Item C: General Obligation Bonds for Street Maintenance

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ECC UGENE ITY OUNCIL AIS GENDA TEM UMMARY Work Session: General Obligation Bonds for Street Preservation Projects Meeting Date: June 9, 2008 Agenda Item Number: C Department: Central Services Staff Contact: Sue Cutsogeorge www.eugene-or.gov Contact Telephone Number: 682-5589 ISSUE STATEMENT This work session is a continuation of the discussion about funding for pavement capital preservation projects with a General Obligation (GO) bond measure. The council is asked to provide direction for development of a resolution to place a GO bond measure on the ballot in November of 2008. BACKGROUND Council Action History Over the past several years, the council has worked on ways to adequately fund a large and growing pavement preservation project backlog. Some highlights from the history of this effort are included in Attachment A. Most recently, on January 28, the council continued discussions of an approach to use General Obligation bonds for street preservation projects. The council directed the City Manager to “bring a resolution forward placing an $81 million General Obligation bond measure to be used for preservation only, no system capacity enhancements, on the November 2008 ballot.” A friendly amendment was added to provide a complete project list as part of the ballot measure. The $81 million bond measure will provide for $6.5 million of overlays and reconstruction activities each year, factoring in the cost of inflation over a 10-year period. There were two policy issues left to resolve after the January 28 meeting: a specific list of projects, and a method for ensuring that the projects to be funded could be adjusted, as required, in future years. Project List According to information published by the American Public Works Association, the cost of reconstruct- ing a road on which maintenance has been deferred is five to six times as much as the cost to perform a timely overlay. One of the most cost-effective uses of pavement preservation dollars is to perform time- ly overlays on streets which are identified as likely to fall into the much more expensive “reconstruct” category. The bond measure project list was developed in order to provide the most effective use of public dollars consistent with council direction by addressing overlay projects to the extent possible, as well as including some high traffic streets in need of reconstruction. For this bond measure, street preservation projects would include overlays or reconstruction of the driving surface of streets, as well as the preservation of existing integral elements such as curbs, gutters, sidewalks, on-street bike lanes, traffic signals, street lights, medians, and traffic calming devices. In addition, $350,000 per year would be allocated to overlay or reconstruction of off-street bike and Z:\CMO\2008 Council Agendas\M080609\S080609C.doc