CC Minutes - 09/26/05 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Taylor said she did not care if her street light was present as she preferred darkened streets. Ms. Taylor said a transportation utility fee (TUF) by any other name was still a TUF. Ms. Taylor noted the council’s long-time goal of fair, adequate, and stable resources, and said the council never discussed how to achieve it. She said that the street system should be supported by a new revenue source in the General Fund. She said the council had been unwilling to discuss new revenue sources seriously, and needed to do so. Ms. Taylor found the suggested service reductions unacceptable and said they could lead to additional expenses in the future. She recalled that during budget crisis engendered by the passage of Ballot Measure 5 the City chose to not water some of its parks and later was forced to spend money to replace dead shrubs and trees killed by a lack of water. Mr. Pryor said the issue was new for him but he recognized the council had been dealing with it for a long time. He expressed appreciation for the packet materials, which helped illustrate the size of the problem. He said the council could either increase resources or reduce expenses, and he did not know enough at this point to know if there were actually opportunities for either approach. He did not think the council could solve the problem on its own, and suggested that more citizen input was needed. Ms. Bettman asked if the City had a standard calculation for the projected estimated operations and maintenance cost for a lane mile of new road. Mr. Corey said the City’s pavement management computer model predicted both road condition and estimated maintenance costs and was the source of the City’s projections for the current backlog. Ms. Bettman said that a key issue for her was that the City continued to build new roads and “pretended” there was no liability associated with them. She believed the construction of new roads was why the City continued to spend money on the problem of the maintenance backlog and it increased in cost. She suggested there were a third option for the council to consider, that of reprioritizing the budget. Ms. Bettman did not support increasing taxes or instituting fees for maintenance and preservation when the City was spending the money it received through the local gas tax and from the federal government for new projects rather than using all possible dollars available for maintenance and preservation. Ms. Bettman did not think the City should use General Fund dollars to fix potholes as that was what the gas tax was for. She said every department in the City could make a good case for increased revenues to meet gaps in those services, and while those gaps may not be as quantifiable, they were just as real. However, the street funding problem seemed to have been assigned a higher priority than those other shortfalls. She reiterated that reprioritizing the budget would take care of the problem. Ms. Bettman said she did not like looking at the issue in a vacuum apart from other budget issues. Mayor Piercy solicited a second round of comments and questions. Mr. Kelly suggested it would be interesting if staff provided the council with information regarding the operations, preservation, and maintenance costs for new roads and the growth in lane miles of roadway in the city over the last ten years. He suggested staff estimate maintenance costs for a lane mile of a one-year- old street and a ten-year-old street. Mr. Kelly said he would also be interested in knowing how many dollars that the City could have directed to operations, preservation, and maintenance went to new projects instead over the past four years. MINUTES—Eugene City Council September 26, 2005 Page 8 Work Session