CC Minutes - 01/24/05 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Bettman said she had been working for a long time to allocate the dollars in question to preservation and maintenance. However, her efforts had not been successful. She believed that the City's road maintenance and preservation budget deficit was attributable to the lack of political will over the past few decades to prioritize those items. Decisions had been made to fund new projects at the expense of maintenance and preservation. Ms. Bettman asserted that of the $185 million allocated through the MTIP, only $2.2 million was flexible funding available to Eugene. She said that reallocating those funds would not stop any new road projects from going forward given the small amount involved. She said the City was forced to go to its taxpayers for money because of priority and funding decisions made by the MPC. Ms. Bettman maintained that historically, Eugene representatives ;;had not had a say" in the regional project list approved by the MPC. Ms. Bettman noted that the Springfield City Council reviewed that city's project list in light of that community's priorities. She thought it was Eugene's fiscal responsibility to do the same thing. With regard to the evaluation matrix adopted by the MPC, Ms. Bettman maintained that the project list could be adjusted based on the Eugene council's priorities. She noted that Coburg was not subjected to the criteria and received STP-U funding without going through the matrix evaluation process. She believed there were exceptions and considerable discretion in the process. She wanted to leverage that discretion so the Eugene council could tell its taxpayers it was spending as much as possible on road maintenance and preservation. Mr. Kelly asked Ms. Bettman if both of Eugene's representatives to the MPC supported her motion to change the criteria and if she knew why representatives of other jurisdictions did not support it. Ms. Bettman said former Mayor Jim Torrey and Lane County Commissioner Bobby Green had supported her motion. She had offered the body a more specific motion to allow Eugene to recover its STP-U allocation, but the motion failed to receive a second. Mr. Kelly said he asked the question because he wondered if, more than a year later, the City of Eugene could have a more productive discussion with the MPC on the topic. As he interpreted the motion, it was rather nuanced, and directed staff to assist the council in adjusting some of the rules so that if Eugene chose, it could use more of the money for maintenance and preservation projects within its own jurisdiction. He supported the motion so the City could go to MPC in a cooperative spirit and advocate for the use of the funds for that purpose. Speaking to the Chad Drive project, Mr. Kelly said that he believed it was a good project and his motion to de-fund the project was a vote against the project funding rather than the project itself. He supported the use of assessments and system development charges (SDCs) to underwrite those costs. Ms. Taylor indicated support for the motion. Mr. Pap6 said the premise and goals of the motion were lofty and worthwhile, but the ;;devil was in the details." He pointed out that the City was almost through fiscal year 2005, and asked how the motion impacted projects scheduled for construction. Ms. Bettman said her motion represented policy direction to change the matrix so that in the future Eugene had the ability to prioritize its flexible funding for mainte- nance and preservation. She wanted to reprogram the funding so that the Chad Drive project was supported MINUTES--Eugene City Council January 24, 2005 Page 10 Work Session