CC Minutes - 01/19/05 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Mr. Kelly agreed there would be value independent of the ordinance before the council in having a broader conversation with the County and other cities. He encouraged Mayor Piercy and City Manager to work together to accomplish that. Mr. Kelly said it would be interesting to know how much flexible funding, such as the STP-U money, was allocated annually to Eugene, and the percentage of those funds that were controlled by the Eugene City Council as opposed to being controlled by the Metropolitan Policy Committee (mPC). Mr. Kelly was not comfortable with the proposed diesel exemption. He said if there was a general exemption procedure that was available to all parties, he would not object. However, he did not want to single out an industry and suggest they were more equal than other parties. Mr. Kelly indicated interest in revisiting the initial TSMF, not the modified one reviewed by the council. Ms. Solomon said the council had been given the full picture of transportation funding six years ago by former Public Works Director Christine Andersen, and the council was aware of the problems and the solutions that existed. She hoped the council would %tep up the plate" and take action. Ms. Solomon asked when the council could offer the voters a chance to consider a TSMF. Mr. Klein indicated the soonest an election could be scheduled was May 2005. Selecting that date would require the City to pay for some or all of the costs of the election. If the election was scheduled for November 2005 or May 2006, the City would incur no costs. He confirmed, in response to a follow-up question from Ms. Solomon, that a supermajority was not required to pass a TSMF. Ms. Bettman said she did not mean to imply that the City was wasting money on transportation projects or that the Chad Drive extension project was a waste of money. Her point was that the project was originally to be paid for through assessments and systems development charge because it was a new road and it increased capacity. Now flexible funding was proposed for those projects, which was not consistent with the council's highest priority of fixing roads first. Since other funding sources existed, those should be used instead of money that could be used to fix potholes. Speaking to Ms. Bettman's comments, Mr. Corey said that the Chad Drive project was identified in the Capital Improvement Program as being funded through SDCs or assessments. A portion of what would have otherwise been paid for by transportation SDC revenues would be paid by the STP-U funding. There would still be direct assessments to the property owners. Ms. Bettman said that the project qualified as a modernization project based on the matrix viewed by the MPC. When the matrix came before the MPC, she had asked if preservation projects could be included in the heading of modernization, she was told by staff the answer was yes; however, when staff returned with the project list, that was not the case, and the MPC had voted to support the criteria. Ms. Taylor thanked Ms. Solomon for giving credit to Ms. Anderson for her emphasis on pavement preservation. She also thanked Ms. Bettman for pointing out the City needed to watch all flexible funds carefully. She said she had not given up on a countywide registration fee. She thought the City gave up too easily, and that people were aware of the need for road maintenance funding. Ms. Bettman referred to the proposed ordinance and said that it appeared the calculation for the reduction of the tax on diesel fuel was based on Springfield numbers and asked if that could be verified before the council considered the ordinance. Mr. Corey said staff had verified those numbers with the industry representatives. MINUTES--Eugene City Council January 19, 2005 Page 8 Work Session