to her that public safety or public health would be a “good place to start.” Eugene Councilor Taylor averred that they needed fewer organizations and not more. She felt that the things the jurisdictions needed to discuss together were the things they could not solve themselves, such as homelessness. She said they needed to think about what the three jurisdictions could lobby together for. She felt that if there were a lot of services for homeless people in one place, the homeless people would go there. Regarding transportation funding, Councilor Taylor averred that the “day-to-day stuff” people really cared about were potholes. She felt that there were things the City could not do by itself but could be done on a county level. She supported holding a discussion on whether to form an ACT. Springfield Councilor Pishioneri wanted the group to create a strategy for addressing the issues. He said they needed to prioritize the issues and if it came to potholes versus public safety, the latter seemed more important. He wanted to look at all of the issues raised by the jurisdictions and to determine what they had to do and what was not required to be done. Eugene Councilor Clark agreed with Commissioner Green and Councilor Ortiz that the Joint Elected Officials should have quarterly discussions. He believed that all of the issues affected more than one jurisdiction. His priorities included public safety and updates to the Metro Plan. He thought the Metro Plan was outdated and needed to be revised. He saw the serious financial shortfalls the County was facing as a challenge to all three jurisdictions. He supported approaching priority setting from a regional perspective. Councilor Clark stated, as the representative for the Santa Clara area, that he was concerned that the jurisdictions did not have a group of citizens who were county residents and were not provided services because of the changes at the state level brought about by Senate Bill (SB) 417. He wanted to ensure that before such a law was enacted there were agreements between the City and the County that provided citizens with recourse should provision of services become an issue. Springfield Councilor Wylie noted that the Metro Plan had been mentioned on all three of the lists of issues and, as such, she thought it was a good place to start. She was interested in working on the TransPlan and transportation issues. MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— February 12, 2008 Page 4 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils