Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Joint Elected Officials Meeting Minutes September 15, 2008 Page 2 Tom Boyatt, Transportation Manager for the City of Springfield, started the staff portion of the meeting. He was joined by Celia Barry, Lane County; Rob Inerfeld, City of Eugene; and Petra Schuetz, Planning Director, City of Coburg. Mr. Boyatt referred to the Regional Transportation Work Plan that was put together by the staff from the four jurisdictions. This program was intended to bring our State required regional transportation planning in consistency with the federally required regional transportation planning. He noted that the City of Coburg had already made a finding of consistency that their Transportation System Plan was consistent with the Federal Regional Transportation Plan. Because of those findings, it was not necessary that they approve the work plan presented. As part of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) boundary, however, Coburg needed to be involved in the development of the Regional Transportation System Plan and that was why they were participating in today’s meeting. Councilor Betty Taylor joined the meeting. Mr. Boyatt noted an email from Bob Courtwright from the Department of Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) which addressed two issues with the work program: 1) It would take some time to complete the land use pieces for Eugene and Springfield, and that the land use forecast needed to occur before the transportation planning could move forward; and 2) The performance measures adopted by the LCDC in 2001 were addressed going ahead into the future. He noted that there was language in the work program that addressed performance measures. These were somewhat separate issues, but were connected in this process. Mr. Boyatt said the work plan had been discussed once in a previous joint elected officials meeting and at least once among jurisdictions during their individual meetings. The work plan (Attachment A in the agenda packet) was not a policy document. Its purpose was to meet transportation planning goal requirements and consistency between state, regional and federal required plans. He noted that there were tasks and a timeline set out in the work plan shown in Attachment A as two columns. He explained the two columns: Major Work Plan Milestone and Ongoing Coordinated Local and MPO Planning Activities. There were two areas in the memo that were the chief areas of inconsistencies at this time. The first was the planned horizon year. The Local Transportation System Plan (TransPlan) had a planned horizon year of 2015, which was the same as the Metro Plan horizon year. The 2007 Federal Regional Transportation Plan had a horizon year of 2031. The second area of inconsistency was project list consistency. No amendments had been made yet to the TransPlan project list since the 2002 adoption. Some of those amendments had been initiated. When they went through the 2031 Federal Plan, all jurisdictions reviewed the project list and updated it based on projects that were feasible and made sense. He gave examples. Mr. Boyatt summarized the bullets in the right hand column of the table in Attachment A. This work plan went out a number of years and flexibility was needed to adapt the plan as needed. Each jurisdiction had policy discussions in that direction. Those discussions were outlined on page 3 of the memo included in the agenda packet. There was agreement to amend the existing TransPlan from planning horizon 2015 to 2023. He explained some of the projects that would be moved from this plan. Commissioners Green and Stewart joined the meeting.