CC Minutes - 07/16/03 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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At the request of Mr. PapS, Mr. Schoening clarified the expenditures in the Capital Projects category. Speaking to Mr. Kelly's concerns about education, Mr. Pap8 pointed out that the City had "done a lot of that." He had personally seen streets painted with the salmon emblem, which helped him to recall the need to consider the salmon. He suggested the funding allocated for general educational outreach was sufficient. Mr. Schoening said there was a relationship between the Stormwater Program and ESA response, but there was not enough money in the fund to address the costs of ESA education. Ms. Bettman shared the surprise expressed by Ms. Taylor and Mr. Kelly about the staff recommendation. She did not believe the program was over-funded. She pointed out that the national trend was to move toward the use of green infrastructure. She said that the City needed to make investments in green infrastructure to reduce its operating costs over the long-term. Ms. Bettman believed that the council would reduce the program but it could not micro-manage those reductions. When the council directed staff to cut $2 million from an existing program, there would clearly be some pain. For that reason, she objected to the recommendation. The service provided to the community was good, and she saw no reason to purposely degrade the service. Ms. Bettman said that there had been no fee increase for ten years, the program was user-fee supported, and there had been no public outcry about the fee increase. Instead, the council heard good things about the leaf pick-up program and educational outreach efforts. Ms. Bettman pointed out that the only parties objecting to the fee increases were the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce and the Lane County Home Builders Association, which wanted the program cut so the fees would go down. She thought that was counterintuitive. On the one hand, those parties wanted to fund development services and facilitate development, but once people bought a house and moved to Eugene, the City would abandon them in terms of services. Mr. Pap8 called for a second round of comments and questions. Mr. Meisner said that there had been no fee increase for several years because the fee was initially set too high, leading to the build-up of reserves. He agreed that the council should not micro-manage the reductions but suggested that when it selected a scenario, it could direct staff to retain certain services, such as the river clean-up. He questioned whether the City's educational efforts were as effective as they could be, or if things could be done differently. Mr. Meisner asked how the City became the local agency responsible for stormwater rather than another agency, such as the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB). He asked if there was ever a discussion of having the utility assume the service. Mr. Schoening said that the charter proscribed the two agencies' roles. He said that in other places, such as Washington County, stormwater services were provided through a service district. Mr. Meisner suggested that EWEB could come to the council and ask for permission to assume the service. Speaking to Mr. PapS's suggestion that LCOG assume the costs of the preparing the information provided by Eugene for the Region 2050 project, Mr. Kelly said that LCOG could not assume the service as the effort was grant-funded and LCOG looked to each local member jurisdiction to give it the needed information. MINUTES--Eugene City Council July 16, 2003 Page 4 Work Session