CC Minutes - 11/28/01 Work Session

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Mr. Farr determined from Mr. Reinhard that staff was not proposing to drop any projects and the community would continue to work on the projects on the preliminary list at some point in time. Mr. Reinhard said yes; for example, unless something changed, the five projects in question would move to the futures list, which did not have the same standing in TransPlan as the adopted project list, but which reflected consensus that further effort was needed to ensure they were eventually constructed. Mr. Farr stated that the council was not eliminating projects, merely delaying them in response to the voters' direction. Ms. Taylor said the answers to the questions asked so far illustrated the folly of what the council was doing. She was interested in seeking federal funding for other priorities and said that the council could easily get less federal money rather than more federal money in the future. She read a letter she wrote to The Register-Guard in defense of what she anticipated her vote on the resolution would be. Her defense to the accusation that she was ignoring a vote of the people was her contention that the election results did not represent a mandate and her belief the parkway succeeded because of deceptive campaign advertising. In addition, the parkway did not gain majority support in her ward. In response to Mr. Kelly's comments about the campaign, Mayor Torrey said that as a parkway supporter he was asked at the City Club forum on the topic if passage of the ballot measure would require a readjustment to the TransPlan project list, and he had responded in the affirmative. He said that it was an accurate statement. In terms of dishonest statements, he said there were a number of advertisements published against the parkway that insinuated the money to be used for construction could be used for general taxation purposes, such as for schools, parks, and neighborhoods. He asked Mr. Reinhard if that was the case. Mr. Reinhard said no. Regarding the staff time, Mayor Torrey suggested that the City would have spent considerable more time on zoning adjustments that would have been necessary in the absence of the parkway. Mayor Torrey said that the federally constrained requirement associated with the parkway was thrown at the community last year for the first time. The community had never planned to have to budget for all the projects in the 20-year time frame. The parkway would not even be done within the 20-year time frame, but the federal government required that the community budget for it. It was a technical budgeting requirement. He did not think that any of the projects on the draft list, with the exception of the extra lane on the Washington-Jefferson Bridge, was authorized to proceed. Mr. Reinhard concurred. Mayor Torrey said that the public needed to understand that none of the projects on the list had been studied or approved by the agency (©D©T) that would give the community the money for the projects. Mr. Meisner called on the council to move forward and work together to do what needed to be done instead of continually blaming. Mr. Meisner said that the futures list was a long-term list and projects on the list would be unlikely to be built in the 20-year planning horizon unless new money came forward or something else was cancelled. Mr. Reinhard concurred. Mr. Meisner noted Ms. Nathanson's points regarding the fact that planning on the west side was premised on construction of the parkway. Assuming that to be true, he asked to what degree the Beltline improvements on the list were necessary for the parkway to work. He expressed concern about building a parkway that would funnel traffic through downtown rather than out through MINUTES--Eugene City Council November 28, 2001 Page 4 Work Session