CC Minutes - 07/15/08 Joint Elected Officials

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and made less expensive. He said they needed a simple understandable transportation system plan that was affordable. Mayor Piercy observed that transportation planning was complicated for the public. She did not think people understood how or why to participate in the planning. Councilor Zelenka agreed that having the public get involved at the local level and having that inform the regional plan would be good. He remarked that public involvement was broken and the “usual suspects” came to meetings to provide testimony. He noted that the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Metropolitan Policy Organization (MPO CAC) had been charged with bolstering public involvement. Eugene Councilor Taylor thought the reason people did not participate sometimes was that they did not recognize they had an impact. She opined that this was especially true regarding the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC). She felt that people were closer to their councilors than to members of the inter- jurisdictional group and would be more comfortable providing input locally. Councilor Bettman opined that the MPO CAC had been “morphed into” a marginalized committee that was in charge of telling the MPC “how to have a nicer forum or better ads in the newspaper.” She declared that this was not the intended role for the MPO CAC; it was to be a body to provide public input. Councilor Zelenka averred that it took perseverance to participate in this kind of planning. He felt they should redouble efforts at the local level to involve not just the institutionally financed groups but also the regular citizens. Councilor Ballew observed that a better job could be done at the local level to garner public input when putting together the Capital Improvement Programs (CIPs). Councilor Ralston noted that amending the TransPlan so that the completed projects were deleted was part of the short-term goals. He thought they ought to consider the TransPlan the RTP and update it so that they would not have to change all of the documents that referred to it. Councilor Ballew did not see anything in the short-term actions that were objectionable. She also did not think the mid-term actions were unreasonable. Councilor Bettman said Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz should take from the discussion what the decision points should be and then the council should have a work session in order to make those decisions. She thought the decisions could then be forwarded to the JEO. Commissioner Fleenor concurred. Mayor Piercy surmised that each group would return to their jurisdictions and make the decisions and then reconvene as the JEO. MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 6 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils