CC Minutes - 07/15/08 Joint Elected Officials

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of the jurisdictions would be making and the degree to which they would agree or disagree about them would be. He wanted to work out a way to coordinate the underlying assumptions. Councilor Bettman questioned whether the underpinning assumptions could be coordinated. She asserted that the City of Eugene was trying to build more densely and the City of Springfield was building out at 50 percent of allowable density. She declared that those assumptions were “extremely different” and she could not see how they could be coordinated. She thought the Metro Plan should be included in the work plan as it contained the land use assumptions that dictated transportation assumptions and the projects. She opined that they would have to be individual plans because the two jurisdictions no longer shared an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). Springfield Councilor Ralston agreed with the assumption that the Metro Plan was no longer useful or that there were components of it that were no longer useful. He supported separate TSPs and averred that if the Regional Transportation Plan took care of the large projects that related to both communities it would beg the question how important the TransPlan would be. He felt that if the MetroPlan was invalid, then it would make the TransPlan invalid, especially if the two jurisdictions developed their own plans. He wanted to know why the TransPlan was important. Mr. Inerfeld responded that the TransPlan was what was considered the TSP and the RTSP at this time. He said they could make TransPlan the name of the RTSP, which was required by the State or it could be called by another name. Commissioner Sorenson remarked that the County had a sense of urgency about economizing the plan so that the federal, state, and regional requirements should be pulled together. He agreed that a local facility that affected one community should be handled locally. He related that the commissioners had directed their staff to return in September or October with an estimate of how long the County had before it would run out of its Road Fund. He predicted that for the County the brakes would stop on its financial ability to participate in regional activities where the Road Fund was a principal source of funding. He was bothered by the idea of not merging the federal, state, and regional requirements. Mayor Piercy asked if Commissioner Sorenson was echoing Councilor Ralston’s sentiments. Commissioner Sorenson affirmed that he was. He said they needed to keep doing the state regional work separately from the federal regional work, but help from the County in certain projects was required by federal and state laws and the jurisdictions would have to help the County look for ways to economize on its participation. Councilor Ballew said before they made a decision about how to develop the transportation plans, whether to do them individually or in conjunction with one another, there needed to be a clearer understanding of the financial ramifications. Councilor Zelenka averred that they were in danger of making three separate plans. He agreed that the local and regional plans should be separate, but he hoped that in consideration of the County’s financial constraints the state and federal planning would be combined into one plan. Councilor Bettman did not want to take regional priority setting out of the purview of local decision-making. She noted that federal funding sometimes required a local match. Commissioner Fleenor encouraged his colleagues and the staff of the jurisdictions to realize that the area could be in a persistent economic downturn that could last “years and even decades.” He also wanted to encourage staff to “keep it simple, reduce the layers of bureaucracy, [and] reduce the policies and procedures.” He predicted this would add less of a burden on taxpayers. He wanted things to be simplified MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 5 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils