Item B: Funding Strategies for Transportation System Operations, Maintenance, and Preservation

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Emergency response is another area where in-house staff typically perform better than contracting. The difficulty in predicting the type and severity of an emergency event makes contracting difficult. In-house staff familiar with the City's infrastructure typically can respond much more quickly than a contractor. Also facilitating emergency response is the flexibility to quickly assign or reassign in-house staff from one project to another, or to dispatch crews to deal with unscheduled problems. This avoids delays which would occur if a private vendor?s representative needed to be contacted and change orders negotiated.For example, if the local asphalt batch plants become unavailable, crews are readily reassigned to other work activities.This combination of flexibility and timely response is crucial to the highest level of customer service and satisfaction. Minor street repairs such as pothole patching or crack sealing have not generated a great deal of vendor interest in the past due to their nature of being many small projects--many driven by citizen complaints--and widely dispersed around the city. In the Transportation Division, all of the capital project work is contracted out with the exception of an occasional small (typically under $25,000) signal or lighting project that City crews might perform, and some new street lights that are installed by EWEB on its poles. The bulk of contracted projects involve capital projects such as traffic signals (new or re-constructed), street lights (new), traffic-calming projects, and miscellaneous traffic operations improvements such as median islands for pedestrian crossings. Most of this work goes out through the Engineering Division's bidding and contract processes. In Transportation operations, City crews do work such as the annual restriping of streets, routine sign inspection and maintenance, and most of the electrical maintenance and bulb replacement for signals and street lights. These are mostly routine,repetitive functions that staff is trained and equipped to do. As in Maintenance, Transportation operations staff is able to cost-effectively blend the pre-scheduled preventive maintenance work with the various types of service calls or problem solving that comes up throughout the year. Operational work contracted out includes saw-cutting pavement or concrete (for loops,conduit runs, etc.),various types of testing, sandblasting and water blasting of old paint. These are functions that are less frequently needed, so it makes sense to hire an outside contractor. All Public Worksdivisions contract with consultantsfor studies and specialprojects. Again, these services usually requirespecialized knowledge (such as bridge designor landscape and architecturaldesign). Current Funding Situation The primary sources of funding for Eugene?s Road Fund are: State Highway Trust Fund, through which gas tax and weight-mile fee revenues are C distributed to Eugene on the basis of population. These revenues are restricted by the Oregon Constitution for use within road rights-of-way. Transfers to Eugene from the Lane County Road Fund through the City/County Road C Partnership Agreement. Other sources, such as interest earnings. C Additional revenues are available from the federal Surface Transportation Program (STP). These funds, which are allocated locally by the Metropolitan Policy Committee, are available for capital transportation projects, transportationplanning and other eligible activities. Other special federal, state and county grants periodically become available; however, they tend to be focused on capacity enhancement versus operation, maintenance and preservation. 8